> Households spiders eat all manner of pests! Fair, but that's a very different rubric than contemplated by the article. If your take is strongly influenced b

> Households spiders eat all manner of pests! Fair, but that's a very different rubric than contemplated by the article. If your take is strongly influenced by utility, you might not necessarily object to eating lobsters in the first place. And maybe that's fine, just two distinct approaches to this question. In fact, if you're concerned, like DFW is, about minimizing suffering for all things that "exhibit preferences," then maybe that's too broad. Maybe then you don't want spiders slaughtering a bunch of other insects, because they exhibit preferences in turn. And then... you become pro-killing spiders? On the other hand, maybe other insects don't pass the sentience/sapience test, only spiders do, and everything's fine, and it just leads to Jainism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism But if you use the "insects are dumb" out, you eventually hit a more general carnivore problem. If you believe you have a moral obligation to avoid causing the suffering of animals for food, then what obligation do you have to protect animals from natural predation? Does the fact it happens in the natural world make the suffering less meaningful? If one believes the death of rabbits for food is a grave tragedy, does that imply a preference for coyotes to go extinct? This isn't preaching, I'm not really sure what the answer is to any of this. Honestly I think your rubric is simpler in some ways.