How Much Do Outdoor Animals Suffer in the Cold?

[Mijin]

@Pjen

Recent Neurology advances is beginning to unpick the "What is it Like to be a Bat?"question- which previously was seen as unknowable.

Researchers know which areas of the human brain react when pain is felt as an extreme discomfort rather than as just knowledge of damage. They also know that if these areas are inoperative, then pain is experienced factually rather than emotionally. This leads to the contention that foetuses under 20 weeks do not feel pain and this is used when surgery is carried out in the womb without anaesthetic. A similar argument would apply to the existence or non-existence of the appropriate morphologically and functionally similar centre in human and animal brains.

In my humble opinion we are probably looking at a complex interpretaion of pain-

In higher animals there is certainly a direct experience of emotional pain; the lower down the phylogenetic scale you go with reduced consciousness, the more likely pain is not 'experienced, but merely reacted to.

Humans have the unique ability to be able to predict the future with considerable accuracy in the manner that lower animals cannot; this means that added to the immediate pain is the knowledge of how serious the damage is likely to be, and we know that as anxiety increases, interpretation of pain changes for the worse.

It is worth remembering that ‘Pain’ is not a single set of qualia, and that pain can be experienced differently by quite simple chemical or psychological intervention.

Anyone with the experience of taking opiates will know how they cut out many direct unpleasant experiences of pain to the point where the pain becomes knowledge rather than experience. We also know that psychological conditions such as belief in controlling the pain oneself (using what is thought to be a self doser) decreases the emotional and serious experience of pain, even when a placebo administrator is used.

FWIW still disagree.

Whenever people are polled on what the worst pain is they’ve experienced migraines always score highly, and cluster headaches (among the population unfortunate enough to experience them) higher still.
So even if expectations can make the experience of pain worse, it’s pretty clear that even with no expectation at all “immediate pain” in itself can be agonizing.

So I don’t think it has much bearing on the OP.

[Pjen]

@Mijin

FWIW still disagree.

Whenever people are polled on what the worst pain is they’ve experienced migraines always score highly, and cluster headaches (among the population unfortunate enough to experience them) higher still.
So even if expectations can make the experience of pain worse, it’s pretty clear that even with no expectation at all “immediate pain” in itself can be agonizing.

So I don’t think it has much bearing on the OP.

I don’t see where your reply counters what I posted- what do you disagree with?

[Mijin]

I don’t disagree with you (not your new point, anyway). I’m asking what your point is wrt the OP.

Earlier you were saying that discomfort is largely about future expectations, and gave the example of a child happily playing in the cold. The implication being that animals are like the child and should be happy. But this reasoning doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, and you’ve retreated from this position. Fine.

Now your point seems to basically be that animals’ experiences/sensations are different. But I don’t think anyone would ever have doubted that.

So if there is something more specific you are saying about animals’ experience of the cold, what is it?

[sycophantOfC.S.Peirce]

I have not been able to find definitive data on this and I do not know if I would trust it if I did because I believe there is, even among scientists, a very strong, built in, optimism prejudice. My personal suspicion is that animals in extremely cold or hot environments are, on the one hand, comparatively warmer or cooler than a human would be by virtue of their coats; but, on the other hand, that they nonetheless suffer unimaginably throughout such conditions and are very much aware of them. They have no choice. They must spend their time surviving and the top two things that means is avoiding predators and finding food. But they know it hurts. I believe if they had human consciousness and human concepts they might very well decide to take their own lives: but that entails a very developed set of concepts that they lack. For example, I very much believe they lack our concept of “otherwise”- that things could be any different from how they are. I believe at any given moment things to them are just how they are: at this moment in existence my leg breaks; at this moment in existence I get eaten, etc. Whatever happens at any given moment is the only thing that could happen and even this portrayal is certainly much too anthropomorphic. But this also raises the question of just what is suffering like for the species and I do not know if it is possible to answer that except by futile efforts of inference and supposition by means of tests devised by humans. Most humans, I think, will strongly disagree with me for a wide variety of reasons, but I believe the life of most species, viewed in human terms, are boring, arduous, frightful, tense, ugly, harrowing, repetitive and meaningless. I do not even see how it can be doubted. What is very much in doubt is how the species perceive and comprehend the nature of their own existences

[Honey]

Original thread date Feb 2014