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WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A BEE?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2017

Brian D. Earp
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Abstract

Do bees have feelings? What would that mean? And if they do have feelings, how should we treat them? Do we have a moral obligation towards insects? A short commentary on M. Bateson, S. Desire, S. E. Gartside, and G. A. Wright, ‘Agitated Honeybees Exhibit Pessimistic Cognitive Biases’, Current Biology 21.12 (2011), 1070–3.

Type
Research Article
Information
Think , Volume 16 , Issue 45 , Spring 2017 , pp. 43 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2017 

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References

Notes

1 This article is adapted from an informal blog post written by the author, Brian D. Earp, with the same title, originally published on 19 June 2011 at the Practical Ethics website, hosted by the University of Oxford Faculty of Philosophy. The original post can be accessed here: <http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2011/06/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-bee/>.

2 Bateson, M., Desire, S., Gartside, S. E., and Wright, G. A., ‘Agitated Honeybees Exhibit Pessimistic Cognitive Biases’, Current Biology 21.12 (2011), 1070–3CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

3 Keim, B., ‘Honeybees Might Have Emotions’, Wired Science (17 June 2011)Google Scholar, <http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/honeybee-pessimism/>.

4 I'm alluding, of course, to Nagel, T., ‘What Is It Like To Be a Bat?’, The Philosophical Review 83 (1974), 435–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 E.g. Singer, P., Animal Liberation (New York: Random House 1995)Google Scholar.

6 For a nice introduction, see Tully, T., ‘Pavlov's Dogs’, Current Biology 13.4 (2003), R117–R119 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 For further discussion of the different ‘levels’ of analysis at which different subjective experiences can be described and understood (with an emphasis on romantic love), see, e.g., Savulescu, J., and Earp, B. D., ‘Neuroreductionism about Sex and Love’, Think: A Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy 13.38 (2014), 7–12 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Earp, B. D., Sandberg, A. and Savulescu, J., ‘The Medicalization of Love: Response to Critics’, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 25.4 (2016), 759–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 For further discussion, see: Earp, B. D., ‘An Anti-Anti-Functionalist Account of Consciousness’, Annales Philosophici 4.1 (2012), 6–15 Google Scholar; Earp, B. D., ‘I Can't Get No (Epistemic) Satisfaction: Why the Hard Problem of Consciousness Entails a Hard Problem of Explanation’, Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences 5.1 (2012), 14–20 Google Scholar; Earp, B. D., ‘Does Rationality + Consciousness = Free Will?’, Journal of Consciousness Studies 20.1–2 (2013), 248–53Google Scholar.

9 See reference at note 2, at page 1072.

10 Horvath, K., Angeletti, D., Nascetti, G. and Carere, C., ‘Invertebrate Welfare: An Overlooked Issue’, Annali dell'Istituto Superiore di Sanità 49.1 (2013), 9–17 Google Scholar, at p. 9.

11 For further scholarly discussion of some of the ideas presented in this article, see, e.g., Mendl, M., Paul, E. S. and Chittka, L., ‘Animal Behaviour: Emotion in Invertebrates?’, Current Biology 21.12 (2013), R463–R465 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Crook, R. A., ‘The Welfare of Invertebrate Animals in Research: Can Science's Next Generation Improve their Lot?’, Journal of Postdoctoral Research 1.2 (2013), 1–20 Google Scholar.