Although yeast is technically living, it’s more similar to bacteria than animals or other living creatures. It doesn’t feel pain and isn’t a sentient being - there is absolutely no reason not to consume yeast or foods made with yeast.
Insects and other animals were not (and are still not in all cases) always considered sentient or capable of feeling pain. When it comes to other life forms, the fact is we have no idea how they experience the world. They are way too different from us. That doesn’t automatically make them less alive or less valuable.
And now we have evidence to suggest that we were wrong, thus there is a moral imperative to act based off this new information. There is no evidence that bacteria or similar organisms are capable of pain or suffering. If you want to just disregard all science and biology, that’s your prerogative I suppose.
If you don’t have any evidentiary basis for your inclusiveness, then that makes it completely arbitrary. Why not start worrying about potential cruelty to non-living things like air, or rocks as well?
Why does it matter? We can’t understand the subjective experience of rocks any more than we can bacteria. Why should we rule out their capacity and not bacteria’s? There’s no more evidence that one has more of a conscious subjective experience than the other, living or not.
By your logic, shouldn’t we opt to be more inclusive of rocks if they could potentially have some sort of experience that we have no current understanding of?
You avoid an avoidable luxury, yet you do not avoid something unavoidable that’s necessary. Curious.
exploitation is a fact of life. why is it unacceptable to exploit bees for their honey, but it’s fine to kill billions of yeasts to make bread?
Although yeast is technically living, it’s more similar to bacteria than animals or other living creatures. It doesn’t feel pain and isn’t a sentient being - there is absolutely no reason not to consume yeast or foods made with yeast.
Insects and other animals were not (and are still not in all cases) always considered sentient or capable of feeling pain. When it comes to other life forms, the fact is we have no idea how they experience the world. They are way too different from us. That doesn’t automatically make them less alive or less valuable.
And now we have evidence to suggest that we were wrong, thus there is a moral imperative to act based off this new information. There is no evidence that bacteria or similar organisms are capable of pain or suffering. If you want to just disregard all science and biology, that’s your prerogative I suppose.
I don’t want to disregard science. I want to err by being preemptively more inclusive, not more cruel, when I don’t have sufficient information.
If you don’t have any evidentiary basis for your inclusiveness, then that makes it completely arbitrary. Why not start worrying about potential cruelty to non-living things like air, or rocks as well?
Because, as you say, they are non-living. What is and what isn’t life is not arbitrary. It’s a distinction based on science.
Why does it matter? We can’t understand the subjective experience of rocks any more than we can bacteria. Why should we rule out their capacity and not bacteria’s? There’s no more evidence that one has more of a conscious subjective experience than the other, living or not.
By your logic, shouldn’t we opt to be more inclusive of rocks if they could potentially have some sort of experience that we have no current understanding of?