You don't need self-awareness to be able to suffer. All you need to be able to suffer is sensors that tell you when something is wrong. Which is pretty common for animals. Dunno if it's in lobsters.
I'd finally have a reason not to!
-
Join the MyBroadband community
South Africa’s biggest forum. Discuss, discover, and connect with thousands of members.
-
Question of the Day: How do you normally pay for purchases in stores?
Article: Be kind to your seafood
- Thread starter jes
- Start date
I wish I could dismember this fly that's torturing me.
FlatspinZA
Expert Member
+1 Shouldn't they be studying something else? Who pays for these studies?
+1...but, see below....
R1 bullet travels at 1000ms, so it's the same speed . It's going to slow dramatically as it hits solid matter, so I think you'll feel something, even if only for a fraction of a second. http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/MariaPereyra.shtml
Erm, huh? So, if someone has no tongue and he's on fire from head to toe, we can't know that he is suffering because he isn't telling us? Daft supposition, if you ask me!
Space_Chief
Honorary Master
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2012
- Messages
- 12,949
- Reaction score
- 4
There is a difference between stimulation of local receptors and secondary effects and conscious perception of discomfort. We have simply no way of knowing if fish experience pain by virtue of seeing them rubbing their lips together. That AS IF is actually important.
Is it a local response to remove the chemical?
Is it a central response to help remove the chemical?
Is it an appreciation of a chemical which then leads the fish to do something in response?
Is it a subjective experience of pain (i.e. something unpleasant causing a feeling of suffering)?
We simply don't know, because the fish cannot say that it experiences pain. In human beings we can ask them if x is uncomfortable but in lower animals, we cannot know that and we simply can't assume it, as these things are explained away by simpler mechanisms without requiring the "experience of pain" in the way we see in more sophisticated human beings.
Space_Chief
Honorary Master
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2012
- Messages
- 12,949
- Reaction score
- 4
I assume that SOMEONE is a human being. Yes we presume they experience pain by virtue of knowing that similar human beings experience pain when they're on fire from head to toe. We simply don't know what it's like to be a lobster. We can't access their feelings, neither can we access the feelings of any other person but we can communicate with other people and presume that the discomfort we feel when we burn our toe, is the same as when they burn their toe. It's still an assumption requiring some metaphysical assumptions and reasoning.
Albereth
Honorary Master
The point is that you can picture yourself in the place of the person on fire and based on your experience in playing with matches could assume pretty accurately that that person is suffering. But you have never been a lobster and so cannot accurately 'prove' that the lobster is suffering just because you would if tossed in boiling water.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) the nervous systems of different species varies and we cannot say that any perceived increase in neural activity translates into pain or suffering. If it did can you imagine the hurt we dish out every time we mow the lawn, or walk on it.
I used to catch flies that were always at the windows, put them in those Miniature alcohol bottle filled up a quarter with water and put them in the deep freezer.
Space_Chief
Honorary Master
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2012
- Messages
- 12,949
- Reaction score
- 4
Great assertion. Could you back it up?
We have no way of knowing how a fish experiences these stimuli. But even if sensors exist, are their signals always represented as pain in human beings? No.
People look at animals and imagine people, but that's not logically coherent.
I agree fully. I'm saying suffering is a sensory input stimuli and has got nothing to do with self-awareness.
Last edited:
FlatspinZA
Expert Member
OK, that's fine.
But let's assume that all creatures have some inherent mechanism that alerts them to the fact that they're suffering damage of some sort, in much the same we know when we stub our toe on a piece of furniture. Let's assume that most creatures alive today wouldn't be alive without this mechanism.
So, what is the mechanism, if it's not pain? By the same token, as what you guys are suggesting, we can assume than a dog doesn't suffer pain because we're don't know what their howls of agony mean. You can clearly see from the expression on its face that it is discomforted, but no, it's not suffering because it hasn't told us so.
If you can think of any other way to alert a creature to damage that is mortally wounding unless corrective action is taken, please enlighten me?
To give an example, or the abilities of plants:
Game rangers kept finding dead buck, but they couldn't work out why they were dying, because upon autopsy they found their stomachs were full. Due to over-grazing, the trees were increasing the levels of Tannin they produced in sympathy with the trees in their immediate area that were being abused. As a result the buck were unable to digest the food they were eating, and they were in a constant state of hunger.
Result: Buck died, trees lived.
Life is not as simple as we think!
Albereth
Honorary Master
I agree that beings do have some inherent mechanism that alerts them to less than ideal circumstances. But I would also suggest that there are filters associated with that too. We cannot react to every single stimuli, and do not even though our nervous systems are pretty sophisticated compared to other life forms. Ask any canary in a coal mine.
Taking your dog and its howls. The closer we are to another creature, the better our assumptions of suffering can be. That said, you do get differences in pain toleration between people, some folk don't suffer from a hangover like others may, some burn in the sun while other go a brown colour. A dog isn't too far off in terms of the complexity of its nervous system - its nose is way more sensitive as an example. Both you and the dog are mammals.
But a lobster is a crustacean. It exists in a different environment. There are way, way more differences between you and a lobster than there are between you and a dog.
I am not saying that lobsters don't suffer. But I do believe that whatever it is that they feel is not the same as what you or the dog would feel. Cutting one of your, or the dog's legs off, would not be an awful lot of fun for you - but that would be a minor irritation for the lobster, as an example. Short of it - I am sure the lobster would rather not be dropped into boiling water but does it experience it in the same way that you would? That I doubt.
I brought plants into the conversation, not because I don't believe that they respond to negative stimuli in a defensive manner. Rather because if we tried to consider the 'feelings' of everything we'd become immobilised.
Space_Chief
Honorary Master
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2012
- Messages
- 12,949
- Reaction score
- 4
"Suffering" sensory input? Sensory input is just action potentials, no different to action potentials felt when a tasty morsel is detected by the antennae of the lobster. The brain then somehow interprets that as information which is then meaningful and may trigger secondary actions such as fight or flight or whatever. But there is NO necessity that noxious or damage induced impulses need by "unpleasant". Seeing lobster activity does not tell you if they're unpleasant or not. Seeing human activity does because we can subjectively account for pain and we can be told by our fellow humans that they also feel unpleasant sensations when they're being burned.
People imagine animals feel pain the way they do, but that's a point requiring proof and can't merely be asserted.
Space_Chief
Honorary Master
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2012
- Messages
- 12,949
- Reaction score
- 4
Well it's an assumption. There need not be pain or the same experience of pain or any experience at all. A creature need not even feel (interpret) anything, as pleasant or unpleasant, just have different behaviours or actions trigger in response to a given stimulus. This is the sort of way primitive reflexes work in mammals. They're done subconsciously at the level of the spinal cord. You're not even aware of them. But even more complex behaviours need not be triggered by pain. Likewise PAIN experienced by an animal is not the same as pain experienced by a human. We simply don't know how bad the pain is unless we feel it ourselves. What is the intesity or the quality of it and how is it perceived and what damage it causes to what.
For another example say when you take morphine, suddenly the UNPLEASANTNESS of the pain from the knife wound in your stomach disappears yet you still feel there is something there, it just doesn't bother you.
A creature need not be alerted at some intellectual level that serious danger is at hand. When you lose your balance your righting reflex kicks in. I don't think you feel any pain. It just kicks in and it's save millions of people from death each year by not falling and breaking their necks. A creature need not feel pain the way a philosophical zombie need not be thinking YET it behaves like it thinks. It may run from toxins and injuries and approach less dangerous conditions, but it need not feel discomfort, in fact a p-zombie does not feel discomfort but may act like it would.
What relevance is that? Are you saying the "sympathy" was an emotion the same way you experience sympathy? It's a poetic metaphor or just poor word choice.
But no-one is saying it is.
Firstly, chuck it in the freezer for an hour beforehand. It pretty much puts them to sleep. You then cut through the head, between the eyes. Done.
Although this is really all nonsense, because lobsters/crayfish/shellfish in entirety have no central nervous system. The experiment these guys performed is silly because the electric shock will jolt them, and this is unexpected. It doesn't mean pain was felt, and everything points there being no possible way that pain could be felt...
Space_Chief
Honorary Master
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2012
- Messages
- 12,949
- Reaction score
- 4
They're high cholesterol too, so they get their revenge!
Kloofvreter
Honorary Master
I agree with Space_Chief on this topic.
Still not pain in any way. Pain would require a central nervous system which they simply do not have. Mammals do so I'm not quite sure why you'd say that animals feel pain differently? Mammals feel it in the same way that we do - a perception based on a central nervous system reaction...
