Does suffering REALLY matter?

[pErvinalia]

Actually cats and dogs, like any other animal, experience pain and fear, which are natural evolved self-preservation sensations and instincts. Humans impute "suffering" to that experience based on anthropomorphic projection. Dogs (and particularly cats) don't lay blame or feel sorry for themselves, they just experience and endure the slings and arrows outrageous fortune and react accordingly.

I think that experiencing pain and fear is enough to be classified as suffering, particularly given that, at least in mammals, it manifests in clear emotional states which we can recognise as being at least similar to our own experience. Sure, humans can reflect on their pain and fear, and "feel sorry for themselves", which adds another dimension of potential misery, but I think consciousness of one's own pain is not a required condition for me to determine that a dog or a cat is suffering.

I think the fact that they show emotional distress indicates a very high likelihood that dogs and cats (and most higher mammals) possess consciousness and self-awareness. Seth calls that anthropomorphism, I call arbitrarily separating humans from other higher mammals "religious".

It's not arbitrary, it is based on self-awareness and conciousness. There may be a "very high likelihood" but that's far from the usual metric required here which is critically robust peer-reviewed science. I think that a creature "suffers" when that creature is capable of defining and articulating the emotion, because "suffering" is an emotional reaction to pain and physical (or perhaps mental) distress. I grant you that other creatures may have the cognitive ability to define "suffering" within themselves even if they are not able to articulate it in language we understand, but that's just speculation at this point.

As is any suggestion that they definitively don't experience suffering and emotion. It's not anthropomorphism to believe that apes suffer because they appear to suffer. Likewise it's not anthropomorphism to believe that most higher mammals suffer because they appear to suffer. But as you say, it's still speculation. It's hard to know how we could ever be certain that an animal does or doesn't possess consciousness. If we can teach a dog to take the Turing Test, then perhaps we will be closer...

"Suffering" has a moral and ethical component as well, so doesn't an organism need to have a moral and ethical structure in order to "suffer?"

I don't know. Does it have a moral and ethical component? I can't say I've considered it in that light before. Isn't suffering the experience of some form of pain and a recognition that that pain isn't desirable?

[Seth]

I don't know. Does it have a moral and ethical component? I can't say I've considered it in that light before. Isn't suffering the experience of some form of pain and a recognition that that pain isn't desirable?

I don't think so. Scientifically and biologically speaking "pain" is actually nothing more than a nerve impulse that's interpreted as pain by the brain because the organism has been genetically programmed to make that link. The undesirability is inherent in the evolved sensation.

[JimC]

I don't know. Does it have a moral and ethical component? I can't say I've considered it in that light before. Isn't suffering the experience of some form of pain and a recognition that that pain isn't desirable?

I don't think so. Scientifically and biologically speaking "pain" is actually nothing more than a nerve impulse that's interpreted as pain by the brain because the organism has been genetically programmed to make that link. The undesirability is inherent in the evolved sensation.

If the undesirability is inherent (and I agree that it is), then giving the label "suffering" to an emotional state where there is a significant amount of pain, undesirable to the organism and altering the emotions seems reasonable. My point earlier was that an ant may have its pain nerves firing, but it does not seem to have an alteration in emotional state that we experience, and perceive clearly in, for example, dogs and cats. I would be reluctant to use the word suffering in describing the state of an ant whose pain nerves are being stimulated.

The place for a moral and ethical component is surely in how we respond to suffering, rather than inherent to the suffering in itself.

[mistermack]

The case of babies illustrates a lot about suffering. When they are born, they have no self-awareness. That's something we develop as we grow. You can point to various stages that babies go through, of developing self-awareness.
How and when they start to recognise themselves in a mirror is the classic stage that people point to.

But you don't need to reach that stage to suffer. A one day old baby can suffer, and will let you know it, loud and clear.
It has no awareness of self. It just feels the suffering, without knowing what it is.
This is surely how most mammals experience suffering. They just go through it. You can see by their body language that they are going through hell. They don't have to be self-aware in the human sense. They can still suffer greatly.

Lots of other animals suffer in the same way as mammals. African Grey Parrots will suffer mentally, if their owner dies, or if they get passed on or sold to another owner. They often bond with just one person, and pine enormously, if they are separated. They are notorious for going into depression, and obsessively plucking their own feathers out, if they get sold.

My next door neighbour had a nanny goat, that she sold three times. Each time it pined so badly that the new owners brought it back, and didn't even want their money back. And that was people who already had other goats, so it wasn't loneliness.

We seem to operate a sliding scale of importance, with the suffering of human babies at the top, then children, young adults etc, with mums and dads expected to suffer in silence. Then come the animals, generally in order of intelligence, with the suffering of ants and worms so basic, that it's hardly considered suffering to us.

But isn't that just a reflection of how much we identify with the various individuals? We evolved to be concerned about the suffering of babies and children. We need to protect them to survive as a species.
So when we think that suffering matters, aren't we just obeying the hard-wiring of our brains?
Is there some other reason why suffering matters, or is it just us, obeying the evolved programs in our heads?

[pErvinalia]

I don't think you can have suffering without self-awareness. It's context-less without awareness. Without awareness it's just pain reception and autonomic response, I'd imagine.

[pErvinalia]

What you talk about, I think, is empathy. When we see a baby crying we experience a lot of empathy, presumably for evolutionary reasons. But you raise a far point. If we think we see suffering in a baby without awareness, then we could be imagining suffering in animals. Although, I still think higher animals/mammals show more targeted emotion than a baby does. A baby basically just cries. There's no gradation. Just cry, or not cry.

[mistermack]

The principle is the same, but my point is the opposite conclusion.

I think a baby suffers, even if it's not self aware. If it's hungry or cold or sitting on a thorn, it suffers and lets you know.
I don't see much change happening, when they reach some level of self awareness. The suffering experience doesn't appear to be any different, or to go through any transition.

So I'm saying that you don't have to be self aware at all to suffer. You don't have to KNOW that you're suffering, to suffer.

And the same applies to animals.

[JimC]

I don't think you can have suffering without self-awareness. It's context-less without awareness. Without awareness it's just pain reception and autonomic response, I'd imagine.

What you forget, I think, is an emotional state. If you were talking about an ant, for example, then I would buy the "without awareness it's just pain reception and autonomic response" bit, and suffering would not be a valid term. But really, it's "without emotions..."

However, with higher animals, and human babies, a clear emotional state exists which is exhibiting all the signs of anguish that an adult human might evince. They are not reflecting on, or thinking about their emotional state, but it is none the less real. Emotions can exist without self-awareness...

[pErvinalia]

I don't see how they can. It seems an oxymoron to me. "Sad" is meaningless without a mind to base it in. A baby's cry is most likely an evolutionary mechanism to utilise our own likely evolutionary propensity for empathy. There doesn't even have to be any emotion behind it. When babies want something, they cry. Why they don't, they don't.

[Jason]

What do you base that on rEv?

[pErvinalia]

Having two of the little bastards myself..

[JimC]

I don't see how they can. It seems an oxymoron to me. "Sad" is meaningless without a mind to base it in. A baby's cry is most likely an evolutionary mechanism to utilise our own likely evolutionary propensity for empathy. There doesn't even have to be any emotion behind it. When babies want something, they cry. Why they don't, they don't.

Naturally, I agree that all of these phenomena are grounded in evolution. However, I think you are seeing "mind" from too narrow a perspective. "Sad" is an emotional state, which requires a much more developed brain than an ant, for example. But, given sufficiently developed brain processes, animal minds can do surprising complex things, and be in a variety of emotional states. On one level, these states are there as internal motivators for survival-oriented behaviour. However, they exist in us, they exist in babies, and they exist in higher animals. The fact that humans (beyond the baby stage) have an extra "overlay" of self awareness doesn't change the commonality we have with animals in a lot of our mental equipment. We associate suffering primarily with emotional states of grief, pain, loss, loneliness etc. The fact that we can be aware of our own emotional state of suffering, reflect on it, and talk about it is an additional layer of mental activity. Animals and babies may not reflect on their own suffering, but that doesn't mean that don't experience it.

[pErvinalia]

I'm not associating human babies with adult non-human animals. I'd imagine the same process exists in the higher mammals. Their babies have no sense of self until a certain point.

[Seth]

The case of babies illustrates a lot about suffering. When they are born, they have no self-awareness. That's something we develop as we grow. You can point to various stages that babies go through, of developing self-awareness.
How and when they start to recognise themselves in a mirror is the classic stage that people point to.

How do you know they are not self-aware? Just because you don't remember being in utero doesn't mean you weren't conscious or self-aware at the time. There's plenty of evidence that fetuses respond to stimuli in the womb, including recognizing a parent's voice. Recognizing one's image in a mirror is absolutely not the test for self-awareness, it's merely a stage of development that indicates that the child can correlate what it sees with the motions it makes which leads to an understanding of reflections.

But you don't need to reach that stage to suffer. A one day old baby can suffer, and will let you know it, loud and clear.
It has no awareness of self. It just feels the suffering, without knowing what it is.
This is surely how most mammals experience suffering. They just go through it. You can see by their body language that they are going through hell. They don't have to be self-aware in the human sense. They can still suffer greatly.

Again I think it depends on how you define the word. The texbook definition is "to bear" or to endure something. The connotation is that what one is bearing or enduring is unpleasant, although one usage is as bearing the action of another as a voluntary act. (See Transitive Verb at 4)

The key to me is that it means going through some unpleasant or painful experience that one recognizes as unpleasant or painful, as opposed to simply reacting instinctively to a particular stimulus. Is what the ant feels "pain," or is it just a signal that causes a particular behavior. Most biologists agree that fish do not feel pain but rather their actions when hooked are simply a response to being constrained. They don't fight against the hook and line because it hurts, but because it constitutes an unusual constraint on their ability to follow their genetically-programmed routine of swimming.

Suffering seems to me to require some element of both self-knowledge and an understanding that the stimuli being perceived is in some way as an "experience" that one goes through with perhaps anticipation of completing that passage. The idea being that without some sort of future-comprehending ability one may feel pain but for creatures that have no concept of "future" and "past" it's just a state of being, like hunger or sex drive, that is perceived without any sort of moral judgment as to whether the state one is in is good, bad or indifferent.

But this is mostly philosophical nitpicking of definitions, but an interesting subject nonetheless.

suf·fer
verb \ˈsə-fər\

: to experience pain, illness, or injury

: to experience something unpleasant (such as defeat, loss, or damage)

: to become worse because of being badly affected by something
suf·feredsuf·fer·ing
Full Definition of SUFFER
transitive verb
1
a : to submit to or be forced to endure <suffer martyrdom>
b : to feel keenly : labor under <suffer thirst>
2
: undergo, experience
3
: to put up with especially as inevitable or unavoidable
4
: to allow especially by reason of indifference <the eagle suffers little birds to sing — Shakespeare>
intransitive verb
1
: to endure death, pain, or distress
2
: to sustain loss or damage
3
: to be subject to disability or handicap
— suf·fer·able adjective
— suf·fer·able·ness noun
— suf·fer·ably adverb
— suf·fer·er noun
See suffer defined for English-language learners »
See suffer defined for kids »
Examples of SUFFER

He died instantly and did not suffer.
He suffered a heart attack and died instantly.
She suffered an injury during the game.
We suffered a great deal during the war.
I hate to see a child suffer.
She suffered through another one of their long visits.
The team suffered a defeat in the play-offs.
Their relationship suffered because of her work.

Origin of SUFFER
Middle English suffren, from Anglo-French suffrir, from Vulgar Latin *sufferire, from Latin sufferre, from sub- up + ferre to bear — more at sub-, bear
First Known Use: 13th century

Babies cry when stimulated because they are genetically programmed to do so. If the definition of suffering is that

Lots of other animals suffer in the same way as mammals. African Grey Parrots will suffer mentally, if their owner dies, or if they get passed on or sold to another owner. They often bond with just one person, and pine enormously, if they are separated. They are notorious for going into depression, and obsessively plucking their own feathers out, if they get sold.

My next door neighbour had a nanny goat, that she sold three times. Each time it pined so badly that the new owners brought it back, and didn't even want their money back. And that was people who already had other goats, so it wasn't loneliness.

We seem to operate a sliding scale of importance, with the suffering of human babies at the top, then children, young adults etc, with mums and dads expected to suffer in silence. Then come the animals, generally in order of intelligence, with the suffering of ants and worms so basic, that it's hardly considered suffering to us.

But isn't that just a reflection of how much we identify with the various individuals? We evolved to be concerned about the suffering of babies and children. We need to protect them to survive as a species.
So when we think that suffering matters, aren't we just obeying the hard-wiring of our brains?
Is there some other reason why suffering matters, or is it just us, obeying the evolved programs in our heads?[/quote]

[Seth]

I don't see how they can. It seems an oxymoron to me. "Sad" is meaningless without a mind to base it in. A baby's cry is most likely an evolutionary mechanism to utilise our own likely evolutionary propensity for empathy. There doesn't even have to be any emotion behind it. When babies want something, they cry. Why they don't, they don't.

Naturally, I agree that all of these phenomena are grounded in evolution. However, I think you are seeing "mind" from too narrow a perspective. "Sad" is an emotional state, which requires a much more developed brain than an ant, for example. But, given sufficiently developed brain processes, animal minds can do surprising complex things, and be in a variety of emotional states. On one level, these states are there as internal motivators for survival-oriented behaviour. However, they exist in us, they exist in babies, and they exist in higher animals. The fact that humans (beyond the baby stage) have an extra "overlay" of self awareness doesn't change the commonality we have with animals in a lot of our mental equipment. We associate suffering primarily with emotional states of grief, pain, loss, loneliness etc. The fact that we can be aware of our own emotional state of suffering, reflect on it, and talk about it is an additional layer of mental activity. Animals and babies may not reflect on their own suffering, but that doesn't mean that don't experience it.

Let's examine the reports of animals like elephants, dolphins and dogs who seem to "mourn" for lost members of the group or for a lost master (Hachi, the dog in Japan who went to the train station for years to wait for his master who died at work one day and never returned comes to mind)