We may be able to figure things out without so much pain and therefore find less utility in it than less intelligent animals. But could not intense pain have helped along our evolution and therefore still be correlated with intelligence?

(Nevertheless, I am a vegetarian out of respect for the beauty and dignity of animals, and concern for the well being of humans who slaughter.)

You got evolution down backwards. Species evolve based on elimination of the things that don’t work, not by promoting features that seem to work better then others. This seems almost the same, but the difference is important. Like people who say that in a billion years we won’t have toes because they serve no purpose. That isn’t the case, we will evolve to not have toes only if people who have toes die off, but those who don’t have them or have less distinct toes survive. If they survive no purpose, they will hang around for a very long time until some day it becomes essential for survival to either have them or not to have them.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s not plausible that our species evolved to feel less pain because we don’t need it as much as less intelligent species. Only if those who feel less pain have a greater probability of surviving will we start to evolve to have less pain sensation. But this just doesn’t seem likely to occur. Even if you are smart enough to know that the coals are hot, why would the guy who gets a jolt when he accidentally steps on them have lower higher survival rate then the guy who only notices the coals after the skin on his foot is half melted away.

Of cause you could argue that the very resent events in human history have turned our evolution into a more breeding focused evolution, since we now have very good survival rates independent of our individual genes due to the healthcare system. But this has only happend in the latest splitsecond of our evolution timeline, and we shouldn’t be seeing any evolutionary effects of that before the far future afaik.

I used to personally hold that most animals were not very intelligent, excepting perhaps primates and cetaceans. Science has clearly revealed that my beliefs were erroneous and that amazing levels of intelligence, memory and self-awareness are present throughout all the animal kingdoms (not just in Mammalia). The evidence seems empirical, reproducible and overwhelming, perhaps because there are *so* many instance-proofs. However it takes generations for the cultural zeitgeist to catch up with knowledge – my children are amazed that people still discriminate against gay people or that anyone in their right mind would still smoke… but yet my daughter is still ‘spiritual’, showing that not all the old culture baggage has been scoured away by the winds of reason).

An animal suffering anecdote; an acquaintance has a large cockatoo parrot – an ‘animal’ that is clearly highly intelligent, self-aware and capable of advanced communication with other species. Animal researchers frequently compare this species to human three year old children when discussing their intelligence and language abilities. This parrot was best ‘friends’ with the family German Sheppard for many years, going on daily walks together, napping together, protecting each other, feeding each other, and just being, well, friends. It was very cute, actually. And then the dog died (from old age) and the parrot mourned like you wouldn’t believe. He keened over the body… he sat quietly on his cage for months and whispered the things he used yell out to the dog. Every day he woke up and walked to the photograph of the dog on the table and kissed it with “Hello, Shadow”, and then got on with his day. I’ve never seen a stronger example of suffering in an ‘animal’, but I’m not an animal behavior researcher, who I’m sure have much better examples.

My Point: I treat a lot of animals as intelligent creatures now, and they have my respect. No, they aren’t equals to humans, with our vastly more complex capabilities, and I’m not advocating voting rights for them. However we cannot blithely assume they will not feel horror and suffering (even if anesthetized) at the reality of being vivisected, or at being raised in a tiny cage until ready to be eaten. We can readily forgive DesCartes or Hooke for what they did centuries ago; I will not presume that our modern morality applies to their historical context (“Jefferson owned slaves”) but I will apply that lens to my contemporaries; we have moved beyond their harsher world into new ethical challenges – one of which is retiring the older cultures way of viewing the world.

I think it’s hypocritical to say that we should reduce all pain and suffering, then let the spider eat the fly.

Everyone, even the most conscientious PETA donating Buddhist vegan makes the same logical leap that some degree of cruelty is ok. Whether it’s slaughtering cattle, or crushing minute insects beneath bicycle tread. The question is where you draw the line and why.

Have there been MRI tests of brain function in pain centers in animals?

Dolphins recognise distress enough to save humans who are drowning so why wouldnt other animals as well in their own terms , through behaviours we might otherwise might not recognise at all ?

I have companion rats (rodent rats, not rat terrier rats) and the thing all rat guardians know is that if your rat buddy looks ill or injured, go IMMEDIATELY to the vet. Rats are prey animals to the nth degree and, thus, are incredibly good at hiding illness and injury. If you can look at your kiddo and see they aren’t feeling good, they *really* aren’t feeling good. Some folks have had rats seem a bit off one night and be gone in the morning. They are that good at hiding when they are hurting.

Cats and dogs and all other domestic animals are very similar. They might be companions now but the instinct for self-preservation when one is injured/ill isn’t gone. They suffer and can suffer a long time – they just aren’t as prone to being dramatic about it as humans are. ;)

However, I do think we like to think of our own species as being more clever than it is. If we were truly “capable of intelligently working out what is good for us”, how come tens of thousands of people choose to take up smoking knowing full well that it will probably cause diseases and decrease their life span?

So no, plants cannot feel pain or suffer.

It makes perfect sense from his perspective. Descartes believed there are only two things in the world, Mind (souls) and Matter. Only Minds can feel pain, how could Matter “feel” anything at all? Therefore only those organisms with minds, us, can feel or reason. Animals cannot. It’s a logical outcome of his philosophy.

Today there are people who seriously argue that consciousness is an illusion. You don’t really feel, or experience qualia, or make decisions, you just think you do. You are a zombie and zombies feel no pain, they’re dead. “You* are just dead matter pretending it’s alive. This just represents the failure of some to overcome their Cartesian categories.

At what point is it ‘Turtles all the way down’? Your examples are all bovine. OK, so cows are out, how about pigs? Sure, the same. Chickens, lizards, salamanders, crayfish, fish, … protozoa. Does it end when we cant find pain receptors (as you seem to point out in your belief that plants do not react to suffering)? And even if pain receptors is a criteria, is it enough? At what point do you feel for every living thing so much that you can’t go on living for the death and suffering that you cause by merely breathing?

Children don’t die so much from jumping off of buildings for fun or behaving particularly more dangerously than other children–the ability to feel pain isn’t required to conceptualize that one’s body can break–rather from normal, painful early warnings going unfelt until more obvious gross physical symptoms later manifest: broken bones, fevers, infections, and myriad other maladies can turn fatal if one cannot feel them.

“Isn’t it plausible that a clever species such as our own might need less pain”

You got evolution down backwards.

Yeah, Dawkins, you got evolution all wrong. Go study theology, or something.

1. All-benevolent
2. Going to burn most people alive forever
3. But not you

You’re seriously setting the goalposts for minimum ethical considerations at ‘Don’t be worse than bears’?

I just laughed pretty good. Thanks for that, travtastic.

I don’t think many people actually think that. At least not in the scientific community. I think there is widespread consensus that animals do indeed feel pain.

The difference is whether or not, and to what extent, they feel suffering, i.e. what are the psychological ramifications of pain.

I would argue that one form of suffering is the protracted inescapable persistence of pain. I think animals can definitely experience this, because all it takes is a nervous system; *how* they experience this, however, their inner psychological representation of this, is anybody’s guess. In any case, experimental protocols followed by all US researchers that work with animals (affectionately termed “vivisectionists” by animal rights fanatics to elicit exactly the type of emotional response that Dawkins’s description did) explicitly prohibit this form of suffering, unless absolutely vital to the phenomenon studied.

But there is another form of suffering, and that is what we humans experience most often, and it is the anticipation of pain and of its consequences. For that, I would argue you need to be able to imagine the future, and there is no evidence that most animals can indeed project their mental representation of self ahead in time (or backwards, for that matter).

I think this article, while provocative, is misleading, because it implies that perhaps the majority of scientists work under the assumption that animals don’t feel pain, whereas the opposite is true, and massive measures are taken to ensure that pain is minimized, and suffering absent.

No, he wasn’t a right-wing nut

Sounds like he was just plain nuts.

Was this train of thought sanctioned and mandated by the “liberal-ish public alternative” school?