Nobody is saying Buna doesn't have personhood (I think nobody is?), but it's hella comforting to me to trust in the collective opinion of the medfags in the thread when they say that even if she has pain signals going in, she can't process them in any meaningful way (shout out to
@Thomas Eugene Paris and
@GenociderSyo in particular for some really elucidating medical spergery over the last 750 pages). The alternative—that she's sentient in a meaningful way and aware of and suffering through her predicament—is horrifying enough that thinking about it is difficult for me.
While not being the cow herself, Luna's continued existence raises a lot more deep philosophical questions than most 'Farms threads do. The nature of being and consciousness, and what divides humans/sentient beings from sacks of breathing meat, the existence and location of the human soul, the difference between pain and suffering... I learn a lot in here and also a lot of medical stuff that just doesn't come up in my day-to-day life. There are a few threads around that teach and test me me as much as or more often than they make me laugh, and this is certainly one of them.
I'll breathe a sigh of relief when Luna dies, but that's not the same or even close to wishing death on her. I wish the problems her existence raises would be solved, and I appreciate that her death would free her family from the weight of caring for her, if only by putting them into bereavement and grief.
I'm hugely conflicted and I guess,
@Adrenochrome Dreams, that that's why I choose to trust that she's not feeling much of anything at all. I don't know enough about medicine or neurology (or philosophy) to do anything but consider the opinions of people more knowledgeable than I, so I trust in whatever gods and stars are up there that the medfags here are correct in saying she's very likely not sentient or feeling anything at all. As I said, the alternative is grim beyond belief.