​The Joy and Suffering of Insects

Expanding Our Sense of Kinship and Divine Love

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Consciousness and Pain in Insects

This essay is an invitation to consider the joys and sufferings of insects. Although the essay focuses primarily on insects, many of the considerations it raises apply more broadly to other arthropods as well, including spiders, crustaceans, and centipedes.

It is prompted by two articles in scientific journals dealing with insect suffering.

One is by Peter Godfrey-Smith, “Inferring Consciousness in Phylogenetically Distant Organisms,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 36, no. 8 (2024): 1660–1666, https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_02158. In this article, Godfrey-Smith explores the conceptual and empirical challenges involved in attributing consciousness to organisms that are evolutionarily distant from human beings, raising important questions about how we recognize—and how we might fail to recognize—forms of experience unlike our own. He makes the case for consciousness in octopusses and then adds: 
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Suppose we conclude there is pain in octopuses. Where are the new frontier cases? Insects are natural candidates to consider. There is now some evidence for acute pain in bumblebees (Gibbons et al., 2022), which have much smaller nervous systems than octopuses (around a million neurons as opposed to hundreds of millions). As data come in, we may find that many more cases probably fall within the category of conscious animals than we thought, but we should also reflect on the concepts and distinctions being used here.

​The second is by Gibbons, Versace, Crump, and Chittka, “Motivational Trade-Offs and Modulation of Nociception in Bumblebees” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, no. 31, 2022, e2205821119, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2205821119). This article presents experimental evidence that bumblebees can weigh competing motivations when responding to harmful stimuli, suggesting a level of flexible, context-sensitive behavior consistent with the possibility of felt aversion.
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Bumblebees avoided noxiously heated feeders less when these dispensed higher sucrose concentrations than unheated feeders. Unlike trade-offs described in other invertebrates (5, 6, 9), this trade-off relied on associative memories, rather than direct experience of the stimuli. Bees’ ability to trade-off heat avoidance against sucrose preference indicates that conditioned motivational stimuli can influence nocifensive behavior, and the trade-off is mediated in the central nervous system (10, 11). As in other animals, such an ability is viewed as consistent with the capacity to feel pain (12–14), although because of the subjective nature of pain experience, it is not a formal proof. Nonetheless, given the potential ethical implications of our research, the precautionary principle dictates that the possibility of insect pain and suffering should be taken seriously in insect research laboratories as well as insect conservation (14, 15).

Six Reasons Why Insects Matter

I realize that, for many people, the suffering of human beings takes precedence, and that, after that, the suffering of other animals—especially vertebrates—seems far more important than anything that might be said about insects. Indeed, the very idea that insects might suffer can strike some as frivolous or trivial, at best a matter of idle curiosity.

Why is this so? In part, it is because insects look so different from us, and because their nervous systems are much smaller and less centralized than our own, even though they can support surprisingly complex forms of behavior.
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Still, the question seems worthy of consideration for at least five main reasons.

1. Scientific Evidence and Behavioral Complexity

There is a growing body of scientific research suggesting that insects exhibit more than simple reflexive responses to harmful stimuli. Their behavior can be flexible, context-sensitive, and modulated by prior experience, raising the possibility that what is at stake is not mere mechanical reaction but some form of felt aversion.

2. Philosophical Considerations: Panpsychism and Panexperientialism

Philosophical perspectives such as panpsychism, along with process-oriented forms of panexperientialism inspired by Alfred North Whitehead, invite us to reconsider the scope of sentience itself. If something like experience pervades the natural world, then insects would not stand outside the domain of feeling but would participate in it, albeit in ways that differ in degree and complexity from our own.

3. Ethical and Religious Traditions

Ethical and religious traditions such as Buddhism and Jainism have long urged a widening of moral concern beyond the human. Their emphasis on the ubiquity of suffering and the importance of nonviolence suggests that even the smallest forms of life may deserve careful regard, not because they are like us, but because they, too, may in their own ways be vulnerable to harm.

4. Expanding Our Sense of Kinship with Life

A recognition of insect suffering can broaden our perspective, helping us to develop a deeper and more inclusive sense of kinship with life. By attending to forms of experience that are distant from our own, we may become less anthropocentric and more attuned to the many ways in which life expresses itself, suffers, and strives.

5. Theological Deepening: A Panentheistic Perspective

A recognition of the possible suffering of insects can widen and deepen our understanding of God—at least if God is understood in panentheistic terms. In such a view, the world exists in God even as God also exceeds the world, and the experiences of creatures are, in some sense, taken up into the divine life. If even the smallest creatures participate in the continuum of feeling, then their joys and sufferings, however minimal, are not lost but belong to the ongoing life of the whole. This does not diminish the importance of human suffering; rather, it situates it within a more expansive, relational vision of reality in which the sacred is present in and responsive to all forms of experience.

6. Aesthetic Achievement: The Inner Lives of Insects

A sixth reason for taking seriously the possibility of insect suffering is that their subjectivity—their inner lives—are, in the words of process philosopher Andrew Davis, "aesthetic achievements."From a process perspective shaped by Alfred North Whitehead, each moment of experience is not merely a passive reception of stimuli but an active process of integration, a concrescence in which many influences are gathered into a unified feeling. This process culminates in a “satisfaction,” a momentary achievement of value characterized by some degree of harmony and intensity.

If this is so, then even the simplest forms of subjectivity are not devoid of aesthetic character. They are, in their own way, realizations of value—however modest in intensity—within the ongoing creative advance of the universe. To recognize this is to see that insect lives are not merely biological processes or behavioral patterns, but moments of felt experience that achieve, however fleetingly, their own forms of aesthetic unity. Their inner lives are not incidental to reality; they are instances of beauty in the making.
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Taken together, these considerations do not settle the question of whether insects suffer, or—if they do—how much they suffer relative to human beings and other vertebrates. But they do suggest that the question is neither frivolous nor trivial. It is, rather, an invitation to rethink the boundaries of feeling, the scope of moral concern, and our place within a world that may be more sentient than we have imagined.

In what follows I offer a few more comments on process philosophy, Jainism and Buddhism, panentheism, and a process philosophy of beauty - hoping they might spur others, including theologians, to think more deeply about insect suffering and, at the end, insect joy.

Process Philosophy: Aversion and Adversion

It will come as no surprise to panpsychists that scientists are now exploring the possibility—and perhaps even the probability—that insects suffer. Panpsychism proposes that something like sentience, or felt experience, pervades the cosmos, extending not only through living organisms but also, in some sense, into its ostensibly inanimate dimensions. From this perspective, arthropods are not anomalous bearers of experience but participants in a wider field of feeling that runs through the fabric of reality itself. Sometimes, this field of feeling includes pain and suffering. 

The question, then, is how far such suffering extends. Process philosophers influenced by Whitehead offer a distinctive framework for addressing this question. They describe themselves as panexperientialists, meaning that, for them, something like felt experience occurs within each and every actual entity in the universe. In Whitehead’s philosophy, this experience consists of “prehensions” (felt relations to other entities in the actual world), and these prehensions are accompanied by “subjective forms,” or emotional tones, that qualify what is experienced. Among the most basic of these responses are aversion and adversion—movements away from or toward aspects of the world as they are felt. Within this framework, suffering or pain can be understood as a felt impulse to withdraw from what is experienced as harmful or noxious. The growing body of scientific research on insects, including studies of bumblebees, suggests that their responses to injury or threat may involve more than simple reflex, pointing instead toward modulated, context-sensitive feelings of aversion.¹

Complementary to this is adversion: a movement toward what is experienced as favorable, accompanied by a desire for, and an experience of, satisfaction. If aversion names the felt diminishment of experience, adversion names its fulfillment—the realization, however slight, of harmony and intensity within a moment of becoming. Aversion can be glimpsed, for example, in an insect recoiling from excessive heat, withdrawing from a noxious chemical, avoiding a site associated with prior harm, or struggling to free itself from entrapment or injury. In each case, there is not merely a mechanical response but a patterned movement away from what is, in some sense, negatively felt.
Adversion, by contrast, can be seen in an insect’s movement toward nectar-rich flowers, in the rhythmic and seemingly absorbed activity of foraging, in the successful return to a hive or nest, or in the coordinated life of a colony in which individual actions contribute to a larger whole. In such moments there may be, however faint, a sense of rightness—a felt fulfillment of aim, a satisfaction in the coordination of activity and environment. These instances suggest forms of enjoyment: a positive tone of experience, a momentary “yes” to the world as it is encountered.
Buddhism and Jainism

Religious traditions such as Buddhism and Jainism have long anticipated, in ethical and spiritual terms, aspects of this emerging picture of a panpsychist universe in which sentience is pervasive. Buddhists maintain that all sentient beings—not humans alone—experience dukkha (dis-ease or suffering) in their daily lives, and many Mahayana Buddhists take vows to save all sentient beings. These vows are interpreted in diverse ways, but they consistently include a commitment to avoid causing unnecessary suffering.

Jains extend this sensibility even further. Within Jainism, the principle of ahimsa (nonviolence) is applied with exceptional rigor to all living beings, including insects and even microorganisms. Practices such as careful walking, filtering water, and strict dietary disciplines are grounded in the conviction that all living beings possess jiva (a life-principle) and are vulnerable, in their own ways, to harm.

Panentheism

From a theological standpoint, these reflections can be gathered into a broader vision of panentheism. In panentheistic thought, the world exists “in” God, even as God also exceeds the world. Interpreted in a process-relational way, this suggests that the felt experiences of creatures—including their suffering—are not external to the divine life but are, in some sense, taken up into it. God is not a distant observer but a participant in the ongoing process of becoming, receiving and responding to each moment of experience. If even insects participate, however minimally, in the continuum of feeling, then their experiences, too, belong to the life of the whole. In this way, the question of insect suffering opens not only ethical and philosophical horizons, but theological ones as well.

The Joys of Insects

From a panentheistic perspective, this line of thought carries a further implication. If the world exists in God, and if the experiences of creatures are taken up into the divine life, then even the (comparatively speaking) "smallest" forms of life contribute to that life. In the philosophy of Whitehead, God has a “consequent nature,” a dimension of the divine reality that receives, feels, and integrates the experiences of all creatures. Insect existence—with its minute perceptions, its impulses of attraction and aversion, its struggles and satisfactions—enters into this receptive life of God. However faint or fleeting these experiences may be, they are not lost. They are gathered, felt, and woven into what Whitehead calls a “harmony of harmonies,” a living synthesis in which each moment of experience, however small, contributes to the richness of the whole. This includes not only their satisfactions but also their sufferings, which are taken up into the divine life not as evils to be justified, but as realities to be felt, remembered, and, in some measure, redeemed within a larger pattern of tragic beauty. In this sense, insect life does not merely exist alongside the divine; it participates in and, in its own way, deepens and enriches the life of God.

Insect Beauty

If insects suffer, they also enjoy—and their enjoyment may itself be a form of beauty. The question is not only whether insects appear beautiful to us, but whether their own subjective lives include moments of felt harmony, intensity, and satisfaction that can rightly be called beautiful from within.

From a process perspective, beauty is not primarily an external property or a human judgment. It is an achievement within experience itself: the realization of intensity in harmony. Each moment of becoming—a concrescing subject—aims at a form of satisfaction, integrating many influences into a unified feeling. When this integration attains richness without destructive discord, it can be understood as beautiful in its own right.

If this is so, then insect life includes its own forms of beauty. A bee navigating toward nectar, a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, an ant participating in the coordinated life of a colony—these are not merely observable patterns but lived occasions of experience. To the extent that these moments involve a successful integration of contrasts into a heightened intensity of feeling, they embody beauty as it is felt from within. Even if such intensity is modest by human standards, it is nonetheless real: a momentary achievement of value.

The Eros of the Universe

In Whitehead, God is not only the harmony of harmonies, but also the Eros of the universe—the source of the initial aim that lures each creature toward richness of experience, toward intensity realized in harmony. From this perspective, the subjective beauty of insect life is not accidental. It is part of the ongoing creative advance into novelty, shaped by a divine lure toward richer forms of feeling. And in the consequent nature of God, these moments of achieved intensity—these small beauties—are preserved and woven into a larger “harmony of harmonies.” Thus, insect beauty is not only felt by insects themselves; it also contributes to the evolving richness of the divine life, in which every realized intensity, however slight, has its place.
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In this way, beauty and suffering in insect life can be understood as two poles of a single experiential continuum: one expressing the fulfillment of value, the other its diminishment—both real, both felt, and both taken up into the ongoing life of the whole.


¹ In the case of the bumblebee, the response is an instance of what scientists call “nociceptive sensitization.” It is “a heightened sensitivity after an aversive event, such as electric shock, pinching, or application of chemicals like table salt.” Such sensitization can be either “peripheral” or more central and generalized, and may involve a state described as fear-like, anxious, or hypervigilant. These findings are significant because they suggest not merely reflexive reaction but a modulated, temporally extended responsiveness to harm, raising questions about the presence of affective experience in insects. See Peter Godfrey-Smith, “Inferring Consciousness in Phylogenetically Distant Organisms,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 36, no. 8 (2024): 1660–1666. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_02158.