The book Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin has some interesting information on this. It is basically similar to what Blake posted above. Dr. Grandin believes that animals feel pain to the same degree that humans do, but that they are less distressed by it than humans are, due to less frontal lobe development. She argues that for most animals, especially prey animals, fear is more distressing than pain. Humans can feel fear just like animals, but we’re less likely to experience the kind of sheer panic that a horse can feel in confined space. We find fear distinctly unpleasant, but it isn’t as powerfully debilitating the way extreme pain is for us or fear is for animals.
The recently late David Foster Wallace essay, “Consider the Lobster” (originally and infamously published in Gourmet magazine to much resulting controversy, and later in a collection of the same name) addresses this question in depth, bookended by his visit to the Maine Lobster Festival) addresses this question in both technical and philosophical depth, resulting in an ambivalent conclusion on the part of the author (and typically, I suspect, the reader as well). The essay is well worth a read for anyone interested in this topic.
Externally, it is clear that the lobster is anatomically capable of discerning both subtle and extreme changes in temperature and responds frenetically to being plunged into boiling water. Means for euthanizing or anesthetizing the lobster are of questionable merit; the most commonly recommended method (stabbing the supraesophageal ganglion as gjbloom mentions) does not prevent the spasmatic response coming from other segmental ganglia, nor is it entirely clear that while the supraesophageal ganglion is the primary cognitive center given how widely distributed the nervous system of arthropods is. Other methods (particularly chilling before boiling, which merely extends the boiling time) are equally suspect in terms of mitigating whatever “pain” the lobster may feel as it shuffles off its mortal coil and onto your plate.
It is clear that the lobster “feels” the boiling water in the sense of a contra-indicative and protective physical response. Whether the lobster is capable of experiencing “pain” in any concept that we can understand is another bag of chum entirely. While we can at least conceptualize (whether realistically or anthropomorphically) what a mammal might think or feel in situations of pain or stress, our understanding of the internal life of something like a lobster is minimal. We may reasonably assume, because of a lack of complex central cortex structures, that a lobster has little cognitive ability and therefore any “pain” that it may feel is a simple reflexive response, but this still argues from a point of essential philosophical ignorance about what the bug experiences. It’s safe to say that no lobster or other member of Arthropoda is going to write a soliloquy on the pain and agony of being boiled alive, nor otherwise express in any other comprehensible form fear of injury or an understanding of death, and on that basis we may accept, if arbitrarily, that whatever pain the lobster may experience is merely a transitory and instinctual response to its inevitable mortality.
The question is more ambiguous when it comes to non-mammals with obvious cognitive capability and at least apparent self-awareness, particularly the more complex cephalopods. Though we cannot pretend to understand their experience of the world, it is clear that they have some kind of internal cognition, albeit probably so foreign as to not be truly comprehensible and therefore (by some arguments) not on the same moral standard as human experience. One could, of course, make the same argument about mammals, and indeed, even other people; my understanding of your mental processes is, after all, only a template of my own experience projected onto your external behaviors. I might credibly assume that your responses are purely autonomic and predicated on a just not very well understood algorithm rather than the result of genuine cognition and self-awareness.
One thing is for certain, though: everything in the sea eats everything else, and without the purely synthetic human concept of compassion. So what if the lobster feels pain in the couple of minutes it takes to boil to insensibility? Are you lessened ethically for comprehending the agony a bug may feel in the fleeting last moments of its life, even though an octopus or seal would simply tear the creature apart limb for limb or bite through the carapace and devour the creature while still alive? The question–at least in terms of a practical matter–seems to be largely one of personal esthetics; whether you are okay with causing a sensory response analogous to pain in a creature that can never protest, even by proxy, and will not otherwise contribute to your life or the advancement of human society, strictly for your own gustatory pleasure. I find it unlikely we’ll ever have an philosophically authoritative, universally accepted, scientifically proven answer to that question. We all have to accept, though (even vegetarians and vegans) that other creatures will die in order that we may live, and the cycle of life cares nothing for what that costs in suffering.
Stranger
In looking for a youtube video of lobster being boiled alive, I found several videos of the process Artisit describes. I think it’s worth noting that not all lobster is served as a whole bug taken right from the tank and boiled. I don’t eat a lot of lobster in restaurants, but I’m sure there are a lot of upscale ways to cook a lobster.
FWIW, I don’t think the carcass is thrown away at all. When I gathered was that the tail takes longer to cook than the rest and that’s why it’s separated.
Also, the “thrashing” of the lobsters in the videos I watched varied a lot. It seemed to me that the experience of the cook had more to do with it than anything else. Not only in the motion of the soon-to-be dinner, but also in the (over)reaction of the cooks.
In one case, a relatively small pot was used and the cook stuck a skewer in the lobsters, er, vent, and used that to hold the tail up and force the head toward the bottom of the pot despite the fact that the tail was still sticking out. That animal didn’t thrash nearly as much as the one that was cooked in a large skillet that was barely deep enough to cover even the small lobster used.
ivan askitov, you mistook what I said. I was saying that not caring about the suffering of our dinner is common in the animal world. That is not uniquely human.
You are correct that it is uniquely human to care. But Starving Artist was complaining how brutal and uncaring humans are, so my point was to put that in context.
I know. I apologise Irishman. I missed the edit window to put things right, but no harm done, eh? 
The comment was made by a television business talk show host named Bruce Williams who had a program on NBC radio called TalkNet, and it occurred 15 to 18 years ago so my memory is vague, but it seems that he observed this either on a fishing boat or processing plant, and not a restaurant.
What does that have to do with anything? Humans have the capacity to empathise and realize the pain they’re putting animals through as opposed to carnivores who must inflict pain in order to eat and feed their young. Animals do not run skewers up the tail of live lobsters simply to keep the tail from curling during cooking and thus presenting a more pleasing appearance at the table; they don’t poke holes through their prey and run ropes through them or keep fish strung up all day by their gills; and they don’t throw living creatures into boiling water or onto a grill or skillet while still alive knowing perfectly well that they could kill them immediately beforehand and suffer no ill consequence; etc., etc., etc.
Shall I go on?
I think SA is saying (and I’m agreeing) that humans, who are capable of understanding what they are doing and how it feels, still inflict suffering on other living things, and that’s a rather horrifying aspect of human behavior. When an animal does it, it’s instinct. When a human does it, oftentimes it’s selfishness and/or callousness.
The fact that other predators do it is not a compelling argument for humans doing it. It seems to me that people scream bloody murder if you use the same standard for animal treatment as you do for human treatment, because humans are special and different and more valuable, but will retreat behind the argument, “But it’s OK for us to do appalling things, because other animals do it! It’s natural!” Can’t have it both ways, IMO. Or rather, you can, if you don’t mind being contradictory.
Exactly the same quality that makes us special confers on us the responsibility to behave differently than other animals. That’s just my opinion, of course.
Yikes! I meant radio business talk show host! :smack:
Very well said.
Down here in the south we think that putting lobsters in boiling water makes them tough. You can avoid that and the pain issue by putting them in a bucket of cold water with a shot of rum. They die quite quickly, relaxed and feelin’ nice.
I used to care about lobsters feeling pain. Then I realized they had mental processing power barely beyond that of a Commodore 64. Screw them. They are barely above plants.
The issue isn’t their ability to calculate bytes of data, it’s their capacity for feeling pain.
Since they clearly have enough sense to flee predators; fight amongst themselves, even to the extent of using their large claws as clubs if banded; and to know, despite their exterior shell, when they’ve torn free a piece of food, I think it highly likely that they have sufficient intelligence and sensory perception to feel pain as well.
And plants feel pain.
Can I chew my fingernails?
Cannibalism.
The real question should be, does oxygen feel pain when it’s forcibly enslaved in the lungs to do our bidding.
Aaaaaaaaand, seeing as how we’ve got the rum out now…
But it’s not just about intelligence.
I can imagine an organism more intelligent than myself that, say, could feel pain but not experience the unpleasant, subjective experience that I associate with pain. Indeed there is a condition called Pain asymbolia where “sufferers” still “detect” pain, but do not feel it as a negative sensation (as distinct from congenital analgesia, where no sensation is felt at all).
Likewise I can imagine an organism far less intelligent than myself that nonetheless feels pain in much the way I do.
This is why the answer to whether lobsters feel pain is so much more difficult than merely answering “Do lobsters respond to stimuli that cause damage to their bodies?”
Apologies if this has been long enough to be considered a zombie thread.
Looks like at least one study suggests they do feel and remember pain.
Here’s a quote from the larger article linked above:
I’ll go with Sarah Moulton from the food channel: Place a chef’s knife on the back of the neck of the lobster, pop down on the handle of the knife and instantly kill the thing.
Then fry it in oil and give to Curly Howard (Stooge 3) to devour.
Bone Appetite!
Some would argue that lobsters do indeed have higher cognitive abilities and feel pain.