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Epistemic asymmetry. You can't even prove that the pain-behavior you observe me demonstrating reflects an internal experience that's anything like your experien
by rosser 10y ago
Epistemic asymmetry. You can't even prove that the pain-behavior you observe me demonstrating reflects an internal experience that's anything like your experience of pain, so asking for "proof" that a fish's pain is actually painful isn't even an objectively meaningful question.
- kranner 10y agoRed herring :) I know I can't know what it's like to be a bat, but maybe suffering in fish can be demonstrated via FMRI. Perhaps it has been but this article doesn't mention it. Just because something shows avoidance behaviour against a chemical gradient doesn't follow that it suffers.
- rosser 10y agoSuffering is experiential and subjective. Pain is measurable, in terms of neurotransmitters and electrical activity. Different people can tolerate pain wildly differently. The same person can tolerate pain wildly differently, depending upon circumstances. One can't even meaningfully draw a straight-line relationship from pain to suffering between individuals of the same species, let alone across as wide a gulf as fish to humans.
- kranner 10y agoI understood your point the first time. I'm talking about the leap made between the article's contents and the headline. Edit: we might mean somewhat different things by 'suffering'. I'm talking about an experience usually (but not always) concomitant with pain that can be measured objectively. Is there such a thing? Can it be measured? I don't know for sure. I feel that it must be there in fish too, but the shallow conflation in this article of suffering and seeming-to-act-under-suffering is a problem for me.