Re:Just how smart is an octopus?
by shanusmagnus on Monday January 09, 2017 @07:22PM
(#13361346)
One annoying thing when this conversation comes up is where the burden of proof seems to lie: somehow, despite the fact that animals produce unambiguous behavior that they feel pain very profoundly, we are called upon to 'prove' that they can actually feel it, instead of the pain-deniers being called upon to prove the opposite.
It's so analogous to the days when people debated as to whether black people should be enslaved for their own good, or whether they were too stupid to mind being enslaved [see e.g., 1], that it would be farcical if it wasn't so fucking sad. Who else, one wonders, might not feel pain? Autistics? Mutes? Republicans?
[1] Plous, S., & Williams, T. (1995). Racial Stereotypes From the Days of American Slavery: A Continuing Legacy. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 25(9), 795-817.
Similarly, I can look you straight in the eye and tell you that I feel fine, while I am in fact suffering great pain internally. Does this mean that I am not in pain? How could you know? You can't. There is no reason for an animal to dissimulate in this way, so we may as well accept their outward expression of pain or pleasure at face value.
Re:Just how smart is an octopus?
by moby_click on Tuesday January 10, 2017 @08:37AM
(#13364629)
Are we talking about human mothers that have been confined in gestation crates for months, having been separated from their mother and their children in the past for generations?
The second part doesn't follow from the first.
People have largely the same nervous systems and largely the same brain structures (AFAIK), and yet they react quite differently to pain and in the extremes they react exceedingly differently to the suffering of others.
Do you think that sows when they crush some of their piglets by lying on them behave how a human mother who accidentally sat on and crushed their own child would? Many animals eat their own offspring seemingly without any response one could term emotional.
You're anthropomorphising.
Now pigs are an interesting species and I wouldn't be personally surprised to find that they show some response which could be deemed a form of emotion.
Just because an animal exhibits herd behaviours, eg wariness when a member of the herd is wary/alert, doesn't mean they are empathising with that other animal.
>Anyone who thinks animals do not suffer is an idiot. //
The question is whether there is an internal pain that matches the external one. If I program a robot to exhibit pained behaviour and to scream when it's stabbed, then stab it, would you consider that robot to be in pain? The external reaction isn't necessarily linked to an internal feeling. Someone who refuses to leap to such a conclusion IMO is acting logically.