There are a very few humans who have congenital insensitivity to pain. They regularly get cuts, burns, broken bones and such without directly sensing the injury.
Such people are at high risk for dying young, so this is clearly not a condition that is selected for in terms of evolution.
Nonetheless, it points out that it may be the case that certain types of simple animals might not feel pain as we know it and still be functional.
“Animals and pain” is the title.
That line can shift from moment to moment. A niece is definitely “us”, unless she hits your son with a tonka truck. But I am talking at the community level, and people definitely attack the weak within their community.
Autistic individuals definitely have emotions but a lot do have sensory issues which I don’t think would be a problem with the nerves and such per se but how the input is interpreted by the brain, could be visual, auditory, or tactile. They could be over sensitive or under sensitive to a stimulus depending on the person.
Some kids can’t stand scratchy clothing because of the sensation, and other feel calmed when pressure is applied to their body like sleeping with heavy blankets. From what I’ve read a lot of them will have problems filtering out background noise and visual stimuli and that’s why they can seem to be in their own world at times, it’s not always that they are ignoring a person, it’s just they can’t focus, and things lik direct eye contact can be distracting and even cause severe anxiety. Children also tend to engage in “stimming” behavior like hand flapping.
There’s been some science suggesting they do in fact feel pain, not just stimulus aversion.
I’m skeptical of whether it’s possible to have a good sense of whether and to what extent animals feel pain based on neuroscience (or anything else).
Problem is that scientists have a relatively good understanding of how the nervous system manifests itself in feelings and sensations in humans, and then extrapolate to other creatures who are similar. But it’s possible that creatures which are radically different have radically different systems which have completely different processes which have no parallel in humans, and these might produce types of sensations which are comparable. I don’t see how you could get around this problem - understanding internal systems of creatures that we have no way to communicate with.
I’ve seen some scientists have argued that certain creatures don’t feel pain based on them not acting like they’re in pain. For example, if an insect has a limb severed and does not refrain from walking on that limb. But I’m not sure this follows either. ISTM very possible that simple creatures like insects (or whatever it may be) can only walk the one way they’re programmed to walk and can’t alter that type of behavior even in response to pain.
Trying to burn live ants with a magnifying glass will definitely send them into a mad dashing frenzy when they feel the heat. I usually had to partially disable them to keep them still enough to focus the beam enough to actually burn them. That’s about as clear as I’ve seen an insect react to what I’m assuming they feel as pain & panic.
I like Chronos’s example of a simple robot that you programme yourself, so that you know it is not sentient, but still feels pain. Possessing human-like consciousness is no prerequisite for being able to experience pain.
As for complex biological animals evolved on Planet Earth, especially other mammals, apes, etc, I don’t see why anyone would expect their experience of pain to be that much different to yours, notwithstanding the fact they will not tell you all about it in human language. (Loosely) paraphrasing Stranger On A Train, there is nothing special about the human soul when it comes to emotions.
I think behaviors associated with stress are a reasonable indication of pain.
Wasn’t it the AI anti-Minsky Weizenbaum of Stanford who said that a thermostat feels two things: “it’s too hot in here; it’s too cold in here?”
There are many examples of animals that demonstrate stimulus/response–after they are dead. This doesn’t mean that animals do not feel pain, but does show that some animals have behavior which is often anthropomorphized but turns out to be nervous responses that don’t have anything to do with the conscious sensation of pain.
I had never heard of this before. Sounds absolutely horrid. Joe Scott (25 min).