can something without a brain feel pain?

[bruder]

http://www.borderlands.com/newstuff/...h/plantsas.htm
Not the exact same study, but similar. I am by no means saying that this information is accurate or valid, but an interesting concept.

 

[vanquish]

Recently a study was conducted in Sweden which researches working on lobsters concluded lower invertebrates are not able to feel pain. Keep in mind that lobsters do have brain stems. Their findings were simple, when you put a lobster into boiling water it reacts to stimuli. It has no emotional response to the stimuli, and thus can not feel pain the way we do. this further shows that they do not "suffer" when they are killed. of course, PETA will argue against this, but for me this is conclusive. If lower inverts with brains cant feel pain, then even less sophisticated animals who only have nerve nets or rings are not feeling pain either. only higher cephalized (brained) organisms can feel pain.

 

[vanquish]

Oh and by the way, the idea of plants feeling pain is absolutely ridiculous.

 

[ratrod]

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Vanquish wrote;
Recently a study was conducted in Sweden which researches working on lobsters concluded lower invertebrates are not able to feel pain. Keep in mind that lobsters do have brain stems. Their findings were simple, when you put a lobster into boiling water it reacts to stimuli. It has no emotional response to the stimuli, and thus can not feel pain the way we do. this further shows that they do not "suffer" when they are killed. of course, PETA will argue against this, but for me this is conclusive. If lower inverts with brains cant feel pain, then even less sophisticated animals who only have nerve nets or rings are not feeling pain either. only higher cephalized (brained) organisms can feel pain.

[/code]
This is what I've been saying in my posts. No brian, No pain lol

 

[taznut]

Originally Posted by Bruder
I have been trying to find a study I once saw, but basically here is the short version...Plants were all hooked up to monitors. One scientist came in and brutally destroyed one of the plants in the room. The rest of the plant's readings on the monitors sky-rocketed. For the next month, different scientists came into the room to feed/water the plants and take readings. A month later, the "murderer" came back into the room and without even touching anything, the plant's readings on the monitors again jumped.
Sorry this is kind of off topic, but I think pretty cool none the less.
It is hard to define pain especially because every species (and every individual within that species has a different pain tolerance, IMO)
I kind of like Fenner's corny joke from "Conscious Marine Aquarist" to sum it up.
"Do fish feel?"
"Sure, they feel slimy."
-Fenner, 144
i plan on pursuing a graduate/PhD degree in psychological research and counseling (not spelling, keep that in mind

)... no thing that is stressed is that you need more than one study to show anything and that you 'cant prove the null hypothesis' which means that you cant prove a theory you can just support it... nothing in sciece is acutually a law, even though somethings are called laws, they are theories with a ton of studies that support it...
although this is an interesting idea and you be cool if it were true...

 

[catawaba]

Originally Posted by taznut
i disagree with this unconscious reaction idea... touching a hot stove is painful, just because u dont have to think about the pain before you react doesnt prove that it doesnt hurt...
It's not UNconscious, it's subconscious. Like breathing.

 

[yossaria]

I am a professor at Purdue University. My field of study is neuroscience. Specifically I am interested in neural connectivity and brain development. Pain is a mental construct; a descriptive classification of a preceived stimulus. In order to preceive a stimulus, you must have cognitive function and the neural circuitry to conduct it. To have cognitive function you need to have higher order logic processing centers usually housed in a brain of sorts.
That being said, most organisms can react to a stimulus. They need not even have a nervous system to react. However, in order to preceive the stimulus and classify it as pain, the organism needs to have higher order neural organization. Primitive organisms cannot "feel" pain. They may react by recoiling but there is no prectepion of pain; just a response to a stimulus. Often times we anthropomorphisize an observed reaction and assume that the animal "feels" pain because it looks like it reacted as if it was/is in pain.
So, coral, at least the coral on this planet, doesn't feel anything. Pain included. Hope this helped.
Yoss

 

[ratrod]

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[pre]Yossaria wrote:
I am a professor at Purdue University. My field of study is neuroscience. Specifically I am interested in neural connectivity and brain development. Pain is a mental construct; a descriptive classification of a preceived stimulus. In order to preceive a stimulus, you must have cognitive function and the neural circuitry to conduct it. To have cognitive function you need to have higher order logic processing centers usually housed in a brain of sorts.
That being said, most organisms can react to a stimulus. They need not even have a nervous system to react. However, in order to preceive the stimulus and classify it as pain, the organism needs to have higher order neural organization. Primitive organisms cannot "feel" pain. They may react by recoiling but there is no prectepion of pain; just a response to a stimulus. Often times we anthropomorphisize an observed reaction and assume that the animal "feels" pain because it looks like it reacted as if it was/is in pain.
So, coral, at least the coral on this planet, doesn't feel anything. Pain included. Hope this helped.
Yoss[/pre]

Thank you, I wasnt going to give my neuro background you said it well :joy:

 

[bang guy]

Originally Posted by Yossaria
I am a professor at Purdue University. My field of study is neuroscience.
Drat, another good debate killed by the facts.
lol Thank you very much Dr. Yoss!

 

[taznut]

Originally Posted by Yossaria
I am a professor at Purdue University. My field of study is neuroscience. Specifically I am interested in neural connectivity and brain development. Pain is a mental construct; a descriptive classification of a preceived stimulus. In order to preceive a stimulus, you must have cognitive function and the neural circuitry to conduct it. To have cognitive function you need to have higher order logic processing centers usually housed in a brain of sorts.
That being said, most organisms can react to a stimulus. They need not even have a nervous system to react. However, in order to preceive the stimulus and classify it as pain, the organism needs to have higher order neural organization. Primitive organisms cannot "feel" pain. They may react by recoiling but there is no prectepion of pain; just a response to a stimulus. Often times we anthropomorphisize an observed reaction and assume that the animal "feels" pain because it looks like it reacted as if it was/is in pain.
So, coral, at least the coral on this planet, doesn't feel anything. Pain included. Hope this helped.
Yoss
this is what i meant :joy:
well said

 

[ratrod]

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[pre]Taznt wrote:
this is what i meant
well said[/pre]

you bet lol

 

[birdmom]

Connection is incomplete.... (my answer)
If this requires further debate..
Perhaps a Philosophy discussion??
This reminds me of the mind vs brain debate....
Or more obscure thoughts......
Later!

 

[1journeyman]

I'm not sure just because an animal can't "define" pain that it can't feel it.
Pain is a word we use to describe a 'physical suffering or distress' (dictionary.com). If an invert reacts to an adverse stimuli doesn't that fit the description?

 

[jerthunter]

Wow, this thread was buried for a few days, I almost forgot about it. One important thing to note, in my opinion, is that ANY definition of pain we discuss will be human constructed, and therefore based on human experience. Pain is a word, and it is used in various ways to describe a shared human experience. We can theoretically located the exact chemical reactions that occur to cause pain but are those chemical reactions themselves pain? I wouldn't think so, but then again I am an uneducated man. We can also attribute certain behaviors, reactions, to a stimulus as reactions to pain, but the behavior itself is not pain either. It may be argued that to have pain one must understand what pain is, and not what the word pain is because words are just a way to communicated shared experience, but what pain actually is. It is easy to understand if I myself can comprehend pain but my understanding of someone or something elses comprehension of pain is based on my observation of something observable. So if I see an organism react to a stimulus in a manner that resembles a reaction by a human to a stimulus that I imagine would be painful I find myself projecting that the organism experienced pain. The arguement that a brainless organism does not have a developed enough nervous system to experience is merely a projection. Granted I would say it is a fairly reliable one but unless we can isolated what pain is, not just the word, not what causes it, not how it makes you react, but the very essence of pain we have no method of measuring it outside of our own experience.

 

[ratrod]

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[pre]Posted by Journeyman1
I'm not sure just because an animal can't "define" pain that it can't feel it.
Pain is a word we use to describe a 'physical suffering or distress' (dictionary.com). If an invert reacts to an adverse stimuli doesn't that fit the description?[/pre]
Journeyman1 and Jerthunter
This has been an awsome debate but just the same, the posts by Yossaria and myself are based on scientific and medical findings and facts. We both have years of neuro studies, if your not "getting it" from what we wrote you probably wont. :thinking:

 

[1journeyman]

Originally Posted by ratrod
...Journeyman1 and Jerthunter
This has been an awsome debate but just the same, the posts by Yossaria and myself are based on scientific and medical findings and facts. We both have years of neuro studies, if your not "getting it" from what we wrote you probably wont. :thinking:
Not really a debate

. As I understand it even the greatest neuro-biologists can't really explain how the brain works. I'm not willing to assume we can understand things like "pain" fear, etc. either. Scientists can't explain self awareness, memories, etc. so to assume we have the knowledge to say other creatures don't feel pain is a stretch. If you kick a dog it will yelp. Does the brain of a dog comprehend "pain"? How is that possible since the dog cannot form thoughts?
My dog howls when he gets hungry. My Brittlestars and Nass. snails come out foraging when they are hungry. Are they both feeling hunger "pains"? I would say yes.

 

[jerthunter]

Originally Posted by ratrod
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[pre]Posted by Journeyman1
I'm not sure just because an animal can't "define" pain that it can't feel it.
Pain is a word we use to describe a 'physical suffering or distress' (dictionary.com). If an invert reacts to an adverse stimuli doesn't that fit the description?[/pre]
Journeyman1 and Jerthunter
This has been an awsome debate but just the same, the posts by Yossaria and myself are based on scientific and medical findings and facts. We both have years of neuro studies, if your not "getting it" from what we wrote you probably wont. :thinking:
It is not a matter of 'getting it' or anything. My point is that ANY definition of pain is constructed by humans. I read the previous posts and I do not see any scientific or medical fact that says what pain in. I see people state definitions and use fact and often opinion to back up that given definition but still no FACT about what pain is. We can say pain is a word and give it a definition and then use that to argue but the problem here is that people have different definitions of pain and just because a specific scientific community decides to use one standard definition of pain for their purposes this in no way makes that the only definition. So this returns to the original problem of what is pain, and no amount of stating differing definitions will make one right and one wrong. So it is not a matter of me 'getting it' it is a matter of me not personally agreeing with a definition of an experience, of pain.

 

[ophiura]

Maaannnn, I got burned on this sort of discussion when I challenged someone on the concept of their fish being "happy."

 

[jerthunter]

Originally Posted by 1journeyman
Not really a debate

. As I understand it even the greatest neuro-biologists can't really explain how the brain works. I'm not willing to assume we can understand things like "pain" fear, etc. either. Scientists can't explain self awareness, memories, etc. so to assume we have the knowledge to say other creatures don't feel pain is a stretch. If you kick a dog it will yelp. Does the brain of a dog comprehend "pain"? How is that possible since the dog cannot form thoughts?
My dog howls when he gets hungry. My Brittlestars and Nass. snails come out foraging when they are hungry. Are they both feeling hunger "pains"? I would say yes.
Good points!

 

[ratrod]

Journeyman1
I'll break this down for ya as I understand it.
Fear = My wife finding the checkbook after I've been to the LFS
Anxiety = My wife looking for the checkbook
Pain = The discussion, after the review
The dog thing, cant help ya, mine wont stay off the road after repeated disciplin, but manages long division if you happen to have a piece of beef jerky handy :joy:
I would agree with your last post