I hate videos where half the fucking video is the outro

>random flailing caused by CNS destruction = "trying to escape"
how do you know it's not having an orgasm?

It proves they have an evolved aversion to stress and danger. It doesn't prove they suffer the conscious experience of pain. As far as I can think of, there's no way to prove either way.

Cuz it fucking dies. A bunch of writhing before dying is much more likely to be pain than an orgasm.

>no way to prove if an animal feels pain

I've never understood this. If you strike an animal it responds to the stimulus and under normal circumstances will try to avoid being struck again. Clearly this implies that there is some sort of impulsive feedback toward avoiding the physical damage of its body. How could that be anything other than something analogous to pain?

I mean if you want to be stupid and say "BUT WE CAN'T EVER GET INSIDE THEIR HEADS TO KNOW FOR REAL" then go ahead. But it's pretty obvious to me that just about any remotely sophisticated organism would need some kind of pain-like feedback to preserve its body.

This is disingenuous. We can strongly infer from the structure of their nervous system that they can and do feel pain.

I'm sure their experience is different from ours (less conscious, you would say), but to turn and say "we just don't know!" until the fish can confirm that yes, it does feel pain, and would you like the fish to rate it on a scale from 1 to 10, is disingenuous.

>How could that be anything other than something analogous to pain?

Because it could just as easily be a reflex or a pain-free response.

Also, many animals (such as lobsters and crabs, for example) demonstrate reactions to stimulus yet they completely lack the brain structure which processes "pain".

>If you strike an animal it responds to the stimulus and under normal circumstances will try to avoid being struck again. Clearly this implies that there is some sort of impulsive feedback toward avoiding the physical damage of its body. How could that be anything other than something analogous to pain?
Argument from ignorance. Just because you can't imagine how the response would happen without pain doesn't mean pain is necessarily involved, it's just a failure of imagination on your part.

>But it's pretty obvious to me that just about any remotely sophisticated organism would need some kind of pain-like feedback to preserve its body.
Why? It seems obvious to some people that the earth is flat. Do you think the Venus flytrap eats flies because it's experiencing hunger?

ITT: Veeky Forums is suddenly full of Zoologists and veterinarians.

What good is a reflex without a punitive measure? The point of pain is that it gets your hand off the stove AS WELL as teaching your brain that the stove is hot and shouldn't be touched.

If a fish drags itself on some sharp rocks and a reflex causes it to swim away, what's to prevent it from dragging itself on those same rocks seconds later? If the reflex is not unpleasant then what purpose does it really serve?

What you're describing would make more sense with extremely basic life forms like bacteria, but seems pretty pointless and unsophisticated for anything more intelligent than an insect/crustacean.

>but seems pretty pointless and unsophisticated for anything more intelligent than an insect/crustacean.

Yet those kinds of reflexes still exist, even in humans.

I'm not here to debate the "how and why"; I'm simply stating that pain-free reflex actions can and do exist, even in humans.

Yeah I know that. I'm not saying every reflex should be punitive or even instructional, I'm saying that a pain reflex is pointless if not psychologically punitive in some way.

Call me a dipshit if you want, but wouldn't it be an evolutionary defect if any kind of animal couldn't feel pain?

>If a fish drags itself on some sharp rocks and a reflex causes it to swim away, what's to prevent it from dragging itself on those same rocks seconds later? If the reflex is not unpleasant then what purpose does it really serve?
Perhaps their reflexes are sufficiently complex and strong for the organism to survive. Who knows? You still haven't proven that fish feel pain.

Yet there are all sorts of animals and plants which demonstrably do not feel pain, yet manage to evolve.

You should outline what you'd accept as proof here, since you're being so stubborn. Can you at least admit that every mammal feels pain similar to what human beings experience based on the similarities in our nervous systems?

>plants
You're moving the goalposts. Plants were never part of this discussion and are distinctly a different kind of organism than an animal. Can you please list some of these animals that don't feel pain?

>You're moving the goalposts. Plants were never part of this discussion and are distinctly a different kind of organism than an animal. Can you please list some of these animals that don't feel pain?
Hold on. You were the one asserting that pain is a necessary evolved trait of animals. Why not plants too? How come they can survive but plants can't? Then you tried to shift the burden of proof, when this discussion was about whether or not you can prove animals feel pain.

>You should outline what you'd accept as proof here, since you're being so stubborn.
The only conclusive evidence I can imagine would arise when we fully understand consciousness. You could convince me that they likely feel pain, if you were to highlight areas or activities of the human brain responsible solely for the experience of pain and nothing else, completely separate from reflex etc. Then demonstrate these same activities in fish, again, separate anything else.

>Why not plants too?
well
>eucaryotic cells.
>non-eukaryotic cells.
>literally basic fucking biology

te floundre

Are you seriously trying to argue that plants and animals are so similar that they have similar nervous systems? How about the fact that plants are stationary while the overwhelming majority of animals are mobile? Pain seems rather pointless in terms of survival if you can't move away from what's hurting you, no? I mean Jesus man if you're gonna give me shit on the basis that a pine tree and a mouse both survive and therefore both experience the same reflexes then I don't know how we're going to agree on anything.

Again I'll ask you, do you believe that mammals most likely feel similar experiences of pain based on the similarities of our nervous systems or do you believe that pain is literally unique to human beings?

ultimately the discussion on whether or not X animal feels pain is pointless because at the end of the day theyre tasty and im not going to stop eating them

>dummy gets btfo
>YEAH WELL I LIKE TASTY BURGERS AHAHAHAHAHA

You really showed us.

You could just opt to kill the animals in a way less likely to make them feel pain.

Imagine doing that with your dick in the fishes butt haha
I wonder how that would feel haha

>Killing animals instead of eating the meat in grocery stores

????????

It's the barbaric asians, here in the civilized white countries we get the regular store meat where nothing died

>aloominnyum