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My initial intuition to your last question was, “No, suffering usually entails some sort of looking-back process that places the pain in that context.” I then
by nefitty 6y ago
My initial intuition to your last question was, “No, suffering usually entails some sort of looking-back process that places the pain in that context.”
I then realized that animals can suffer, and either I’m confounding Buddhist and Western psychological definitions of suffering, or suffering doesn’t require consciousness of it occurring for it to be suffering.
I hope that makes sense!
- pmiller2 6y agoThe difference is that when an animal suffers, they retain memories. One only need to consider something like this story I heard about a dog on Reddit, who was scared of obese people and men. Turns out, the dog was severely abused by a 500-lb man who was its former owner.