Trying to bring the difference between nocioception, experience of pain and having a subjective experience of pain. Different physical and emotional phenomena.
Does a crab look like it’s feeling pain when it yanks one of its claws out? Mostly seems unphased and it has a far more complex biology than an insect.
For example, when under anesthesia and having skin pricked without being made aware/conscious that the skin has been damaged and the body is working to restore it. This would be viewed as “feeling” pain as the body adjusts and focuses resources in addressing it. However, the experience of pain was not possible due to lack of awareness impeding a conscious representation of reality.
“Feel” is something that requires consciousness and a sense of awareness that the pain being experienced is self-related. Consciousness requires complex systems and a nervous system which insects do not possess. Whilst reactive and reflexive actions are performed, whether they experience pain as a personal subjective phenomenon is something that isn’t tested. Reaction isn’t a proxy to consciousness.
Would a bacteria “feel” pain because it reacts to the environment?
I say this as someone that has almost a Buddhist approach to respecting living creatures. However, the science of consciousness and a physicalist approach inform my views.
Yes, exactly my point. How can an insect feel pain when they’re devoid of the complex machinery that allows them to have pain emotion and connect the pain experience to a self.
I took more issue with the use of “feel” as that’s normally associated with a human experience of feeling. An insect lacks “hardware” to approximate a human experience of feeling.