"even Mother Theresa apparently had a steely side"
Even? http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_wor...
Even? http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_wor...
>If you had the opportunity to feed harmless bugs into a coffee grinder, would you enjoy the experience? Even if the bugs had names, and you could hear their shells painfully crunching?
No doubt their nervous systems transmit pain signals but whether bugs experience suffering seems like an open question to me.
And thus I can't equate indifference to the death of insects with sadism.
And since the question is open as to what the bug's experience is, there may also be a tendency for individuals to interpret their behaviours as being evidence of suffering or not depending on how sadistic they are. Non-sadists may tend to interpret the bug's behaviour in ways that suggest there isn't any experience of suffering. Sadists will do the opposite.
It's difficult to see what if any interesting issues the question of the bug's internal experience could bear on. It's our perception or imagination of that experience that would seem to be far more important in how the act should be classified for a given individual.
Why are you so certain? There seems to be plenty of debate on the issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_invertebrates .