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/sci/ - Science & Math

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9796914 No.9796914 [Reply] [Original]

Last night I stubbed my toe while sleepwalking and broke my nail, which lead me to wake up to a bed soaked in blood. But that made me think: Since I didn't feel anything from burying a piece of nail into my flesh while unconscious, how can an animal feel pain if they don't even have a consciousness to begin with?

>> No.9796951
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9796951

The capacity to react to the bodily impulses (e.g.) pain are not the hallmark of consciousness.

What is pain to you?
Something that makes you react in a certain way. E.g. you feel a sting and suddenly automatically clench you teeth or tense your back muscles. See pic related. Animals sure can go through that process.
Maybe, on top of that reaction, pain is something you judge: You consider it as something you dislike. Is to dislike more than the above reaction? Is the process of negative association and thought coming to mind something more conscious and free than clenching you teeth or tense your back muscles? Is what you do more than just the best way to react for your genes to make sure you don't, in the future, unnecessarily expose yourself to that situation that brought about pain?

>> No.9796966

>>9796951

> Is to dislike more than the above reaction?

>Yes. It's the same reason why I can't stay 20 minutes without doing something and an isect can just sit on my wall for the whole day.

>> No.9796968

>>9796914
> how can an animal feel pain if they don't even have a consciousness to begin with?

get help. you're sick in the head.

>> No.9796974

>>9796968

... ? Knowing a rock can't feel pain won't make me torture it for fun or something you might be thinking. I'm just curious on what is pain without a consciousness to feel it.

>> No.9796975
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9796975

>>9796914
>they don't even have a consciousness

>> No.9796979

>>9796966
The second greentexting makes this a bit hard to parse.

Taking a leap here and trying to interpret, I'd want to add that of course humans "are more elaborate state machines", but in the end you could still argue that all we do is try to gather resources, make babies and try to make them have babies too. This is still an argument taken by enough of people to prevent us from taking "consciousness" completely seriously and to flesh it out in a 4chan post.
That is to say, even if I were to sit on a position that human consciousness is something super special, I couldn't in a few lines properly debate someone who argues that "feeling pain" is nothing more than the right tool that evolution cooked up to prevent the kid from putting it's hand into the hot fireplace a second time.

>> No.9797543

>>9796975
prove they do