A discussion with a philosopher friend got me all bewildered. He claimed that we

A discussion with a philosopher friend got me all bewildered. He claimed that we

A discussion with a philosopher friend got me all bewildered. He claimed that we cannot say that animals feel pain, because a mind is necessary to feel pain, and animals don't have a mind. My argument was twofold: 1. How do we know that animals don't have minds? 2. Pain is a result of stimulus to certain parts of the brain. If we assume that animals don't have minds, we can still see that their brains respond to pain stimuli the same way as ours. Even if they are unable to cognitively translate an external factor into a thought train like "I stuck my hand on a hot plate, it hurt, so I removed my hand from the hot plate", surely we can watch them pull back from things that we would experience as painful. I was wondering what your thoughts are on this subject. Thanks.

Read another response by Peter Lipton
Read another response about Animals, Mind
Print