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Kuciwalker
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of Schmooism
Feb 2001
time: 00:18
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quote:
Originally posted by Spiffor
Whan an horribly Pascalian idea. Animals can not feel pain? What have you been smoking? Next, you'll tell me animals are unable to feel fear as well? |
Yes. There is no such thing as sensation, beyond simple response to stimuli such as plants growing towards the light or, hell, an electron being repelled by a negative charge, in a nonsentient being.
quote:
About sentience: I agree with you that animals are not self-aware, and haven't developed any conceptual thought about their place in the cosmos (duh). But to equate the lack of sentience with the lack of feelings, like you do, is utterly absurd. |
Sentience has nothing to do with conceptual thought about their place in the cosmos, it has to do with self-awareness - the thing that actually feels the sensations we have. Electrons are not self-aware, or sentient, people are, because electrons simply respond to stimuli, but people actually feel stimuli.
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Kuciwalker
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of Schmooism
Feb 2001
time: 00:18
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quote:
Originally posted by Spiffor
Kuci:
Go get tore to death by hounds. I'm eager to see if your reaction to that treatment differs from the average fox's  |
That's completely disingenuous, and you know it (or if you don't, you haven't been reading my posts).
I could build a robot that writhed and howled in what looked like pain when you started breaking it. I could make it so fantastically complicated that it even looked like a person. It would not, however, actually be feeling pain; it would be triggering motors and speakers whenever certain electrical sensors were triggered. It's exactly the same way with foxes. With humans, however, our thoughts are so complex that they actually give rise to self-awareness. This is obvious, since you know you are self-aware, and that your brain is practically similar to other humans' brains, so other humans ought to be self-aware too. In addition, there are other people who have spoken of the concept of self-awareness without you telling them about it first, and the most reasonable conclusion is that they have actually experienced it, to know of it.*
There is no difference between the fox's pain and a plant growing towards the light. Neither involve consciousness, all are just fantastically complicated but NOT self-aware machines responding to stimuli.
(* Turing proposed the "polite convention" that anything that claims it is self-aware, is actually self-aware, since all evidence for sentience in another being, even another person, is by nature circumstantial.)
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Spiffor
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CPA - Evil Clone brigade
Nov 2001
time: 06:18
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quote:
Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Yes. There is no such thing as sensation, beyond simple response to stimuli such as plants growing towards the light or, hell, an electron being repelled by a negative charge, in a nonsentient being. |
Newsflash: pain is the response to a stimulus happening to our nervous system. The human people who have a dysfunctional nervous system will sometimes not feel the pain of a skin-burn, or of a rampant disease.
It is actually a serious medical condition, as the body cannot gather all (and in the most extreme cases none at all) the alerts sent by the nerves, and thus exposes itself to more danger.
Now, these people are human people, and they aren't brain dead.
This implies that:
1. Pain is the natural reaction to a stimuli vehiculated by our nervous system. Even by human people. Such possibility would imply that animals also feel pain, as they have a functional nervous system (unlike plants).
2. The pain we human experience is something we should dismiss, because it is a fallacy that can be bypassed by neutering the nervous system. If Fakirs can sit on nails, why couldn't we?
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19-11-2004 15:47
do you not know how nature works? 
Smiley 
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