Categoría: Sentience in Animals
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Invertebrate sentience: A review of the neuroscientific literature
Regarding invertebrate sentience «we might discover that, for a unit of objective time, some invertebrate’s experience of suffering lasts subjectively longer than a human’s experience would» Read more: https://www.animal-ethics.org/invertebrate-sentience-a-review-of-the-neuroscientific-literature/
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Only mammals and birds are sentient, according to Nick Humphrey
Only mammals and birds are sentient, according to neuroscientist Nick Humphrey’s theory of consciousness, recently explained in “Sentience: The invention of consciousness”. In 2023, Nick Humphrey published his book Sentience: The invention of consciousness (S:TIOC). In this book he proposed a theory of consciousness that implies, he says, that only mammals and birds have any…
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The Challenge of Determining Whether an A.I. Is Sentient, by Carissa Véliz
«…sentience may go unnoticed for years, as was the case with Martin Pistorious [1] … Because brain death can be misdiagnosed [2], and because we have little understanding of the necessary and sufficient causes for consciousness and therefore cannot be certain of when someone might be in pain, some experts have called for the use…
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Mutations in sodium-channel gene SCN9A cause a spectrum of human genetic pain disorders
Individuals with congenital indifference to pain have painless injuries beginning in infancy but otherwise normal sensory responses upon examination. Perception of passive movement, joint position, and vibration is normal, as are tactile thresholds and light touch perception. There is intact ability to distinguish between sharp and dull stimuli and to detect differences in temperature. The…
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How a nervous system operates without giving rise to an experience
In our bodies, if our knee is lightly tapped, our leg moves automatically (with no intention on our part) and independently of the experience of the tap that we sense. The information that originates in our knee, with the tap, splits up and moves through two separate pathways: one path goes to our brain through…
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No binding, no suffering
Plants don’t suffer. Their fictitious misery should not be used to justify the real misery of our nonhuman animal victims. “But how do you know plants don’t suffer?!” says the meat-eater, affecting a touching concern for the well-being vegetables. “Science proves plants feel pain!” But no. Suppose that consciousness is fundamental in Nature, or at…
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Richard Dawkins about suffering in nature
«The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive; others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear; others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites; thousands of all…
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The imperative to abolish suffering: an interview with David Pearce
English | Español | Português Photo: Peter Singer, Justin Oakley and David Pearce at EA Global Melbourne. David Pearce is a British philosopher famous for his idea that there is a strong ethical imperative for human beings to work towards the abolition of suffering of all sentient beings (named «The Hedonistic Imperative«). In the manifesto,…