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Is a nervous system explicitly necessary to feel physical sensations? Why should we presume that a nervous system is necessary? They may have pain receptors tha
by Valmar 9y ago
Is a nervous system explicitly necessary to feel physical sensations? Why should we presume that a nervous system is necessary? They may have pain receptors that we haven't identified yet. Plants have consciousness... but it is quite different to animal consciousness, because their bodies are vastly different to our.
I feel that we should presume consciousness, pain, emotions, etc, in all living beings, until most rigorously proven otherwise, because just because we may not understand non-human, non-mammalian or non-animal living beings as well as ourselves does not mean that they cannot experience whatever equivalents their consciousness, bodies or minds allow them to.
- red75prime 9y agoWhat basis do we have to call presumable feeling associated with negative stimulus "pain" and not "tingling" or "shame" or "irresistible urge to move away"?
- Valmar 9y agoOn what basis do we have to deny them being able to feel pain without having truly proven it or not?
- red75prime 9y agoBecause word pain loses any meaning then. You can't prove that your toilet bowl doesn't feel pain when you violate its homeostasis by flushing.
- Valmar 9y agoDon't try to equate living beings with non-living things. Doesn't work. My argument is that all living things can feel pain, regardless of how it manifests for them.
- red75prime 9y agoIt is not an argument. It is a statement. OK. What about short DNA fragments in a solution of DNA replicase. They are built from DNA, they are replicating, in a few billions years they can evolve, they aren't much more complex than a toilet bowl, undergrad molecular biology student can create them by billions.