Posted by Otter at 12:16pm Jun 29 '11I'm not being facetious... it has philosophical arguments, moral arguments, religious arguments, scientific/health arguments AND social/political arguments!
After reading everything below - I can't even formulate my own opinion on the matter. I'm really impressed with our 4k group on this one - I never would have considered on my own all the aspects of this discussion that were presented.
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I guess my opinion can only be this: In the end, we must have a definitive way of knowing how animals experience pain. We can guess that it's similar to how humans experience pain and I think that's probably a pretty fair concept, but it's not concrete.
In this particular instance - have we interviewed enough humans who've had their heads cut-off and bled-out that we know how that FEELS compared to "stunning"? In this I actually agreed with [private], I'd rather have my head cut off than be electrocuted.
Psychologically - even if the electrical shock is very brief and the pain experienced from the [private] is 1-3 minutes... I actually rather enjoy the idea of how it would feel to bleed out as a sort of more peaceful demise offering me a few moments to be aware and accept my fate.
Do animals experience death in a similar way?
---- This also brings me to a question of animal sentience. Another platform that I've really sat on the fence over for YEARS. There's a day when you may have heard me argue that animals don't have sentience and self-awareness like humans do... and another day when I may have argued the opposite. If animals aren't self-aware, do they CARE about death or even pain at all? If they are, would they more readily accept it as I would?
So much unsettled here... this is a great controversy.
After reading everything below - I can't even formulate my own opinion on the matter. I'm really impressed with our 4k group on this one - I never would have considered on my own all the aspects of this discussion that were presented.
---
I guess my opinion can only be this: In the end, we must have a definitive way of knowing how animals experience pain. We can guess that it's similar to how humans experience pain and I think that's probably a pretty fair concept, but it's not concrete.
In this particular instance - have we interviewed enough humans who've had their heads cut-off and bled-out that we know how that FEELS compared to "stunning"? In this I actually agreed with [private], I'd rather have my head cut off than be electrocuted.
Psychologically - even if the electrical shock is very brief and the pain experienced from the [private] is 1-3 minutes... I actually rather enjoy the idea of how it would feel to bleed out as a sort of more peaceful demise offering me a few moments to be aware and accept my fate.
Do animals experience death in a similar way?
---- This also brings me to a question of animal sentience. Another platform that I've really sat on the fence over for YEARS. There's a day when you may have heard me argue that animals don't have sentience and self-awareness like humans do... and another day when I may have argued the opposite. If animals aren't self-aware, do they CARE about death or even pain at all? If they are, would they more readily accept it as I would?
So much unsettled here... this is a great controversy.
man... this is a great controversy! - Otter