A bit of a sad tale

That gets to a deeper philosophical (and biological) issue. We have a difficult enough time defining consciousness in ourselves and determining consciousness in another living thing of a different species is multiple times more difficult because of the inherent communication barrier.

The following will likely be long because I’ll have to qualify terms and ideas. Or, I could just say “because there is no evidence of it”.

Anyway, to proceed, the same question can be asked about all sorts of things (plants, for instance). Some Japanese beliefs maintain objects have souls and, by association, display a will.

But, if we limit to just the discussion of suffering, we can put down a few definitions. Physical suffering and emotional (psychological) suffering. Mind you, even there we have a spectrum that is difficult to pin down. People who run marathons suffer all manners of physical and psychological hardship yet they do it willingly and with determination.

Some people fast on purpose and others pierce various parts of their bodies on purpose.

But, again, for the purpose of this discussion, physical suffering we can define as unwanted pain. Psychological suffering we can define as the condition resulting from the awareness something is doing us harm or we are in a situation that will result in us being harmed.

There is psychological suffering we inflict on ourselves (we don’t think we are pretty enough, or fit enough, or resent people who have more, or we feel guilty for having more than others — that last one not so much in evidence). Again, for the purpose of this discussion, let’s leave that out.

So . . . do animals feel pain? They certainly react to things that cause damage to them. But, does that damage come with an awareness of its significance? Is an animal self-aware to the point that in addition to the physical reaction there’s an emotional component to a given pain event?

I don’t think so because it doesn’t appear to be in us, either. If you burn yourself or cut your finger, you don’t sit and ponder on the significance of the damage. Your reaction is instinctive; you do something to minimize further damage. You might contemplate complications (infection) and take additional steps, but the initial reaction doesn’t include a component of psychological suffering; it’s purely physical. Later, we might mourn our inability to make Spam sandwiches until the burn heals or the cut finger repairs itself.

If we have a large amount of damage, the psychological suffering comes later (not universally; sometimes we’re just grateful to have survived).

I “suffered” a lot of pain following my two surgeries but there wasn’t a psychological component adding to the “suffering” because I could anticipate the end result; I knew it was a temporary condition that would result in an improvement over my prior state (being injured).

If I lost someone I care for, there would not be any physical damage to my body but the emotional impact would be great. That comes both from recognizing another individual as an entity onto itself that is similar to myself and from various degrees of emotional attachment I might have to the individual in question. There is a certain amount of suffering we absorb even when hearing about the death of someone we didn’t know and that’s in part due to our valuing ourselves as individuals and recognizing the same value in the identity of someone else.

It’s a long road here, but . . . we just don’t see the same in insects. Some animals exhibit behavior we attribute to a sense of mourning (some mammals and some birds) but it could just as simply be described as an instinctive reaction of a social group.

You tend bees and it would seem difficult attributing individuality (and hence self-awareness) to an individual bee.

Side note: there is something called the mirror test that’s used to test self-awareness and there is some indications ants (surprisingly) can recognize themselves.

But here I have to be careful here and not look for “human” behavior in animals (an easy thing to do as we try to explain the world around us in terms we recognize and make sense to us). If an animal can “recognize” itself in a mirror, is it proof that it is self-aware? A baby typically will recognize themselves in a mirror at about 18 months of age. That initial awareness grows into a more defined and deep sense of self-awareness and the understanding of one’s place in the whole of society at large and one’s immediate family.

The matter of consciousness is more complicated than mere self-awareness (HERE).

I say that because I’m sure someone will point to some animal behavior and say “it’s just like humans do”. Typically, it’s not. And, when it is, it’s because it’s a universal behavior that has nothing to do with consciousness per se and is not limited to humans.

In this discussion (about the butterfly) self-awareness comes into play when we consider dying. Are animals aware of their mortality? Does it affect what they do and how they live? It’s difficult attributing reason to behavior (or vice versa) but from what I can understand, there is no such evidence. Some animals appear to mourn their dead, but this is not a clear indication of awareness of one own’s mortality.

Literally, I don’t think the butterfly was aware that it was dying. It probably was in distress and I should have put it out of its misery. I didn’t because I don’t know if the dying process of a butterfly (or other insects) has pain associated with it. Dying from old age is (in the absence of disease and from what little I know) not painful in itself. We all dream of eventually dying peacefully instead of being squashed by two tons of rolling steel. Even in terminally ill patients, we take care of the physical pain but there’s no escaping the awareness of impending death short of getting drunk or taking mind-altering drugs.

Perhaps the biggest reason I don’t think animals are conscious is that they do not create art (or anything) for its own sake. All of their behavior is tied to survival (and yes, they “play” but that’s not creating anything). No animal I know of creates anything representing themselves in their environment. No animal I know of has the cognitive capacity to plan outside a very limited scope.

The second big reason I don’t think as animals as conscious is because they don’t appear to have an awareness of time. It may be that consciousness is closely tied to such awareness. By that, I mean awareness not just that time passes but that there is a future and anticipating what that future may bring based on the past. An awareness that we are part of that future. Animals certainly learn from experience (unlike many humans) but I’ve never read any study indicating animals can plan based on anticipation of future events (outside events tied to weather and seasonal changes and often regulated by their biology).

Understand, I like animals (even bugs) and don’t want to have them “suffer” but that “suffering” I don’t want them to have is based on (unconsciously) putting myself in their situation. I wouldn’t want to, for instance, be squashed by a giant shoe. But, realistically, I wouldn’t know if it happened; I would be squashed. I can “suffer” imagining such passing before it happens and others (few others) might “suffer” the fact I’m gone and someone would have to “suffer” scraping me from the sidewalk, but I would be no more than a stain on such sidewalk and blissfully unaware of any such suffering . . . unless I’d been squashed very slowly until the boundary comprising my being loses its coherence and I popped out of existence.

If this doesn’t teach you not to ask me questions, I don’t know what will.

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