[thechat] Fish do feel pain
Erika Meyer
emeyer at lclark.edu
Thu May 1 13:16:13 CDT 2003
>>What surprised me was the title - the leap from responsiveness to damaging
>>physical stimuli, to subjective experience of pain is a huge one.
>
>yeah, if you're being all objectively scientific. good point.
y'know, one would think that fish's ability to feel pain could be
inferred from the fact that they have a central nervous system. I
mean, wtf?
It's like that argument that male babies couldn't feel pain when
being circumcised. Even though they scream... nerve endings? hello?
I think these "fish can't feel pain, worms can't feel pain, babies
can't feel pain" arguments are made so that homo so-called sapiens
can feel better about inflicting pain on others. It's a little thing
called "denial."
It is easy to make these claims (they can't feel pain, the don't have
a soul, they don't have feelings) about any creature that cannot
articulate in a human tongue: "ouch, that hurts."
In fact, I think the biggest problem animals (and babies) have is
that they can't speak. When you don't have a voice, you are
completely f*cked.
Cause most humans aren't really all that smart. And denial is an
art we do exceptionally well. we do it so it feels real. we do it
so it feels like hell.
Not that anyone's feelings can be objectively proven... or disproven...
anyway.
E
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