Bees live in highly
stratified yet flexible social organizations with group decision-making skills
that rival academic, corporate or government committees in efficiency. In
spring, when bees swarm, they choose a new hive that needs to satisfy many
demands within a couple of days (consider that the next time you go house
hunting). They communicate information about the location and quality of food
sources using the waggle dance. Bees can fly several kilometers and return to
their hive, a remarkable navigational performance. Their brains seem to have
incorporated a map of their environment. And a scent blown into the hive can
trigger a return to the site where the bee previously encountered this odor.
This type of associative memory was famously described by French novelist
Marcel Proust in À la Recherche du Temps Perdu.
Given all of this ability, why does almost everybody instinctively reject
the idea that bees or other insects might be conscious? The trouble is that
bees are so different from us and our ilk that our insights fail us. But just
because they are small and live in colonies does not mean that they can’t have
subjective states, that they can’t smell the fragrance of the golden nectar or
experience the warm rays of the sun or maybe even have a primitive sense of
self. I am not a mystic. I am not arguing for pan-psychism, for the notion that
anything is conscious. Nor am I assuming that bees can reason or can reflect on
their fate as animated cartoon bees.
Bibliography
honeybeephilosophy.blogspot.com
(QS. An Nahl
[16]:68-69)
No comments:
Post a Comment