- Joined
- May 6, 2020
This is an idea that has crossed my mind many times, and it may not be one that I can express in eloquent terms. So fuck the eloquence; I'll type it as it comes:
Let's assume, for a moment, that all things with a central nervous system (and maybe even those that don't) have some level of sentience. self awareness (in terms of the mirror test) doesn't necessarily apply here. I'm talking bout the ability for organisms to experience things in general. I'm going to disregard any form of "philosophical zombie" or "automata" based reasoning here and simply assume all things that appear to be conscious are.
There is a clear evolutionary pathway for such a trait. Pain signifies something to be avoided and pleasure is something to actively seek. Something causes pain? Stop doing it. Something causes pleasure? Keep doing that. Those organisms whose pain/pleasure sources most closely match what is necessary for survival and reproduction will generally be more likely to survive and breed. There's a whole discussion to be had about this theory of consciousness (and, quite frankly, that's what this thread probably should have been about), but I want to focus primarily on those lower organisms that don't have our reasoning ability.
Personally: I just pissed on a crane fly that managed to make it inside my house and inside the rim of my toilet. It landed in the water, of course, and I kept pissing on it before flushing. I got to bear witness to the mindless thrashing it was performing before I pulled that knob. Assuming this bug had some kind of sentience, I think it suffered more than most humans can imagine. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a little bit bad for it. Yet that might be a better way to go than victims of the tarantula hawk wasp, or any spider for that matter.
To tie together my sporadic writing:
the assumption that these creatures feel pain and the understanding that they lack the same cognitive abilities that humans have lends itself to one conclusion: They suffer MORE when they suffer. They feel just like we do, yet they do not have the ability to put it into context. They don't necessarily understand why they are going through whatever predicament they are going through. They just know that they are going through it. Imagine being some sort of animal that pretty much only knows pleasure and pain. To be a bit anthropocentric: imagine your murderer biting and clawing at your entrails without regard for your suffering, seemingly for no reason, and (even if you could ask him why he's doing it) you're met only with silence and more pain until your inevitable death. The cherry on top being that you don't even understand concepts like "sadism" or the food chain. All you know is this other animal found you, chose to inflict this harm upon you, and there's not a damn thing to do about it. That is hell.
Let's assume, for a moment, that all things with a central nervous system (and maybe even those that don't) have some level of sentience. self awareness (in terms of the mirror test) doesn't necessarily apply here. I'm talking bout the ability for organisms to experience things in general. I'm going to disregard any form of "philosophical zombie" or "automata" based reasoning here and simply assume all things that appear to be conscious are.
There is a clear evolutionary pathway for such a trait. Pain signifies something to be avoided and pleasure is something to actively seek. Something causes pain? Stop doing it. Something causes pleasure? Keep doing that. Those organisms whose pain/pleasure sources most closely match what is necessary for survival and reproduction will generally be more likely to survive and breed. There's a whole discussion to be had about this theory of consciousness (and, quite frankly, that's what this thread probably should have been about), but I want to focus primarily on those lower organisms that don't have our reasoning ability.
Personally: I just pissed on a crane fly that managed to make it inside my house and inside the rim of my toilet. It landed in the water, of course, and I kept pissing on it before flushing. I got to bear witness to the mindless thrashing it was performing before I pulled that knob. Assuming this bug had some kind of sentience, I think it suffered more than most humans can imagine. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a little bit bad for it. Yet that might be a better way to go than victims of the tarantula hawk wasp, or any spider for that matter.
To tie together my sporadic writing:
the assumption that these creatures feel pain and the understanding that they lack the same cognitive abilities that humans have lends itself to one conclusion: They suffer MORE when they suffer. They feel just like we do, yet they do not have the ability to put it into context. They don't necessarily understand why they are going through whatever predicament they are going through. They just know that they are going through it. Imagine being some sort of animal that pretty much only knows pleasure and pain. To be a bit anthropocentric: imagine your murderer biting and clawing at your entrails without regard for your suffering, seemingly for no reason, and (even if you could ask him why he's doing it) you're met only with silence and more pain until your inevitable death. The cherry on top being that you don't even understand concepts like "sadism" or the food chain. All you know is this other animal found you, chose to inflict this harm upon you, and there's not a damn thing to do about it. That is hell.
