Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago Well, because it has not really been proved at all, except if we accept some specific assumptions (about consciousness), and if you wiggle those assumptions just a tiny bit, trees also feel pain, and stones too.
Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t.
But I guess that is why it’s hard to settle down on things, like babies don’t feel pain was so ingrained in people, until it wasn’t. Personally I wonder what should we do if insects feel pain. Accept it? And then do what?
A question more complicated than it seems at first glance IMO.
No, stones don’t feel pain because they aren’t alive. They have no nervous system of any kind. Trees are alive, react to damage and even signal other nearby trees of danger. What we see as pain is obviously subjective, but that does in no way take away that any living being also feels pain. Pain isn’t some thing that exists in itself, it’s the brain or cells sending signals that something is damaging us.
I seriously don’t understand how you could think stones feel pain, they have nothing to make those signals.
They are assuming that pain is a reaction to some sort of stimulus. In this case, of course living things with some sort of nervous system will feel pain, as they react when they are hurt, but one could argue that hitting a stone very hard could deform it, cause it to wobble, create cracks, etc. and that could constitute as pain.
Of course, this really stretching the definition of pain by a lot. Personally, I don’t think stones feel pain.
That’s because we do not understand consciousness (like at all) and you need consciousness to “experience” the world, and for example, pain.
No consciousness, no pain.
So to your question; one theory is that everything has a little bit of “consciousness” and it’s just in the wildly complex brain it can actually express it so well, which means the whole universe is somewhat conscious.
I personally don’t think so, but I also know that that is just wishful thinking from my side and that I do not know anything more than that I have, a consciousness.
HTH