hi,

i know you're all sick of questions. but this is not an attempt to criticise you guys. i think any attempt to end suffering is a noble and just cause.
but i have a question that i have never seen asked to you before (although it probably has).


if i were to clip the beak off a chicken, it would be painful for it. it would flap his wings about and squawk, probably.

now if i were to clip your nose off, you would also show signs of extreme pain. you would have a subjective interpretation of the pain, you would probably think "this is the most painful thing i have ever experienced", and you would suffer.

now what i'm asking is, how do you know that the physical response to pain and the subjective interpretation of it, aren't two different things?


if i made a robot chicken, and programmed it to show signs of pain, i.e. flapping its wings and squawking, and then proceeded to torture it, i doubt anyone would be angry about this. after all, the robot chicken doesnt "feel" the pain, it just responds to the sensation of it.

so what is it about the real chicken and the robot chicken that is different? both are made of matter. the real chicken is made from organic matter, but that simply means it is matter of an animal/plant. i mean, the chicken's bones are made of metal (calcium).

the real chicken, it could be argued, has voluntary motion, free will. but does it? it feels hungry, it searches for food and eats. it feels the biting of a tick, it pecks its own skin. it is afraid, it flees. it feels pain, it squawks and flaps its wings. perhaps the real chicken is simply a much more advanced version of the robot chicken, more features, and tastier :D

this logic could even be applied to humans. if we look hard, we can see that our behaviour is pretty much cause and effect.

i guess it's a question of self-consciousness. we know ourselves to be self-conscious, and we assume it for other humans. some of us extend this to other animals.

when we feel pain, we FEEL it.


so is it wrong to assume a chicken actually suffers from pain, just because it responds to it?

if not, i guess the line is drawn somewhere. i havent heard of any cockroach exterminators receiving death threats, and i'm sure most PETA members continue to clean toilet despite knowing that millions of germs will die.

I don't see any reason to think that the subjective experience of pain requires self-consciousness. Whether behaviour is cause and effect or not also has nothing to do with subjective experiences.

Another example to consider is trolls - they just seem to come up with the same stuff over and over again, so do we have a reason to attribute consciousness to them? Troll behaviour seems so mechanical, that can we be justified in assuming that their vocalizations are indicative of experiences?

If you cut a troll..does he not bleed?

I kill cockroaches in my home as they are a disease threat to my family (as humanely as possible I hasten to add). What has this got to do with needlessly debeaking chickens for the sake of appetite?
Of course they f*ckin feel pain otherwise they would not respond to it!
I don't wish to belittle you but what a stupid argument.

There were some interesting experiments on pain done recently on humans. They took people who have chronic and acute pain, and made them watch their brains in action. They used brain scanning equipment for this so that the people could "see" their pain. It's called "real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging" and it shows people the inner workings of their brains.

By watching their pain and trying to modify it, they were able to subdue their brain's reactions to pain signals.

This experiment took place at the Stanford University Medical School.

I know this doesn't really reply to the Original Poster's question, but as I don't feel like replying, I thought I'd post this instead.

Funny how you start your post saying you are not trying to criticize yet you end with sarcasm..
I agree, Troll!

Of course they f*ckin feel pain otherwise they would not respond to it!
I don't wish to belittle you but what a stupid argument.

it's OK, i dont feel belittled because i dont think you've understood my point.

if an animal responds to the sensation of pain because they subjectively feel it, does that mean a robot feels pain if it is programmed to respond to the sensation of it?

I don't see any reason to think that the subjective experience of pain requires self-consciousness.

really? surely subjective experience and self-consciousness go hand in hand. in my opinion in order to begin describing your thoughts and feelings, you'd have to know and be aware of what "YOU" is.


and i'd hate to feel that i'm being implied as a "troll" - i'm simply asking a question.

i was just trying to be humorous with my last comments, sorry if i came across as a troll.

regardless of whether i'm a troll or not, i have still asked a valid question.

Don't be silly. Robots don't have nerve endings.

There is a rare syndrome CIPA - it's one of the rarest diseases in the world. It's people who feel NO PAIN AT ALL!!! They rarely live till the age of 25.

Everything is dangerous. If their appendix hurts, it could burst without them knowing it. They could cut themselves and not notice and bleed to death. They could stick their hand on a burning hot plate and not notice.

It's a terrible terrible disease.

really? surely subjective experience and self-consciousness go hand in hand.I don't see why.

in my opinion in order to begin describing your thoughts and feelings, you'd have to know and be aware of what "YOU" is....yeees, but you don't have to be able to describe your experiences in order to have them.

and i'd hate to feel that i'm being implied as a "troll" - i'm simply asking a question.Well you're the question-asking species of troll.

Don't be silly. Robots don't have nerve endings.

no, but you can create an equivalent.

how does a touch screen monitor respond to it being touched? it has its own version of nerve endings. now if you programmed the touch screen monitor to be able to detect not just presense but also force, and programmed it to emit a voice recording saying "ouch!" everytime you punched the screen, does it have a subjective experience of pain (suffering)? no.

it doesnt because it is a collection of inanimate pieces working together.

now is a chicken a collection of inanimate pieces working together? what about a human? in my opinion, yes. but there is something about a human - self-consciousness, that means we are able to not only sense and respond to pain, but feel it. so if you have a simple organism at one end of the scale, e.g. a slug, and a human at the other, provided you believe the slug is not able to have a subjective interpretation of pain (which is arguable i suppose), where, in the middle, is the line which divides self-conscious organisms and those which merely respond in a certain way to certain stimuli, like our touch-screen monitor?

you don't have to be able to describe your experiences in order to have them.

in that case, if something does not KNOW that it is being subjected to adverse stimuli, is it unethical to do so?

in that case, if something does not KNOW that it is being subjected to adverse stimuli, is it unethical to do so?That depends on what you mean by 'know'. It is unethical, whether the being is able to form a propositional belief referring to the being's identity or not, for example.

If something doesn't meet the criteria of membership for joining this board, is it ethical for that something to post?

by "knowing", i mean on a subjective level.

if a chicken solely just responds to stimuli, then it knows it is being tortured just as much as a ball knows it is being pushed by rolling.

by "knowing", i mean on a subjective level.As opposed to "objective knowing", which is what?

if a chicken solely just responds to stimuli, then it knows it is being tortured just as much as a ball knows it is being pushed by rolling.Yes. But I don't see a reason to suppose that there are only two alternatives: self-consciousness or no consciousness at all (i.e. "just responding to stimuli"). It's unethical to cause the negative subjective experience of pain, which I attribute to chickens.

Do you think human infants or newborns are self-conscious? If you don't, do you think they don't feel pain? If you do, then for what reasons?

If the chicken has a subjective experience of pain (which is pretty much the same as saying that if the chicken feels pain, since for me "unexperienced pain" doesn't make sense), then it is unethical to cause that pain.

that's a good term, "unexperienced pain". what i mean by unexperienced pain, is that, just because an animal responds to something, does not necessarily mean it experiences it. in my opinion that is an absolutely valid idea- there are so many cause and effect interactions that go on within the human body that "we", the thinking self, are not aware of, that it is possible for another organism like a chicken to have cause and effect interactions that it is not aware of, if it is aware of anything at all.

re-reading the last paragraph, i can see confusion may arise over the distinction of being physiologically aware of something, and the "thinking self" being aware of something.

our pupils dilate and contract automatically depending on how much light there is. this happens automatically without us ever having to decide "there's too much light in this room, i better contract my pupils".

the question i'm asking is, can you equate this automatic reaction to the reaction that chickens make when sensing pain, i.e. they do so without thinking about it?

Chickens and humans are biologically quite similar. As are all vertebrates. We're all fairly close cousins on the evolutionary tree. All vertebrates are more genetically similar to each other than, say, an amoeba is to a bacterium. We're built the same-- we have similar nervous systems and brains. There's every reasons to believe we sense the world in the same fundamental ways, and no scientific reason I'm aware of to believe we don't. Studies of pain responses have shown that the similarities in pain response between humans and other vertebrates extend beyond the grossly visible signs down to those that are only detectable by instrumentation and bloodwork, such as releases of certain neurotransmitters and blood pressure spikes.

At the end of the day, given all the remarkable similarities in pain response between humans and other verterbrates and teh biological mechanisms of that pain response, it's simply grasping at straws to argue that something that looks like pain, sounds like pain, and shows up on the charts like pain is not really pain.

I'm not so sure we can clearly demonstrate the same pain response similarities between vertebrates and invertebrates such as insects or worms. But many vegetarians choose to avoid killing insects and other invertebrates where feasible. But I do suspect that to a large extent virtually all of us, even dedicated vegetarians, are still prejudiced against invertebrates, particularly small ones like insects and worms, as "less important" life forms.

To pose the same type of question vis-a-vis bacteria and other microorganisms is simply ludicrous. It's patently impossible to go through life without killing any bactiera. Your own immune system is doing it all the time. And if your immune system breaks down, you generally don't have long to live, because they will kill you. On top of that, they don't appear to have any of the equipment necessary to experience anything we could recognize as suffering, such as a brain and a nervous system. If they do in fact suffer, I doubt we would have any way of observing it.

what i mean by unexperienced pain, is that, just because an animal responds to something, does not necessarily mean it experiences it.Yes, I understand that. But the argument for chicken consciousness is not "chicken respons to negative stimuli, therefore chicken is sentient. q.e.d.". The argument doesn't rely only on chickens' observable behaviour but also argues from physiological similarity to paradigm cases of sentience (adult humans) and evolution.

What the frig difference does any of this make? You torture an animal, it screams in pain. What else matters? Subjective, objective? Who cares?

If Dave honestly wanted an answer to his question, he would search for some of the mountains of scientific research regarding this question. All availabe on the internet, local library, or local institution of higher education. Or even ask his veterinarian. In fact, there have been many news articles in all the major sources on this in the last few years regarding fish. By asking us, he can dismiss any answers we give as "biased".

So Dave, show us you honestly want an answer by doing the research yourself and then letting us know what you find.

If Dave honestly wanted an answer to his question, he would search for some of the mountains of scientific research regarding this question. All availabe on the internet, local library, or local institution of higher education. Or even ask his veterinarian. In fact, there have been many news articles in all the major sources on this in the last few years regarding fish. By asking us, he can dismiss any answers we give as "biased".

So Dave, show us you honestly want an answer by doing the research yourself and then letting us know what you find.

Exactly. I had forgotten about that recent research reguarding fish.

Funny how you start your post saying you are not trying to criticize yet you end with sarcasm..
I agree, Troll!


Isn't calling someone a troll namecalling, and therefore a violation of the TOS?

Isn't calling someone a troll namecalling, and therefore a violation of the TOS?

Perhaps you should site all the posts on VB that use the word Troll. If you follow back you will see my saying Troll was in agreement with another poster.
Then again, you are/were a mod, perhaps you should already know the answer to your question.

So, whats really got your panties in a bunch? Oh, is this the part where I "really learn?"

Isn't calling someone a troll namecalling, and therefore a violation of the TOS?

Same as calling someone "sunshine".

I thought you had to actually say, so and so is a troll, in order for it to be against TOS?