![]() ![]() In fact, we all have the strong intuition that the animals with which we interact the most (cats, dogs, horses, etc.) are conscious and able to feel pain. The idea of sentience could be a temporary compromise with which to accept that some animals feel pain and should be treated with compassion. However, since the problem of animal consciousness is so difficult to address, it does not seem to be realistic to wait until we solve it to decide how we should treat animals. However, as I discussed in previous articles ( Not Just Intelligence, The Uniqueness of Human Suffering, The Difference Between Pain and Suffering, More Thoughts on Animal Suffering), we cannot say that a living being feels pain if it is not conscious, because how can there be pain if there is no awareness of the pain? After all, in humans the same stimulus that causes pain when we are conscious does not cause pain when we are unconscious. ![]() In modern Western philosophy, sentience is the ability to experience sensations (known in philosophy of mind as “qualia”).” In the context of animal welfare, saying that animals are sentient means that they are able to feel pain. Eighteenth-century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think (reason) from the ability to feel (sentience). Wikipedia gives a definition of sentience analogous to the definition of consciousness: “Sentience is the capacity to feel, perceive or experience subjectively. Or maybe it was because I saw it as a devious way to avoid confronting the issue of animal consciousness, which would involve answering difficult questions like these: Are animals conscious? Are some animals conscious while others are not? If so, how can we tell them apart? If animals are conscious, is their consciousness the same as ours or there is something unique to human consciousness? Which ones are sentient? Source: Maybe it was because for me it carried religious connotations that should not be mixed with science. I must confess that I initially disliked the word “sentience”. Juan Carlos Marvizon, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
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