Inverts & Pain - The Ultimate Thread

[Anansi]

Pain *requires* a psychological component. full stop.

You mean the type of psychological component that may trigger a fight or flight response?

Inverts do not have any indication of a psychological component. full stop.

Inverts have brains and Im sure those brains have the psychological components necessary to trigger a fight or flight response. Furthermore, what is your particular definition of a psychological component?

Nobody anywhere in this thread has not said they don't have nerve stimuli that in a psychological brain could or could not be interpreted as pain, however, that's where your reasoning falls apart.

No, my reasoning doesnt fall apart. It's ridiculous at best to compare human pain to invertebrate pain, especially given our liberal definition of pain.

The nerve sensations and resulting taxis you describe above has never been part of a definition of pain, ethical or otherwise, as it's just nerve firing and response.

In regards to sensation, everything is nerve firing and response. How is invertebrate nerve firing and response any less significant than human nerve firing and response. Just because they dont have the "hardware" doesnt mean they dont subjectively experience their own pain.

Living organisms completely devoid of a nervous system avoid negative stimuli, that doesn't begin to mean they're aware beings that suffer pain.

No. 1 - I never said they were aware beings
No. 2 - I never said they suffer. I just said that may subjectively experience their own version of pain.
No. 3 - Why would they avoid negative stimuli unless:
Their psychological component (which you say they lack) tells them to.
Negative stimuli causes them a significant level of distress and/ or pain.

If it wasnt either of these things, why would they avoid negative stimuli at all? It all has to originate in the brain (no matter how small and simple it is)... and it has to be the result of a sensate experience.

 

[Code Monkey]

The purpose of this particular forum is providing factual information on tarantula husbandry. This debate never goes anywhere because it's not something you can establish with debate. You establish whether something can feel pain with actual research followed by analytical reasoning.

This always breaks down into three ranks.

Rank 1: The sum total of the argument amounts to because we know tarantulas exhibit negative taxis to stimuli that we would consider painful, they must feel pain.

Rank 2: The sum total of the argument amounts to since they're alive, they must be able to feel pain.

Rank 3: A far more complex argument that is based in established science and ethical reasoning. Ethically speaking, pain is defined as requiring a psychological component. Negative taxis and "alarming" nerve impulses are never considered as evidence that an organism can feel pain since almost all living things exhibit some form of negative taxis, including plants and bacteria, and all living things with a nervous system have nerve impulses that would be considered "painful" in a reasonably complex brain. The ability to feel pain is related to establishing that an organism is capable of the psychological component.

So, no, we do not know with absolute certainty that a tarantula does not feel pain. However, we do know with absolute certainty that likelihood they can feel is somewhere in the vicinity of me winning the Powerball lottery every week for a year. The number of neurons is too few, the number of interconnections is too few, the behaviors too hardwired, and so on. In the absence of an actual study that demonstrates such a psychological capacity in tarantulas, the answer to the question of if they can feel pain is almost certainly no.

If someone higher rank than me wants to reopen this thread, they can, otherwise anyone who wants to continue the illogical debate of trying to fly in the face of the entirety of neuroscience may take it to the Watering Hole.