And I must admit I agree with the conclusion, especially as I have trouble seeing how their ability to suffer can be much lower than ours (I mean, we have a lot of evolutionary history in common. I can’t really justify how my cat would be able to feel an amount of pain ten times lower than mine).
Since animals are far more numerous than humans, they have much worse living conditions, much less money is spent on their welfare than on human well-being, and animal charities are more funding-constrained, it’s hard to see how working on them can be less cost-effective.
In fact, it has been suggested by Richard Dawkins that less intelligent animals might experience greater suffering, as they require more intense pain to elicit a response. The evolutionary process would have ensured they feel sufficient pain.
Agreed. I disagree with the general practice of capping the probability distribution over animals’ sentience at 1x that of humans’. (I wouldn’t put much mass above 1x, but it should definitely be more than zero mass.)
Why would they need more intense pain to elicit a response? Intuitively to me at least with less “reasoning” ability, the slightest bit of pain would likely illicit a response away from said pain.
Well you might need a reasoned response I.e. it seems that when I do X a bad thing happens to me therefore I should endeavor not to do X.
Here is the quote from Richard Dawkins:
“If you think about what pain is for biologically speaking, pain is a warning to the animal, ‘don’t do that again’.
“If the animal does something which results in pain, that is a kind of ritual death – it is telling the animal, ‘if you do that again you might die and fail to reproduce’. That’s why natural selection has built the capacity to feel pain into our nervous systems.
“You could say since pain is there to warn the animal not to do that again… an animal that is a slow learner or less intelligent might need more intense pain in order to deter [them] from doing it again, than a human who is intelligent enough to learn quickly.
“So it’s possible non-human animals are capable of feeling more intense pain than we are.”
That does seem plausible but I think the opposite i more likely. Of course you need a reasoned response, but I’m not sure the magnitude of pain would necessarily help the association with the reasoned response
Harmful action leads to negative stimulus (perhaps painful) which leads to withdrawl and future cessation of that action. It seems unlikely to me that increasing the magnitude of that pain would make a creature more likely to stop doing an action. More like the memory and higher functions would need to be sufficient to associate the action to the painful stimuli, and then a form of memory needs to be there to allow a creature to avoid the action in future.
It is unintuitive to me that the “amount” of negative stimuli (pain) would be what matters, more the strength of connection between the pain and the action, which would allow future avoidance of the behaviour.
I use “negative stimuli” rather than pain, because I still believe we heavily anthropomorphise our own experience of pain onto animals. Their experience is likely to be so wildly different from ours (whether “better” or “worse”) that I think even using the word pain might be misleading sometimes.
More intelligent beings shouldn’t necessarily need pain at all to avoid actions which could cause you to “die and fail to reproduce”. I wouldn’t think to avoid actions that could lead to, or would need very minor stimulus as a reminder.
Actually it does seem quite complex the more I think about it/
I had in mind that maybe the power of thought could allow us to put things into perspective better and better support pain (as can be experienced through meditation). However, this can go both ways, as negative thoughts can cause additional suffering.
But I shall check the suggestion by Dawkins, that sounds interesting.
Thanks a lot for this post!
I was thinking of doing something similar myself.
And I must admit I agree with the conclusion, especially as I have trouble seeing how their ability to suffer can be much lower than ours (I mean, we have a lot of evolutionary history in common. I can’t really justify how my cat would be able to feel an amount of pain ten times lower than mine).
Since animals are far more numerous than humans, they have much worse living conditions, much less money is spent on their welfare than on human well-being, and animal charities are more funding-constrained, it’s hard to see how working on them can be less cost-effective.
In fact, it has been suggested by Richard Dawkins that less intelligent animals might experience greater suffering, as they require more intense pain to elicit a response. The evolutionary process would have ensured they feel sufficient pain.
Agreed. I disagree with the general practice of capping the probability distribution over animals’ sentience at 1x that of humans’. (I wouldn’t put much mass above 1x, but it should definitely be more than zero mass.)
Why would they need more intense pain to elicit a response? Intuitively to me at least with less “reasoning” ability, the slightest bit of pain would likely illicit a response away from said pain.
Well you might need a reasoned response I.e. it seems that when I do X a bad thing happens to me therefore I should endeavor not to do X.
Here is the quote from Richard Dawkins:
“If you think about what pain is for biologically speaking, pain is a warning to the animal, ‘don’t do that again’.
“If the animal does something which results in pain, that is a kind of ritual death – it is telling the animal, ‘if you do that again you might die and fail to reproduce’. That’s why natural selection has built the capacity to feel pain into our nervous systems.
“You could say since pain is there to warn the animal not to do that again… an animal that is a slow learner or less intelligent might need more intense pain in order to deter [them] from doing it again, than a human who is intelligent enough to learn quickly.
“So it’s possible non-human animals are capable of feeling more intense pain than we are.”
https://plantbasednews.org/culture/richard-dawkins-animals-feel-more-intense-pain-than-humans/#:~:text=“You could say since pain,intelligent enough to learn quickly.
That does seem plausible but I think the opposite i more likely. Of course you need a reasoned response, but I’m not sure the magnitude of pain would necessarily help the association with the reasoned response
Harmful action leads to negative stimulus (perhaps painful) which leads to withdrawl and future cessation of that action. It seems unlikely to me that increasing the magnitude of that pain would make a creature more likely to stop doing an action. More like the memory and higher functions would need to be sufficient to associate the action to the painful stimuli, and then a form of memory needs to be there to allow a creature to avoid the action in future.
It is unintuitive to me that the “amount” of negative stimuli (pain) would be what matters, more the strength of connection between the pain and the action, which would allow future avoidance of the behaviour.
I use “negative stimuli” rather than pain, because I still believe we heavily anthropomorphise our own experience of pain onto animals. Their experience is likely to be so wildly different from ours (whether “better” or “worse”) that I think even using the word pain might be misleading sometimes.
More intelligent beings shouldn’t necessarily need pain at all to avoid actions which could cause you to “die and fail to reproduce”. I wouldn’t think to avoid actions that could lead to, or would need very minor stimulus as a reminder.
Actually it does seem quite complex the more I think about it/
Its an interesting discussion anyway.
Ah, that’s interesting. I didn’t know that.
I had in mind that maybe the power of thought could allow us to put things into perspective better and better support pain (as can be experienced through meditation). However, this can go both ways, as negative thoughts can cause additional suffering.
But I shall check the suggestion by Dawkins, that sounds interesting.