Key, Brian (2016) Why fish do not feel pain. Animal Sentience 3(1) (after reading the article, read the abstracts of some of the commentaries too, for contrary vuews).
Only humans can report feeling pain. In contrast, pain in animals is typically inferred on the basis of nonverbal behaviour. Unfortunately, these behavioural data can be problematic when the reliability and validity of the behavioural tests are questionable. The thesis proposed here is based on the bioengineering principle that structure determines function. Basic functional homologies can be mapped to structural homologies across a broad spectrum of vertebrate species. For example, olfaction depends on olfactory glomeruli in the olfactory bulbs of the forebrain, visual orientation responses depend on the laminated optic tectum in the midbrain, and locomotion depends on pattern generators in the spinal cord throughout vertebrate phylogeny, from fish to humans. Here I delineate the region of the human brain that is directly responsible for feeling painful stimuli. The principal structural features of this region are identified and then used as biomarkers to infer whether fish are, at least, anatomically capable of feeling pain. Using this strategy, I conclude that fish lack the necessary neurocytoarchitecture, microcircuitry, and structural connectivity for the neural processing required for feeling pain.
Only humans can report feeling pain. In contrast, pain in animals is typically inferred on the basis of nonverbal behaviour. Unfortunately, these behavioural data can be problematic when the reliability and validity of the behavioural tests are questionable. The thesis proposed here is based on the bioengineering principle that structure determines function. Basic functional homologies can be mapped to structural homologies across a broad spectrum of vertebrate species. For example, olfaction depends on olfactory glomeruli in the olfactory bulbs of the forebrain, visual orientation responses depend on the laminated optic tectum in the midbrain, and locomotion depends on pattern generators in the spinal cord throughout vertebrate phylogeny, from fish to humans. Here I delineate the region of the human brain that is directly responsible for feeling painful stimuli. The principal structural features of this region are identified and then used as biomarkers to infer whether fish are, at least, anatomically capable of feeling pain. Using this strategy, I conclude that fish lack the necessary neurocytoarchitecture, microcircuitry, and structural connectivity for the neural processing required for feeling pain.
Last semester I took PSYC 302, a class that examined everything that we currently know about how humans experience pain. Although the research in this field is extensive, the general takeaway from that class is that we are not confident in our understanding of the causal mechanisms of pain. There are many theories with solid evidence and many components of the pain system have been identified, but we cannot be certain in our understanding of pain as many important questions remains unanswered.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of my primary issues with the argument presented in this article. We are uncertain about pain functioning in humans, let alone other species. Although some of the evidence presented by Key is compelling, I do not agree with the statement, “it is reasonable to conclude that fish do not feel pain (p. 14).”
Kimberly, if you have a peek at the over 50 commentaries on Key from experts all around the world, you’ll see that most of them agree with you and not with Key.
DeleteHi Kimberly, I took PSYC 302 last semester too and agree with you. This article reminded me of the article about the squids that was talked about. We learned that when under stress, (being attacked by a predator) injured squids without anaesthesia survived longer than squids who were anaesthetized. Here's the original article if anyones interested: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214003352?via%3Dihub
DeleteOf course this is squids, not fish and perhaps the ethics of this experiment are a bit murky (when is it justified to inflict pain on animals?) but I think it illustrates two very important points:
Squids do in fact feel pain, even though they have different neuroanatomy to us
There may be an adaptive advantage to feeling that pain (hyper-vigilance to escape predators.)
I think this article is just another example of why key is wrong in assuming that fish do not feel pain.
Sophie, yes, since Key's target article (and partly because of the (negative) reaction to Key's article, the legal circle has been widened somewhat to include some invertebrates. That too because of two articles in the same journal (by Jonathan Birch and his co-workers).
DeleteIf you can explain the adaptive advantage of pain, you've solved the HP.
But all you need is mirror-neurons to feel the affective distress of pain, in yourself and in any other sentient being within range of your mirror.
I fully agree with your point. I was honestly a little uneasy with the language Key used in this paper. He outlines his strategy stating step 1 as follows "identify which brain region is directly responsible for the feeling of pain in humans". However, as you mentioned and as has been replicated time after time, there is no pain signature apparent that can be surely referred to as "directly responsible for the feeling of pain in humans" and in fact, pain and its expression in the brain (as expressed through activation of different brain areas) is variable across individuals and not stable enough to attribute regions as directly responsible. Also, his main thesis follows the principle that "structure determines function" but this does not mean that in order to perform a certain function, only these structural elements can be used and that they have to be shared across species especially when interindividual variances in pain response exist within humans already.
DeleteInjy, unlike with heart structure, which does resemble its function (pumping), brain function does not resemble its function, which is the capacity to DO all the things (cognitive and vegetative) that we can DO (EP). This is even more evident with the capacity to FEEL (e.g., pain), where all we can have is correlations between DOings and and brain activity (T4).
DeletePain is an extremely adaptive function. It allows humans to prevent severe injuries and to understand the limitations of their bodies. People with a congenital insensitivity to pain have a much shorter lifespan that the average person because they will often injure themselves without realizing it.
ReplyDeleteI do not see any logical reason why fish would not also require this adaptive function. Evolving to not experience pain would decrease their species’ evolutionary fitness and would serve no larger benefit. The theory that fish do not feel pain is contradictory to many evolutionary principles.
Kimberly, you are of course right. But do you notice that you have not explained how or why felt pain is needed for the adaptive benefits you mention, rather than just “nociception” (tissue damage detector activity) and supervised learning? [“Stevan Says”: in an intact nervous system, nociceptor activity, if any, is felt, except under local or general anesthesia.]
DeleteThat said, it would of course be absurd (and extremely cruel) to say that fish are insentient (so we can do whatever we like to them) because we have not yet (or cannot) solve the HP! Especially since our OMP-reading mirror capacities are enough with birds, mammals and people…
Bekoff, Marc (2022) Time to stop pretending we don’t know other animals are sentient beings. Animal Sentience 31(2)
Kimberly brought up a good point, felt pain is indeed necessary for adapting but also, as you mentioned, for non conscious neural processing of tissue damage, as well as supervised learning. This discussion along with the reading made me think of the studies we were taught in Social Psychology, where men vs women's pain tolerance and endurance was compared. It was found that although men had a better initial tolerance/response to pain, women had a better long term endurance to it. The evolutionary or cognitive factors were not discussed, but I am assuming it is due to adaptive functions where women would be in more positions to have to endure pain during childbirth, etc. I have a hard time wrapping my head around fish not experiencing felt pain (especially since a conclusion cannot really be reached), but the evidence suggesting it is nonetheless quite fascinating.
DeleteAriane, you missed the point about felt pain vs. unfelt nociceptive signals from tissue damage.
DeleteBecause of the HP, we have no idea how or why pain is felt, rather than just tissue damage being detected and signalled. Of course it must have provide and adaptive advantage, but what was it?
Before even reading the rest of the paper, I wanted to comment on the number of weasel words employed in the first few sentences already:
ReplyDelete"“Qualia” are the subjective or phenomenal (conscious) experiences associated with the perception of olfactory, taste, visual, auditory, and somatosensory stimuli. [...] The salient element of a quale is that the experience is conscious, and it is hence dependent on conscious neural processing."
Friday's lecture reinforced that qualia, consicous experience, subjective experience, phenomenal experience, etc., are all just weasel words that should be avoided to prioritize using only 'felt states'/'feelings' and 'sentient states'/'sentience'.
Amélie, a fun way the nonsense covered up by weaseling can easily be exposed by substituting FEEL, FELT, or FEELING for each of the WWs:
Delete"“FEELINGS” are the FELT or FELT (FELT) FEELINGS associated with the perception of olfactory, taste, visual, auditory, and somatosensory stimuli. [...] The salient element of a FEELING is that the FEELING is FELT, and it is hence dependent on FELT neural processing."
As most commentaries on Key’s paper mention, neurobiological findings are still largely insufficient to assert that fish do not feel pain. In the absence of conclusive evidence and certainty about fish’s ability to feel pain, I believe the only fair outcome is to assume that they do indeed feel pain. Key instead argues that this assumption is problematic, as it could cause “legislative restrictions on fish-related activities with potentially serious negative implications for native subsistence fishing [...]”. As a vegan, it’s frustrating to see Key hang onto specific cases of need-based (subsistence) fishing to simultaneously justify alternative desire-based commercial large-scale fishing that could so easily be avoided. It really reminds me of the classic “but if you were stranded on an island?” dilemma that people fixate on rather than considering their everyday decisions to consume animal products, which are far from necessary for their survival. In other words, I think Key fails to acknowledge that native subsistence fishing and other survival-based fishing practices should not serve as a bias to deny fish the ability to feel pain, which would then provide an argument supporting ALL fishing practices. In my opinion, we cannot justify practices that hurt animals by blindly denying their ability to hurt, but rather by discussing specific situations in which the need/pain trade-off may be ‘‘worth it’ (eg subsistence fishing).
ReplyDeleteHey! I agree with your comment that Key's argument on whether fish feel pain is ridiculous. Regardless of the empirical answer, large business industries do not care about whether an animal feel pain, let alone regulations or laws, since they can usually pay off the low fines for breaking them.
DeleteAnd as you said, his example felt like an offhand comment trying to give reasons to justify his already-held beliefs. Additionally, it had nothing to do with whether fish felt pain or not.
However, I did have somewhat of a random question for you (and possibly any other vegans, including Professor Harnad). I will come forth and say that I am not a vegan. My brain craves particular tastes, and so far, the alternatives proposed have never satiated the specific tastes (although alternative meats and products are getting closer to my specific liking). Yes, I know that I have all the rational and moral reasons for not eating any animal products, but for XYZ reasons, I am not able to.
However, I was wondering if, morally speaking, we could eliminate the pain receptors of animals. In this way, animals would AT LEAST not feel any pain throughout their lives. Would it make it more "morally acceptable?" I know that the answer may still be "no," but the way I see it, we would at least make their lives less crappy.
Amélie, you have put your finger on the core ethical issue: hurting feeling organisms without vital (life-saving) necessity.
DeleteAlexei, I won’t preach, because you say, honestly: “I know that I have all the rational and moral reasons for not eating any animal products, but... my brain craves particular tastes.”
All I can tell you (and so can anyone who has given it a long enough try) is that the brain updates your cravings, so that new tastes become at least as satisfying as the previous ones, once you stop eating meat. I can tell you (with a lot of remorse) that I learned this much later than I should have: On my 17th birthday I stopped eating meat, but not eggs and dairy.
"I Am Ashamed to Have Been a Vegetarian for 50 Years"
I got used to not eating meat, but my taste cravings did not change, because, in fact, they were being satisfied by dairy and eggs, which are still animal protein, which I was still eating.
It was only 12 years ago that I became vegan, after a graphic description of the horrors of the dairy and egg industry at a McGill Student Symposium on Animal Law – all of which I had known all along, but had been fending off the cognitive dissonance with the usual rationalizations and sophistry: “Yes, cows are hurt and killed in practice, for dairy, but in principle they need not be, whereas there is no way to get meat, even in principle, without hurting and killing.” In other words, it’s ok to keep doing it in practice because it could be done otherwise in principle.
Well, when I finally stopped eating all animal protein, my tastes changed (within about 8 months, in my case). Through all the years I had been vegetarian, I refrained from eating meat, but its taste and smell did not repel me. Human beings are facultative omnivores. They can subsist as carnivores, or herbivores, or both. And I was both. But when I stopped eating eggs and dairy, my metabolism and brain took the cue (the complete absence of animal protein) and updated to full herbivore mode. Herbivorous food began to taste indescribably better than it had tasted while I was just a vegetarian omnivore. It was as if it had been only black and white before, and now it was in full color. Remember the distal and proximal stimulus in Week 7? And lazy evolution? What your brains make good-tasting to you is what you need out of what you are eating. I did not need that animal protein; and once I stopped eating it, what I needed began to taste better and better. (Because all the nutrients – including proteins – that humans need are available from a completely herbivorous diet.)
So your cravings will take care of themselves, if you give them a chance, by cutting out the metabolic cue of animal protein.)
About the fantasy of genetically engineering animals to be insentient: We may not have solved the HP, and it may not be solvable, but there is no reason to doubt that the capacity to feel evolved because of the adaptive advantages it conferred for survival and reproduction. Trying to engineer them out would be like trying to engineer a zombie. (And it isn’t just pain from tissue-damage – nociception – that is at issue in the suffering we inflict on animals: there is terror, deprivation, and all the other states we call suffering.)
More promising than trying to engineer out sentience from the genome and brain is the ongoing attempt to clone meat from animal cell cultures without hurting or killing animals.
But my question is: Should animals have to keep being slaughtered and killed, to keep satisfying our tastes, until the engineered projects succeed, even though both our needs and our tastes can be satisfied by going vegan now?
Alexei, I get where you're coming from, because I also used to wonder about ways to render animal exploitation and slaughter "humane", as it seemed like such a big part of my life that I couldn't adapt (clothing, food, hygiene products, etc). Unfortunately, these practices are inhumane almost by definition. Trying to remove sentience from animals appears significantly compromised in a practical sense, and arguably even more inhumane in an ethical sense. We've established that we hurt sentient beings and that this is a problem because they can feel pain and suffering (as Prof Harnad mentioned, this pain isn't just physical in the current industry). The solution you're suggesting would be to somehow remove their ability to feel, but aren't we by that same act taking away the essence of their being? Personally, without feeling, I wouldn't consider myself to be me. Now of course I don't know whether this is the case for animals. But I do think that engineering animals to make their exploitation more 'moral' is not really moral in itself, it's just taking the dominance one step further.
DeleteAlso, I wanted to point out something in your response (while trying to not be 'that annoying vegan'): "large business industries do not care about whether an animal feel pain, let alone regulations or laws, since they can usually pay off the low fines for breaking them". It's interesting to notice who we place as active subjects in sentences that deplore the issue of animal exploitation. From my understanding, the meat and dairy industry is largely failing, which is why the government, far from imposing new laws for animal protection, has instated a meat tax (at least in the US, even vegans pay it...). This is just an example to illustrate that the problem is far from a "villain industry VS kind unknowing citizens" situation, still today. If you're interested in this I would really recommend What the Health which is available on Netflix I think.
Amélie, the only living things we can eat that are zombies (I hope!) are plants. Even with an enormous amount of monstrously cruel (and useless) experimentation it would not be possible to genetically engineer a viable (i.e., living) zombie mammal, bird, amphibian, reptile, fish, or invertebrate -- even if here existed a way -- there is none -- around the OMP to guarantee that they were insentient. Turing-testing is about passing the test, not failing it. The TT could not tell you a human body was a zombie, let alone an amphioxus body!
DeleteAnd if there were a way to turn a sentient animal into a zombie (instead of trying to genetically engineer one) it is not that you would be "taking away the essence of their being": you would be killing them: there would be no "them" there.
But the point is that none of that is necessary. We need to eat; but we don't need to eat sentient beings.
Amelie, along with majority of commentaries, presented the insufficiency and inconclusiveness of the evidence that was used to support the claim of insentience to fish. The insufficiency for definitive proof was acknowledged by Key, but his argument was put forth nevertheless because he saw the assumption of fish being sentient as “problematic”.
DeleteI think the problem is that NO boundary exists from where we source our food; humans eat EVERYTHING. The boundary suggested by Harnad is between plants and animals, the former being the one inbounds. Inbounds thus contains “zombies”; In other words- living organisms without the capacity to feel.
This is where I think an issue presents itself. The boundary is a suggested baseline from which emerging research can push inbounds members to out-of-bounds or vice versa. Except there is a barrier that is inherent with the question of sentience/feeling called the other-minds problem, which restricts mobility between bounds. Thus, the problem is if one draws a line or boundary, being able to readjust the line lies on the other side of the OMP. Although a line is drawn for Harnad, it is not where others suggest. A more restrictive boundary can be supported by Reber et al.’s 2020 article “all living organisms are sentient”. So where do we begin with deeming species inbounds or out? How do we allow the line to be more adaptable?
Sepand, wait for the next target article in Animal Sentience, which will be about plant sentience.
DeleteAnybody can claim that fish cannot feel and that plants can. The rest is a matter of evidence and expert evaluation of it.
Reading all your comments made me realize a lot of things, from Alexei’s sayings about his brain’s craving to the adaptive capacity of the brain to create new craving to replace old ones in Harnad’s comment. I think that I do agree with what Amelie said about the fact that the driving motivation for Key’s theory that fish don’t feel pain should not be something like “assuming that fish do feel pain would have a bad impact on human’s food supply, fishing, etc.” In fact, it reminds me of a conversation I had a with a family member who told me that some experts on the human body like dentists or even gastroenterologists suggests that human organs are not meant to chew and process meat, or even animal product. A lot of people stop drinking cow’s milk because it is hard to digest. I can also see the cognitive dissonance that Alexei is talking about because I can feel it myself. Even though I try to buy vegan products as much as possible, I sometimes eat meat outside my home and I know that there is some cruelty behind it. That discussion makes me think that I should try harder. In the end, we can never know what a fish is feeling unless we become the fish ourselves, which is impossible.
DeleteCharlene, Key's "bad impact" is not an impact on human and survival and health. It is an impact on the economics of the meat, fish and dairy industry. A transition is possible (and may already be underway), but the industry will try to delay it as long as possible (by means such as ag-gag, and misinformation, intended to resolve the public's cognitive dissonance in favor if the status quo).
DeleteThe points raised in the Wiebers & Feigin target article -- about the human health dangers from the meat, dairy and egg industry (pandemics, antibiotic resistance, environmental degradation, climate change, etc.) -- are real and huge, but [“Stevan Says”] the direct harm to human health from eating meat, fish and dairy may be exaggerated by animal activists (with good intentions but also some wishful thinking). It’ definitely yet another reason for going vegan, but a very minor one, compared to W & F’s factors. -- And even those are minor compared to the unspeakable agony the industry causes to feeling creatures every minute of every day, the world over.
But the metabolic transition to herbivore mode is actually much easier if we don’t do it gradually but all at once. The complete absence of animal protein is the cue to the metabolic system and the brain to switch. (I know that, from having been a vegetarian for almost 50 years, still in carnivorous mode all along, because I kept eating dairy and eggs. For me the taste switch was only flipped 12 years ago.)
Key's argument implicitly assumes that feelings (in this case, pain) is something that occurs at the level of T4. He argues that feeling pain is correlated with certain brain structures in humans, and that, if fish do not have those brain structures, they therefore lack the capacity to feel. By the same argument, we would have to say that a T3 robot behaving indistinguishably from a human in every way does not feel pain, IF its "brain" is wired in a different way than ours. I don't know if that's a reasonable thing to conclude.
ReplyDeleteKey does (very briefly) address the possibility that fishes' brains can have a different wiring and still feel pain (see page 14). But he begs the question by concluding that, since their brains have mostly feedforward pathways, they therefore cannot feel pain (this is just a reiteration of the conclusion: if fishes' brains are wired differently than ours, they therefore cannot feel pain).
Gabriel, one of the points that comes out repeatedly in the published commentaries on Key is that brain evolution has often found more than one way to get the same DOing done in different species by different means. This is a form of underdetermination a little reminiscent of the “weak equivalence” that first came up in the discussion of computation and computationalism. This weak equivalence applies also to physiological mechanisms.
DeleteIn this paper, Key matter-of-factly states evidence from neuroscience research to advance his claim, without acknowledging that we still know very little about how human pain pathways and how feelings of pain arise (as Kimberley mentions above). I also find that Key’s assertion is founded on an incorrect assumption that to feel pain, the causal mechanism must be exactly the same; the underlying neural pathways and structures must be similar. In past biology classes I’ve taken, his belief is rendered untrue through the existence of analogous structures in evolution (aka structures anatomically different with different origins, but produce same functions: butterfly and bird wings, for example). This example provides evidence on how T4 may not be the ideal state for reverse-engineering behavioral capacities.
ReplyDeleteDarcy, spot-on.
Delete"Interestingly, after such a stab wound injury, fish continue to exhibit qualitatively normal behaviours; there is no observable suppression of their feeding, swimming and mating behaviours (Schmidt et al., 2014),
ReplyDeletesuggesting that they are not experiencing post-craniotomy pain."
It's almost as if fish still needed to survive even after a craniotomy.
Although I believe that this article was written in good faith and tried to bring empirical evidence to the table, it ended with a wrongful conclusion, especially considering the quote mentioned earlier. Just because we do not understand how fish experience pain does not mean that they do not experience it.
Alexei, there were many weaknesses in Key's paper, pointed out by the published commentaries, but the biggest one was that of "multiple realizability" or "weak equivalence." Can you explain that more concretely?
DeleteMathilda, and, actually, it's not even that different (from birds) in fish; so the human comparison is a red herring...
DeleteKey makes his argument by listing the structures that are necessary for feeling pain in the human brain, and claiming that, since the structures are different in the fish brain, fish must not feel pain. I (along with the threads above and the commentaries that responded to Key) think Key’s argument is very flawed. A consensus among the comments I read is that Key’s argument using neurobiological findings is insufficient for his conclusion. Key’s conclusion that fish do not feel pain is underdetermined by setting mammalian neurostructures as the standard for the capacity to feel pain. It is not sufficient to conclude that human brain structures are the only explanation of pain. As Broom states: “Emotions, feelings and learning from these are controlled in the fish brain in areas anatomically different but functionally very similar to those in mammals.” In other words, the same function (e.g., feeling pain) can be derived from different causal mechanisms. In thinking that only mammalian brain structures can produce the capacity for pain, Key shows that his category for what can produce pain vs what cannot, needs to be broadened (and hopefully the many commentaries responding to his article helped to update Key’s category via verbal instruction).
ReplyDeleteJosie, apt synthesis.
DeleteJosie, all true. What to do?
ReplyDeleteThe question of how and why any organism feels pain is another version of the "hard problem" (how and why they feel anything). "Nociceptive" behaviors and mechanisms (to detect, escape and avoid body damage) are easily explained by evolution. But the fact that body damage is felt as pain is not (explained in previous skys).
ReplyDeleteThe hard problem has no bearing at all on the fact that (some) organisms feel pain. It also doesn’t bear on what needs to be done to prevent people from inflicting it. But the latter seems more of an ethical problem than a cognitive science question.
Melis, the HP of explaining how and why organisms feel does not bear on anything in cogsci causally; in fact, that's why the HP is hard.
DeleteThere is a tendency, at the end of this course, to feel that since feelings don’t look like they’re going to be explainable by cogsci, feelings don’t matter.
Cogsci is not ethics; and ethics is not cogsci. This week’s readings were added to show that feelings do matter -- in fact they are the only thing that really matters, whether or not they turn out to be causally explainable by cogsci.
By virtue of the other minds problem, we can’t be sure that others feel, let alone feel pain. Key applies a biased framework in which he identifies structures he deems necessary for feeling pain, and claims that because they’re different in the fish brain, fish must not feel pain. Key’s claim that the mere presence or absence of certain brain areas or mechanisms is enough to assert feeling or non-feeling is too restrictive and violates the other minds problem.
ReplyDeleteAgreed! Anil Seth's commentary piece makes similar points.
DeleteI think the critical point is that just because fish may not experience the thing we identify as pain, it doesn't mean they don't experience other things which are, as Key says, noxious.
Nor should his analysis lead us to value judgements on how we should treat fish; we wouldn't apply this logic to humans who may lack the capacity for pain (which is a real disorder, called CIP), so I see no reason that it should apply to fish.
Lastly, I agree that the framework it totally biased and absurd. It is a pretty crazy reach to claim that we know how our sensations arise, given that Key presumably knows all that we have learned in this class on the hard problem, etc...
Jacob, do Key’s three responses sound as if he “knows all that we have learned in this class on the hard problem, etc.”?
Delete“The idea that it is more benevolent to assume that fish feel pain, rather than not feel pain, has emerged as one position of compromise in the debate on fish consciousness. However, accepting such an assumption at “face value” in biology can lead to devastating consequences.” (p.2)
ReplyDeleteI don’t understand the analogy here to the (MMR) vaccination in association to autism, or at least it’s not relevant. What are the devastating consequences of accepting fish feel pain? Some would still eat fish, as there are communities in which subsistence fishing is necessary, and in which tradition involves a lot of respect for the animal. However, fewer people would probably eat animal protein, and for good reason, if it were true fish felt pain. Recognizing animal sentience is the minimum we can do in acknowledging the horrors we inflict upon non-human species. Reading this article led me to think about the way we let our feelings control our convictions. I believe that many wouldn’t dare inflict pain on dogs or cats because we are biased by their “cuteness.” Does that mean, then, that society believes that some animals feel, and others do not? Or do we simply study rodents and fish because they are easily to breed and manipulate?
“An alternative hypothesis as to why fish do not need the architecture of a human cortex to feel pain is because fish do not feel 'human pain,' but instead they feel 'fish pain.'" (p.14)
This is also an interesting point since we live in such a human centric society that believes there has to be homologous feelings and doings in between species, when it is very likely that there is just another way for animals to feel pain that doesn’t necessarily translate to our way of feeling pain. This is the problem with the behavioral assays we perform in labs, some of them only demonstrate reflexive rather can deliberate, felt states.
A question for Dr. Harnad and for everyone–is there really any ethical and efficient alternative to animal testing in the world of science and medicine?
Tess, subsistence cultures for whom eating fish is a matter of life or death have as much right to eat fish as fish have to eat fish, or as we have to eat plants.
DeleteBut I wonder what it means, and means to the fish, to be slaughtered with "a lot of respect." Some seem to feel that even after eating fish is no longer a vital necessity, the cultural tradition justifies continuing to eating the fish. The Yulin festival seems to be a cultural tradition in which “many people… dare inflict pain on dogs or cats,” not at all “biased by their ‘cuteness’”. Nor are they biased by it on the rest of the days of the year. Human habits and traditions tend to subsist like that…
The question is not whether “fish pain” feels like “human pain” but whether it hurts.
There is, today, no “ethical and efficient alternative to animal testing in the world of science and medicine” to save lives.
But, as in every field, a lot of animal research is not done to save lives, but to follow bandwagons, get grants, get published, get tenure, and advance careers. And animals are treated as expendable lab supplies – though rarely as psychopathically as in factory farming.
Hi Tess, I agree that the MMR vaccination analogy is ill-fitting. Last semester, I wrote a paper on whether the link between the MMR and autism weaponized neuroableism. It was interesting to delve into this topic because, as you rightly say, opting your child out of the MMR because of its counterfactual link to autism has vastly different consequences than believing that fish feel pain because we have insufficient evidence to prove otherwise. While the former precautionary choice results in a collective vulnerability to measles, mumps, and rubella due to a lack of herd immunity, the latter may result in disruptive legislative and ideological change with no direct vital consequences. I concede that these legislative changes could have significant short-term economic and food-security implications, but they could also have HUGE long-term benefits for humans and fish alike (e.g., the regeneration of oceanic ecosystems, including oxygen-producing plankton, and the banning of non-subsistence, large-scale fish farming, which breeds parasites harmful to marine ecosystems and consumers of the affected aquatic life).
DeleteI unfortunately don't have an answer to your question but, after reading 11c, I imagine that a viable alternative in the field of cognitive science is the computational modelling that Professor Harnad makes reference to in the 11c interview.
Polly, what about the criterion of vital necessity?
DeleteEven in the abstract Key comments that “the thesis proposed here is based on the bioengineering principle that structure determines function.” This may be the case for some structures in the body but is extremely hard to determine for the brain areas and functions in particular in humans and especially in other organisms.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore as has been pointed out Key focuses solely on strong equivalence (the input, output, algorithm, and procedures need to be exactly the same for equivalence). I believe the only real conclusion that can be drawn from the neurobiological research that was done is that fish cannot feel pain in the way that humans do (though how we do exactly is still a question anyways), this does in no way rule out the possibility that they may feel pain through a different mechanism (weak equivalence) (in the same way that bats can “see,” locate their surroundings, through echolocation).
The consequences of Key’s misleading conclusion are disastrous if he is wrong, therefore I lean to the side of caution: the conclusions are far worse if Key is wrong than if he is right.
It's nice to hear even a T3 robot thinking so humanely; they must have built in mirror-neuron function...
DeleteThe main argument in Key’s text is that fish cannot feel and experience pain. Indeed, the core part of the text delves into many technical details relating to different neuroscience terms, showcasing how fish have a different brain structure than humans. In other words, he believes that for fish to feel pain, it has to be in the same manner as humans, through the same neurological pathways. However, this is incorrect because we are uncertain of the causal mechanisms behind pain in the human brain. As we have seen before with Fodor (Week 4), knowing where the neurological signal comes from in the brain does not mean we understand the intricacies behind the pain. In addition, as mentioned on the board, there does not need to be a strong equivalence between pain in the human brain and the animal brain, as there exist analogous structures in evolution. Fish might still feel pain but differently than human beings.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, I think an interesting aspect of Key’s text is the following: “The proposition is that it is impossible to ever know what a fish feels, and as a consequence fish should be given the “benefit of the doubt” and unconditionally bestowed with the ability to feel pain.”. Indeed, knowing the horrors behind animal experimentation, I think this is an important route to follow for the upcoming years.
I don’t know if it is genuinely possible to experiment, considering the potential pain of animals, but it should not be disregarded nonetheless.
Étienne, in the real Darwinian world, life-and-death conflicts of interest are a tragic and inescapable reality. Obligate carnivores must hunt and kill to survive. Herbivore prey must fight their predators to protect themselves and their offspring. Siblings must sometimes compete to survive. Biomedical research to try to save human life at the cost of animal life falls into this same tragic fact of life itself.
DeleteBut read the other replies about careerism (and incompetence) in all fields. And remember that while the monster of factory farming is in the room, and most people are still choosing to feed themselves from it, instead of the humane options, we cannot even gauge the boundary between NORTH and SOUTH (q.v.) in biomedical research on animals, and its potential to save (human) lives. A vegan planet may feel differently about it.
(And then there’s also the ongoing animal-free biomedical research aimed at feeding– perhaps even curing -- the planet in alternative ways.)
The article summarizes the science behind the neuroanatomy of fish as proof that they do not feel pain. Though fish seem to withdraw from painful stimuli (nocifensive behaviours), Key suggests that since fish do not possess the neuro anatomical features and organizational principles required to feel pain (that we as humans possess). I feel that I would need to be better versed in neurobiology and neuroscience to truly debunk his claims. Nevertheless, I do feel that it is not sufficient to assume that fish do not feel pain because they do not harbour the same neurology as us pain-feeling animals. And still, I do agree that it is “better safe than sorry” to assume that they do feel pain to avoid inflicting pain on conscious beings. I was unaware that people believed that fish do not feel pain. Perhaps this is why they are the most abused animal in Canada for agricultural purposes.
ReplyDeleteLaura, as you see in the commentaries co-published with Key's target article, those who are "better versed in neurobiology and neuroscience" do "debunk his claims."
DeleteJust as the OMP is the victims' problem (the fish), not the theorizing fisher's problem, so “better safe than sorry” pertains to the fish's safety and sorrow, and not the fisher's or the fish-eater's, or the fish researchers'.
Fish are the most abused animal everywhere. But no species wants to win that competition.
Key states that fish do not feel pain because they "lack the necessary neuroanatomical structures or neural circuits to perform neural processing necessary for feeling pain”. From what I have understood from the reading and skywritings above, I would argue the following. One, the other minds problem continues to prevent us from empirically test whether fish feels pain. Secondly, it is a very anthropocentric view to examine how other species’ feel by solely using human anatomy as a reference. Finally, other functions of an organism might correlated with (and not caused by) different neural mechanisms than that of a human's.
ReplyDeleteFrom an evolutionary stand point, the human evolved ability to perceive pain is one mechanism that plays a key role in our survival. Pain is an important indicator of body function, and provides one with feedback of where one is hurt. However, due to the variability in the environment in which organisms evolve, this ability may exhibited differently. Ultimately, although the assumption that the nervous system generates the feeling of pain, and that the ability feel pain evolved as a survival trait, we are still left with the hard problem of how and why we feel pain.
Sara, if you could show how and why -- if "pain is an important indicator of body function, and provides one with feedback of where one is hurt," the feedback signal must be felt, by a feeler, rather than just transmitted, like all the other unfelt physiological and biochemical signals being exchanged within the brain and between the brain and the rest of the body -- you would be the immediate winner of the HP sweepstakes!
DeleteIn this paper, Key first argued 1) the cortex is responsible for feeling in humans, 2) there are four special neuroanatomical features in the cortex that enable the cortex to perform signal amplification and global integration that give rise to conscious processing. 3) fish do have these structural features. Conclusion, fish do not feel pain. Initially I have found key's paper very convincing, and it was a relief that after reading some replies, finding out Key's argument has some flaws and the conclusion is not correct to assume. In particular, the main criticism is that the evidence for which structure is responsible for feeling is incomplete. In other words, we still don’t know the mechanism of feeling. Nevertheless, Key's paper is important in the sense that if we were to find the causal explanation for feeling, finding correlations might be the best we can do. At least Key is trying to answer the question of whether fish feels, by solving the hard problem, a causal explanation for feeling.
ReplyDeleteCynthia, please read the other commentaries and replies here, and also the published commentaries on Key. You will find the two main flaws in Key's claim that fish don't feel pain. One is that evolution has more than one way to produce capacities. There are many examples. In the case of pain there is no reason it has to be the way the human brain does it.
DeleteThe other flaw is that unless Key wants to claim that birds don't feel pain either, then evolution seems to have found another way with birds -- and a way much more like the fish way than the human way.
Apart from that, Key is not claiming that fish don't feel; only that they don't feel pain That's odd, because if there is one feeling whose causal function most people think is obvious (even though, on close inspection, the obviousness vanishes and we are face to face with the HP), it's pain.
I came into reading the article quite skeptical. Over the course of reading it, as he brought out various pieces of (in hindsight, some what haphazard and cherry-picked) neurophysiological evidence I admit he began to sway me into uncertainty some amount, though several of his points including the analogy to autism/the MMR vaccine definitely felt off. After reflecting after reading the article, though, I came to realize that the subject at issue here is essentially the hard problem, and the hard problem won't be solved by looking at a few studies and making a conclusion based on the presence or absence of both feedforward and feedback neural connections. Looking at Braithwaite & Droge (2016)'s commentary, indeed one of their critiques is that any work on this topic should situate itself within a framework of consciousness, which Key does not do.
ReplyDeleteSee the reply to Cynthia above.
DeleteKey cited evidence from neuroscience research to support his argument that fish do not feel pain. However, lacking the biological structures that are said to produce pain doesn't mean fish don't feel pain or any feelings, but that they don't have that exact biological structures humans do. It surprises me how Key uses different examples inconsistently to support his claim. For example, he cites a study which observed that after craniotomy, fish behave normally in essential life-dependent behaviours such as feeding, swimming, and matin. Key suggests that since fish don't perform differently after craniotomy as humans do, they must not feel anything, including pain. He then refutes the study concluding "direct electrical stimulation of the forebrains of fish can elicit defensive escape behaviours" by remarking that it doesn't warrant that fish can feel pain or anxiety.
ReplyDeleteJenny, yes, a lot of cognitive dissonance is evident in Key's article. I doubt that it's because in league with the fishing industry. My guess it's something that happens a lot in science, in which someone comes up with a theory, and then keeps defending it with more and more far-fetched reasoning. Usually the only victim of this is the truth, and only in that it is delayed. But for the fish, the present and future victims, the delay is fatal.
DeleteContrary to many in this class I have not taken a class about pain and neither have I read different literature about this subject. For that reason my knowledge about the specific brain structures related to human pain is quite scarce. Brian Key wrote this extensive article as an attempt to prove that fish does not feel pain based solely on the propositions that this animal does not have the necessary biological structures to feel such feelings. However, despite his logical reasoning being sound, I think he makes a mistake when assuming that his most vital proposition is true. I think Key wrongly assumes in his article that things such as ‘feeling pain’ can be easily mapped to a brain region. And due to that (wrong) assumption, he gets to what I think is his mistaken conclusion.
ReplyDeleteVitoria, there is a bit more to it than that.
DeleteKarina, good points.
ReplyDeleteAsk not whether "fish pain" is like "human pain" but whether it hurts. There seems to be something universal to suffering; not its intensity but what philosophers have come to call its "negative valence." But if you thought the OMP was hard, try measuring and comparing "intensity of negative valence." The utilitarians seem to think it can be done, but even human pain specialists have trouble comparing it across people. Trying to measure it across species seems to be pushing OM-reading beyond all limits (and that’s without trying to integrate positive and negative valence trade-offs – something only feelers themselves can do, cartesianly, for their own feelings, and only while they’re ongoing).
Re-posting Karina's comment, which got deleted:
DeleteIn this article, Key goes on to argue that fish (and other invertebrates) do not feel pain. He believes the principal structural features that are used to detect pain in humans should be used as biomarkers to see if pain is detectable in other species (such as fish). Key explores the where, what, and why of pain, and comes to the conclusion that fish cannot feel pain due to their lacking of neural architecture meant for pain sensation. The reasonings made in this paper are extremely flawed in my opinion (and as I can see above, the opinion of others in the class as well), due to our limited knowledge of pain-related mechanisms. We have not yet solved the easy problem (even if we were to solely reverse-engineer the mechanisms allowing us to feel pain), so assuming that our (limited) knowledge of the circuitry must be the same in all species is flawed, as there can be other underlying neural correlates to pain that we are currently unaware of, or evolutionary changes that cause other species to have different mechanisms for pain than humans. I want to agree with the point Kayla made above, which is that fish might not feel pain in the same way we do, but would like to further ask if all of our experiences of pain are the same? We all react slightly differently to the same stimuli, so I’m not sure if we can assume anyone truly shares our individual experience with it, despite making the same categorization for what is deemed “painful”.
Teegan, Ask not whether "fish pain" is like "human pain" but whether it hurts.
ReplyDeleteKey presents neurophysiological and behavioural evidence to conclude that fish do not feel pain. However, this conclusion seems inaccurate because, as many others in the class have stated, Key does not explore convergent evolution (i.e., the possibility that fish evolved nociceptive hardware responsible for feeling pain differently than humans), nor does he acknowledge the hard problem [i.e., we cannot (yet) explain how/why humans feel (pain), so how can we do so for fish?]. A commentary on Key's paper that caught my eye is "Robot fish do not need sentience", which concludes that biomimetic robot fish do not explain the causal role of sentience (Chella 2016). Both Key and Chella's articles have reminded me just how problematic sensational headlines can be. Although neither article definitely concludes that fish cannot feel, their titles seem to suggest otherwise.
ReplyDeletePlease see the other comments and replies.
DeleteI went into the reading a little skeptical as the title is a bit surprising. After reading the article, I am not convinced by Key’s argument. He presents that broad mapping of homologous region of the brain can explain underlying mechanisms such as vision or olfaction amongst vertebrates. Applying this principle to pain, he argues that since fish don’t have certain brain structures responsible for pain in humans and don’t demonstrate the same reflexes when exposed to noxious stimuli, we can infer that they do not feel pain. His argument is based on indirect approach to this problem. However, I feel like Key fails to address that pain is highly adaptable and that we know very little about the human’s causal mechanisms of pain. However, nothing states that the structures have to be in any way similar in order to feel pain. Key doesn’t discuss that part. Also, it seems as if Key violates the other minds problem. Indeed, this problem revolves around the fact that we can’t be sure what others feel and it also applies to pain. Even passing beyond this, the presence or absence of certain brain regions isn’t a sufficient argument to prove anything about feeling.
ReplyDeleteInes, good summary but see the other comments and replies. Why is it a "violation" of the OMP to infer, from evidence, that a fish does not feel pain? Is it a violation of OMP to infer, from evidence, that a fish does feel pain?
DeleteScience is not about certainty, just evidence-based probability. Key's reasoning may be faulty here. And he may be violating the Precautionary Principle here. But not the OMP.
See the reply to Cynthia above. Key is talking about correlations (Fodor) and not causal mechanisms. And he is only talking about feeling pain in particular, not about to feeling in general.
ReplyDeleteThis paper takes a syllogistic approach to determining whether or not fish feel pain. Following discussing the neurobiology of pain, a criteria was established for the neurobiological requirements for a vertebrate to experience pain. This was then used to evaluate whether or not fish feel pain to conclude that they do not
ReplyDeleteThis paper was a good reminder to avoid confusion of behavioural correlates with proof of existence and the importance of taking information at face value.
However, Key violates the violates the other minds problem. Pain is a feeling, it 'feels like something' to be in pain. As such, it belongs to the realm of conscious experience. Just like we are unable to know whether or not those around us are conscious, we also cannot know whether they feel pain.
Emma, see reply to Ines, above.
DeleteFair enough!
ReplyDeleteI would say that personally I think Key has gotten the foundational base for the whole argument wrong. No matter how he says argues for fish lack the structure to feel pain, it is simply absurd for me to hear that one can delineate the cerebral structure and mechanisms for pain. I have not taken the class in pain as some of my fellow classmates, but in some of my other classes that briefly touched on pain, pain can be beneficial/pleasurable to us as well as harmful. So it is not about specific neurocircuitry/structure/biomarkers generates pain, I think this is more about the OMP. Key, or anyone has no clue about whether fish can feel the pain, or they feel anything at all, because they are not and cannot be them. I read some commentaries on Key and found them to be very interesting.
ReplyDeleteMonica, please see the reply to Ines above (and other replies in this thread).
DeleteConcluding that fish "do not feel pain" for their lack of mammalian pain neural circuitry is a long shot, if not outright erroneous. Key's shaky conclusion can be criticized for several reasons. First, Key assumes that possessing a mammalian neural circuitry necessitates painful feelings. The causal mechanisms of pain perception (a doing capacity) is still an active field of research. After reading Key's work and his conclusion, it is as if he is drawing his conclusion already with a solution to the EP in mind. Though he did not explicitly state that particular neural networks are the "causes" of pain perception and feeling (due to their complex interactions), the fact that he concludes that fish do not feel pain for their lack of such networks suggests that he does, indeed, believe that they cause the feeling of pain. In other words, not only has Key not offered any sensible solution to the EP (capacity of nociperception), but he has also gone ahead and drawn his conclusion that fish "do not feel" pain without addressing the HP and OMP, which are intricately linked to the current subject matter. I agree that Key's conclusion can be dangerous if wrong. However, what is even more dangerous is his reasoning that brought him to his conclusion.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I understand from the readings and your previous comments, solving the EP won't necessarily bring us any closer to solving the HP because HP is causally superfluous. Again, take nociception as an example; as a doing capacity, even if we map out all causal mechanisms involved in nociception (i.e., the causes of involuntary reflexes, behavioural withdrawal), there will be causal room left to explain pain perception's (feeling) role. In other words, even if we could reverse-engineer nociperception, its causal explanation does not explain pain perception. In nociperception, the doing capacities (involuntary reflexes, behavioural withdrawal) could be explained by a set of causal mechanisms. However, once the doing capacity (nociperception) is causally explained, there would be no room for the causal mechanism of feeling (pain perception); what needs to be done for nociperception has already been done and executed, and therefore the causal role of feeling is superfluous.
Delete*there will be no causal room left..
DeleteYucen, good reply.
Delete"Ask not whether "fish pain" is like "human pain" but whether it hurts."
ReplyDeleteI can understand why we tend to relate fish pain to human pain because the latter is something of which we are cartesian certain. Being hurt is a state of feeling (being aware of the pain). The point is not finding fish pain's relevance in human pain (although it helps) but investigating whether fish feels anything at all. Personally, I find it much easier to understand as I swap out all the sensory-related states with Professor Harnad's vocabulary (feel/felt/feeling). Instead of "Ask not whether "fish pain" is like "human pain" but whether it hurts," it reads: Ask not whether "fish feeling" is like "human feeling" but whether it feels. As much as Key believes that fish do not feel pain, the OMP, EP and HP, which he failed to address in his paper, undermine the legitimacy of his conclusion.
Key makes multiple mistakes in his argument that fish do not feel pain. First, his evidence that the human feeling of pain arises due to the cortical system that Key describes is not conclusive. He acknowledges that opposition exists to some of the evidence he presents about specific brain areas involved in pain perception and does not provide sufficient evidence that the system must function in the way that he claims for people to be able to feel pain. Second, he argues that because fish cannot feel the pain that humans feel in the way that humans feel it, they cannot feel something comparable to pain. This is a bad argument because even though function follows from form, there are still many structures that can achieve the same or similar purposes. As such, since we are not certain that fish do not feel pain, we must assume that they do and treat them as such.
ReplyDeleteElena, good summary, but how does "certainty" come into it? Isn't this just cogsci, not maths? Only the feeler can be certain.
DeleteI think that this is really when the other minds problem comes into the equation here, since there is truly no way for one to be certain about what something or someone else feels, that only they can be certain of what they are feeling. Just because we are able to come up with some physiological and behavioural evidence that fish do not feel pain does not mean that this evidence is sufficient, in fact the only real way to ascertain this information would be to get the fish to self-report if it is feeling pain. Unfortunately, we aren’t technologically advanced enough yet for this to be a reality.
DeleteDr. Harnad, I was merely trying to express the difference between having evidence suggesting that fish do not feel pain in the same way as humans and having evidence that it is certain that fish do not feel pain. Key cannot provide evidence that would allow us to deductively argue that fish do not feel pain, so we should always exercise the precautionary principle.
DeleteElena, fair enough. Certainty is irrelevant (even human feelers could be lying (except me!).
DeleteBut ordinary evidence that fish feel exists aplenty. Having a cortex like a mammal's would have been even more (ordinary) evidence, but birds don't have a mammalian cortex either either, so...
Certainty about INsentience (zombihood) is just as impossible as certainty about sentience -- and that can only be positive evidence, like "Laylek," and only for me.
(Why can there only be positive cartesian evidence for feeling, but not negative?)
Yucen, good point. But cognitive dissonance will inspire (and has inspired) the retort that "Okay, they do feel, but maybe they don't have 'negatively valenced' feelings; only neutral and positive ones. Maybe only humans can suffer..."
ReplyDeleteThe relevance of OMP and EP to this question is clear. But what is the relevance of HP?
Nadila, whether fishes (or any organisms) feel pain is not HP but the OMP. And according to Turing, the EP and the TT are as close as cogsci can get to solving the OMP. What’s the difference between the HP and the OMP. And remember that neither calls for cartesian certainty.
ReplyDeleteI was familiar with the classic “fish don’t experience pain” idea before reading this article, mostly because I found it fascinating that an organism seemingly as complex as a fish did not feel pain. However, I had only ever really read or thought about it from a neurobiological and behavioural standpoint, not from the perspective of Turing and Searle. I do agree with the sentiment that Key’s points, while reasonable, do not address the notion that pain is a subjective experience that in humans, can be confirmed through self-report. Although there are physiological and behavioural signs of pain, there is no clear way to get inside the fish’s head and determine if it truly does or does not experience pain; this is the other minds problem.
ReplyDeleteBrandon, it's not just fish whose "head" (as opposed to just their brain) you cannot get into. The same is true of dogs, cats, monkeys and (yes) talking humans. But once you set aside cartesian certainty for all of them, you're left with T-testing (i.e., T3/T4 doings) with all of them, (Explain...)
DeleteThe only way to test what's in someone else's head is indirectly (because of the other minds problem). The best indirect test, as Turing showed us, is as complete a test of 'doing' capacity as we can devise. (Turing had initially limited this to verbal capacity, perhaps because it seemed to best reflect cognitive capacity, but much of our cognitive capacities are beyond testing the written word (e.g. motor capacities)). For fish, as well as any other animal, the same applies: the best test for feeling is a test about doing. The best we can do for other animals is to understand how their doing capacities arise, and ultimately such a test faces the same limitations as it does with people (for one, we won't be able to assert that fish do not feel as Key does).
DeleteKey's argument is, indeed, astounding. Moreover, the fact that this was released in 2016, when scientific knowledge is more advanced to refute the notion that fish do not feel pain thoroughly, is very unexpected and makes his intention in releasing such a papern very questionable.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, I find it quite interesting that Key works with “understanding the principles of stem cell biology, differentiation, axon guidance, plasticity, regeneration and development of the brain.” In this respect, it astounds me that he would not have come to the realization that there are cases in the world where people do not feel pain, or if not, then to at least think critically about the possibility of the existence of these cases.
For instance, Congenital insensitivity to pain and anhydrosis (CIPA), as defined by Khadije Daneshjou et al. “extremely dangerous condition in which CIPA cannot feel as a result of pain-sensing nerves in these patients not properly connected in parts of the brain that receive the pain messages.” In the case of CIPA, they still have the same structures as humans who can feel, but they are not functioning properly. Thus, This alone can refute his claim that because fish do not have the same structures as humans, they cannot have feelings.
Altogether,It astounds me that someone who studies such topics can still believe that fish do not feel with such weak arguments. Therefore, I agree that it appears to be an attempt to feel less guilty about how humans will treat such animals.
Maira, of course Key knows about CIPA, etc. He would reply that humans have the machinery, but in CIPA it's malfunctioning. Fish don't have the (human) machinery. Please read the other replies to see what's wrong with that response.
DeleteIt's always interesting to hear from people who aren't solely interested in cognitive science. In fact, prior to this class, I was one of these people. Before taking this course, I would not have given much thought to certain topics covered in this course, such as the other person's problems. In this respect, maybe it's not my place to speculate, but Key is clearly not interested in cognitive science. This is because, while the other-minds problem was mentioned at the start, I believe that IF he was as interested in cognitive science or at least the domain of such; he could have further mentioned the other-minds problem as a potential caveat to truly understanding whether animals, fishes, and so on truly feel. Rather, he doesn't, which makes a lot of his arguments feel untrustworthy and inconsistent to me, as if he didn't bother to do "serious research" before releasing this publication.
ReplyDeleteOn that note, it is quite interesting to see how the minds of cognitive scientists differ from those who do not truly study or consider aspects of this field; in this case, the inclusion of other minds' problem, ideas of consciousness, and so on. Notably, this is coming from my perspective as someone who began this class with little understanding of what cogsci is truly all about, but was eventually able to develop critical thinking about the integrations of all the fields that participate in it.
Maira, Key knows about the OMP too. That's not the problem. He is just insisting (obstinately) on a mammal-centered anatomical correlate that is merely one of many ways to produce the same behavioral and cognitive capacities. Please read the other Replies in this thread.
DeleteSophearah, what matters is not whether their feelings are "valid" but whether they hurt.
ReplyDeleteMaira, the harmful consequences for humans of an impairment in their capacity to feel pain is unfortunately not evidence that fish can feel pain: Why not?
ReplyDeleteI, like those above, am baffled at Key’s assertion that there are dire consequences to assuming that fish feel pain. It seems to me that the only consequence of this assumption is the possible moral quandary of the methods of fish farming and fish consumption that continue to be practiced if they do, in fact, feel pain. In terms of both ethics and the precedent of the OMP in cogsci, it seems more reasonable to me to presume that fish do hurt (even if that hurt is not the same as human hurt).
ReplyDeleteKey compares the assumption of pain in fish to that of the false link between the MMR vaccine and autism, when I’d say it is more comparable to the presumption that fish do not feel pain. By this I only mean that it seems more like a free pass to condone unethical treatment of fish, like the article on autism condoned parents’ decisions not to give their children the MMR vaccine. I don’t want to make assumptions, but to me it reads more like an easy explanation in support of a political ideology than anything else.
I agree with your reasoning on what must be motivating Key's argument here. I really appreciated the "Why babies do not feel..." response to his paper. A few of the commentaries get very scientific in their explanations but I feel that this perfectly embodies what we discuss in class in saying that "it is a mistake to expect
Deletethat pinpointing particular locations in the brain … will explain why their activity does or
does not contribute to conscious experience." I think raising the questions of babies helps other put things into perspective when it should be enough to understand that pain is pain regardless of whether it is human/something of the same physical make up.
Good points from both of you.
DeleteI was just curious when Key stated “Since pain is the conscious (felt) neural processing of noxious stimuli, we should, in the first instance, be asking what the defining properties of conscious processing in the human cortex are. Conscious processing is dependent on at least two non-mutually exclusive processes: signal amplification and global integration across the surface of the cerebral cortex (Dehaene et al., 2014; Pritchett et al., 2015).”
ReplyDeleteIn this regard, how does this fit into an evolutionary lens when we consider how people handle pain differently? For example, we often speak of high pain tolerances and low pain tolerances. Hence, how do the conscious processes of different pain thresholds actually work? In earlier parts of the course, we discussed evolution’s role in explaining the why, so then how can we explain the different pain tolerances? Of course, gender, social environments, and so on all play a role in determining differences in pain tolerance, but it's still an intriguing idea that I'd like to learn more about - Especially with the idea that "fishes do not have the same type of pain," which in this case, the same can be said about humans, where some humans do not feel the same amount of pain as others.
Maira, the point here is not about pain tolerance but about whether pain is felt at all. The two papers Key cites here are vague speculations, and based on human brain data. Please see the other comments and Replies about analogous mechanisms in evolution.
DeleteSimilar to a lot of the students in this class, I also took PSYC 302. I agree with the sentiments that we have too much difficulty describing how humans experience pain, so how can we explain how other species that we cannot communicate with experience pain? I appreciate that other commentaries felt similarly to us, rather than Key’s take on pain.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest grievance with this text was the assumption that fish need the same neural pathways as humans to experience pain. It does not take into account the evolutionary perspective that cognitive capacities of fish in terms of their physiological reaction to pain may cause a different response.
Inayat, that's it.
DeleteThe relevance of the hard problem is evident here because it is the same as in humans. We don’t know how feelings arise in us and why they do, just as we don’t know how fish feel. But it doesn’t mean that feelings are negligible. Using Key’s logic, fish could believe we don’t feel because they don’t recognize our brain mechanisms as their own. However, we know without a doubt that we feel, which is why this explanation is silly. Luckily, Key’s article and similar conversations have sparked or fuelled many movements to recognize animal sentience. New laws in countries such as Spain and New Zealand recognizing that animals do feel are a significant step towards more ethical and sustainable practices in the food industry.
ReplyDeleteIt is fairly easy to refute Key's claims by using some of the concepts brought up earlier in this course. For starters, just because fish didn't evolve the same pain structures as we did doesn't mean that they didn't find another way to evolve pain feeling abilities rooted in different structures. It is of course possible for the same function to be rooted in different brain structures; for example, the function of vision is present in many animals even in cases where they don't share the same structure (rods and cones…etc) as humans. It is also problematic to think that there is one single brain region that is directly responsible for feeling pain in the first place, as demonstrated in the Fodor section of the course. In the end it seems like the OMP makes it impossible though for us to know if fish feel pain or if they do not feel pain.
ReplyDeleteWell, Fodor didn't exactly "demonstrate" anything (not even Searle did); they more or less just pointed out the obvious. But, yes, locationism is naïve. And, yes, OMP cuts both ways. But you don't need to "solve" the OMP (let alone solve it with Cartesian Certainty) to know that other people -- and many, many other species -- feel.
Delete