This is undeniably a worthy goal, but I feel that in discussing this, often the wrong questions are asked, or rather, the easy and implausible solution is offered to the question: „Who feels pain?” The typical answer would be: those who have a central nervous system, which is clearly a mechanism that is capable, among other things, to cause the sensation of pain. I find this simple answer to be lacking.
A better question, in my mind, would not be „who feels pain?” but rather „why is there such a thing we call pain?” And the answer to this question will force us to considerably expand our notion that only living organisms with a sufficiently developend nervous system fall under ethical considerations.
The function of pain is of course not a big mystery. Wikipedia sums it up nicely:
„Despite its unpleasantness, pain is an important part of the existence of humans and other animals; in fact, it is vital to survival. Pain encourages an organism to disengage from the noxious stimulus associated with the pain. /.../ Pain may also promote the healing process, since most organisms will protect an injured region in order to avoid further pain.”
With this in mind, it should be clear that if pain serves such a clear evolutionary function, then all evolved mechanisms or processes that serve the same function should be considered pain-like, and organisms that have such mechanisms or processes should fall under ethical consideration. The question is not whether a particular member of a species is capable of feeling pain; rather, it is whether such organisms have a function or process that serves the same function that pain does for us. And if they do, we should include them in our ethics. Needless to say, the number of such species is vastly larger than those with nervous systems, and would include plants and insects and probably even microbes of various sorts.
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