The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain and Science. Bernard E. Rollin , Peter SingerHartshorne and the Metaphysics of Animal Rights. Daniel A. DombrowskiAnimal Consciousness. Daisie Radner , Michael Radner

In an oft-quoted passage fromThe Principles of Morals and Legislation(1789), Jeremy Bentham addresses the issue of our treatment of animals with the following words: ‘the question is not, Can theyreason? nor, can theytalk? but, Can theysuffer?’ The point is well taken, for surely if animals suffer, they are legitimate objects of our moral concern. It is curious therefore, given the current interest in the moral status of animals, that Bentham's question has been assumed to be merely rhetorical. No-one has seriously examined the claim, central to arguments for animal liberation and animal rights, that animals actually feel pain. Peter Singer'sAnimal Liberationis perhaps typical in this regard. His treatment of the issue covers a scant seven pages, after which he summarily announces that ‘there are no good reasons, scientific or philosophical, for denying that animals feel pain’. In this paper I shall suggest that the issue of animal pain is not so easily dispensed with, and that the evidence brought forward to demonstrate that animals feel pain is far from conclusive.

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Animal Ethical Views and Perception of Animal Pain in Veterinary Students

Animals ◽

10.3390/ani8120220 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 8 (12) ◽

pp. 220 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Anna Valros ◽

Laura Hänninen

Keyword(s):

Animal Rights ◽

Animal Ethics ◽

Pain Perception ◽

Ethical Challenges ◽

Veterinary Students ◽

Pain Scores ◽

Animal Pain ◽

Ethics Dilemma ◽

Ethical View

Veterinary students face several ethical challenges during their curriculum. We used the Animal Ethics Dilemma to study animal ethical views of Finnish veterinary students, and also asked them to score the level of pain perception in 13 different species. Based on the 218 respondents, the utilitarian view was the dominating ethical view. Mammals were given higher pain scores than other animals. The proportion of the respect for nature view correlated negatively, and that of the animal rights view positively, with most animal pain scores. Fifth year students had a higher percentage of contractarian views, as compared to 1st and 3rd year students, but this might have been confounded by their age. Several pain perception scores increased with increasing study years. We conclude that the utilitarian view was clearly dominating, and that ethical views differed only slightly between students at different stages of their studies. Higher pain perception scores in students at a later stage of their studies might reflect an increased knowledge of animal capacities.

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Pursuing an understanding of animal consciousness: Implications for animal morality and a creaturely theology

Verbum et Ecclesia ◽

10.4102/ve.v36i3.1442 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 36 (3) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Cornel W. Du Toit

Keyword(s):

Animal Rights ◽

Evolutionary History ◽

Animal Communication ◽

Homo Sapiens ◽

Animal Consciousness ◽

Nonhuman Animals ◽

History Of ◽

New Research ◽

Scientific Environment ◽

Animal Morality

The importance of animals in the evolutionary history of homo sapiens comes to the fore in light of an increasingly trans-human techno-scientific environment. New research on consciousness, and animal consciousness in particular, has prompted questions relating to animal rights, animal morality and the emergence of a creaturely theology and theological primatology. The possibility of understanding nonhuman animals is investigated with reference to notions like consciousness, thinking, awareness, language and communication, including the importance of emotion in communication. Special attention is given to the nature of animal communication as it came to the fore in bonobo and other chimpanzee research. Building on the notion of awareness and communication, the article focuses on the notion of animal morality and comments on some aspects of a creaturely theology.

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Developing Valid Behavioral Indicators of Animal Pain

Philosophical Topics ◽

10.5840/philtopics20204817 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 48 (1) ◽

pp. 129-153

Author(s):

Elizabeth Irvine ◽

Keyword(s):

Animal Welfare ◽

Animal Species ◽

Empirical Work ◽

Pain Mechanisms ◽

Behavioral Indicators ◽

Animal Consciousness ◽

C Elegans ◽

Animal Pain ◽

Nonhuman Animals ◽

Pain Experiences

Identifying which nonhuman animal species are capable of feeling pain is important both for understanding pain mechanisms more generally and for informing animal welfare regulations, particularly in genera that are not yet widely protected. A common way to try to provide evidence of pain experiences is through behavioral indicators. In this paper I use a very simple interventionist approach to experimentation, and the contrast case provided by C. elegans, to argue that behavioral indicators commonly used for identifying pain in nonhuman animals are much less robust than typically presented. Indeed, I argue that many behavioral indicators of pain are invalid as they are currently described. More positively, this analysis makes it possible to identify what valid criteria might look like, and where relevant, to identify existing evidence related to them. Based on this I propose that the best way to make progress on questions around animal pain is to clearly ally them with questions about animal consciousness more generally, and to productively use conceptual and empirical work in both areas to develop more theoretically defensible behavioral indicators.

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