ANNOUNCEMENTS
- No office hours today
- Field trips--see changes
- Frans DeWaal book next time
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PAIN
- Mammals
- Birds
- Fish
- Invertebrates: crabs, lobsters, octopuses
- Insects
Just about all animals have nociceptors, but do they feel pain? And if so, does their pain feel like our pain?
Some are skeptical becasue of brain differences.
FISH--DIFFERENT BRAIN ANATOMY
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OTHER MAMMALS--SMALLER PREFRONTAL CORTEX
CEPHALOPODS AND CRUSTACEANS--DECENTRALIZED NERVOUS SYSTEMS
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| The Octopus Mind--Peter Godfrey Smith |
INSECTS--VERY SMALL BRAINS
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Does it matters, ethically?
- Utilitarians...but they tend to focus on pain
- Bentham: "Can they suffer?"
- Singer: pain and pleasure are basis for interests
- Common sense--
- wrong to unnecessarily prevent pleasure
- zoos, how we care for pets
Much more research on pain than on pleasure
- Jonathan Balcombe trying to rectify that situation
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DO ANIMALS HAVE PLEASURE?
Pleasure vs. pain
- Seem analogous, but in some ways not
- Nociceptors lead to pain experience, but there are no specialized pleasure receptors
- In humans: sensations from any sense can cause pleasure
- The chemistry of pleasure: dopamine, endogenous opioids, endorphins
RR8--is the evidence for pleasure just as strong as the evidence for pain in animals?
"In the case of physical pain at least, if an animal has the equipment to experience it, then she is also probably equipped to experience pleasure." (Balcombe p. 19)
"If there is one most crucial reason why feeling good should not be the sole domain of Homo sapiens, it is this: pleasure is adaptive. Feeling good is a powerful motivator that steers animals toward behaviors that keep them alive and help them reproduce. Contrary to popular myth, life in the wild is not relentlessly harsh; survival and pleasure are mutually compatible." (p. 21-22)
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THIS SURE LOOKS LIKE PLEASURE
Inside the Animal Mind part 2, 12-18:50 (tab at top of page)