Re: Fish don't have ethical feet it doesn't mean they can't move- was Re: Ethical feet


"whisky-dave" <whisky-dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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>
> "H Duffy" <Hester_Duffy_nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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>>>> But that hasn't been shown at all.
>>> Maybe you didn't notice the accompaning diagrams of a fish and a human
>>> brain.
>>
>> So what? They;re just pictures.
> And words.

Not not the sort of repeatable scientific evidence that you demanded,
remember?

>
>> In order to show that the bit of the brain which perceives pain isn't
>> present in fish, you'd need first to provide conclusion scientific
>> evidence proving which bit of the brain perceives pain
> Where as your insisting that it's the damaged tissue.
> So where's your conclusion scientific evidence ?

I'm insisting that the rest of the nervous system is generally involved int
he process. Do you really need scientific evidence to confirm that? I mean,
I can provide if you want, but is it not really really obvious that the
nervous system in parts other than just the brain is involved in the
perception of pain?

>> (the paper you keep citing doesn't provide this) and then you'd need to
>> show that that part of the brain is not present in fish _and_ that there
>> is no other part of the fish's brain which perceives pain.
> Well all the above is available some of which are listed as eeferences
> listed at the
> bottom of the page.

Coudl you quote the relevant bits please? I'm assuming from this that you
have fol;lowed up the references, and checked that everything is correct?

>
>>
>> Now, does your paper even begin to cover any of that?
> Yes, and it's hardly my paper it's on a vets site.

You've been talking about the paper on the Colorado fishing site; are you
now changing your references to something else?

>
>> And what has the way a fish moves got to do with whether it can feel
>> pain?
> If they feel pain then they'd be some way of us observing that,

Yes, and we discussed exactly how you'd do that (the hypothetical study that
I described, and which you said wopuld constitute proof) and then I went and
found the evidence (the two studies which used almost exactly the same
method as the hypothetical one I described). Have you forgotten all that?

> if you can't tell from how a fish behaves then you'll need to find another
> method.
> We have appendix and tonsils and maybe other organs we don't really use
> so why do we have them, can you anwser that ?

We do use our tonsils, they're part of our immune system. Our appendix is no
longer in use, but appaears to have been a left-over part of the digestive
system. However, because we don't use it, it is now much smaller than it
used to be, and it is non-functional.
However, a fish's nervous system is still just as well-developed and just as
functional as it needs to be to experience pain, so it's really not
plausiable to say that it is obsolete, as our appendix is.

> A fair few people have them removed with very little effect on them,
> so I assume mine don't do much but I haven't had them removed either.
> So if they aren't doing anything why do we have them.
> it could well be a similar reason why fish don't need to recieve the
> perception
> of pain, because there's not a lot they can do about pain is there,

Yes, there is, as we've already discussed; they can get away from something
that is currently causing them pan, and they can learn to avoid it in the
future. Doing so helps them stay alive. To say there's nothing they can do
about pain is really _collosally_ short-sighted.

> it's a bit of a waste of limited brain power maybe nature has decided
> it's not worth having them in a fishes brain, maybe evoluition decide that
> a sense of avoidence of danger is more efficient than feeling pain.

And how would they know what is dangerous and what isn't, if they don't feel
pain? Perhaps they've learned to recognise "Danger; corrosive chemicals"
signs?

> Humans need to experinece pain before they realise not to do something
> maybe that's the wrong way of going about it. Somewhere in evolution the
> basic single celled amoeba seemd to find that movign away from something
> harmfull
> was more efficient than building a brain to sense bain to tell it in the
> future
> to move away.

So what you're saying is that, in your opinion, amoebas are more
sophisticated and better designed than humans?
Well, in your case, I suspect you may be right.

>> The claims that that paper makes are not sufficiently supported by
>> scientific evidence to be taken seriously. They rely _simply_ on the
>> claim that the bit of our brain which reacts emotionally to pain isn't
>> present in fish. But actually, they don't identify which bit of the brain
>> perceives pain as pain (rather than as an emotional event), and they
>> don't explain why, if fish can't feel pain, they have a sophisticated
>> nervous system designed so as to be able to detect noxious stimuli and
>> transmit messages about them to the brain.
>
> To me thats all very obvious.

Then please explain it; if fish cannot perceive pain, why do they have a
complex nervous system designed specifically for the purpose of detecting
noxious stimuli and transmitting messages about those stimuli?
And why is it that noxious stimuli make them behave in one way, and noxious
stimuli plus anaesthetic make them behave in a different (more normal) way?

Please give me straight answers to these questions; not rhetorical
questions, not claims that it's obvious, not metaphors or parables, just
straight answers.

> Maybe you could explain why we need to feel pain, what is the point why
> can'twe have the amoebas 'idea' where you just stay away from things
> that can cause tissue damage.

Because we're not single-celled animals. It is quite easy for a single cell
to have a built-in tendancy to retreat from noxious stimuli, but if our
cells did the same thing, we would physically fall to pieces in we absorbed
a noxious chemical such as a poison. OUr cells would be pulling in different
directions, and we would die.

>> I asked you whether an experiment like the one I described would prove
>> that fish can feel pain; you said that it would.
>
> Well show me where I said that or is that your paraphrasing of what I
> said.

Do you not remember?
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I said, having described the hypothetical study I came up with, "So if I can
find a study which says pretty much what i've said above, and uses
anaesthetic to reduce distress caused by what we would expect to be a
painful stimulus, you'll accept that fish can feel pain?

You replied "Yes if you can prove the fish feels pain so go for it. ".

>> *heh* If it has to make sense to _you_, then forget it, it's not going to
>> happen. If it only has to make sense to the average person, then that's
>> no problem, i've already provided that.
>
> As usual you've not proved much other than you have problems understand
> basic processes.

Which basic process are you talking about here?

>> *sigh* I'm not talking about that now, Dave, I'm talking about the
>> scietific studies which i presented to you as requested, and which you
>> have rejected on the word of one biased source with no supporting
>> evidence. Don't go changing the subject now.
>
> Prove the veterinarian site is biased

No Dave, the vetinary site, which says that James Rose's study is
interesting but doesn't agree with it, is not biased. The Colorado fishing
consortium site (or whatever it was) _is_ biased.

>> Specifically, it shows that fish can and do feel pain. They are designed
>> to do so, and their behaviour confirms it.
>
> To you maybe.

And to scientists who study these things, yes. Remember, the people you said
you would believe?

>> No, I mean it's a purely physical response, like a venus fly-trap
>> snapping shut; there's no thought or intent involved, it's just the way
>> the cells react under certain conditions.
>
> But how do you know that is not a sign of pain or hunger or sexual
> advance.

Because in order to feel pain or hunger or sexual urges, you need a nervous
system. Amoebas don't have a nervous system. (They also don't have sex, but
I'm sure you knew that, right?)

>> No, it isn't. But if they're complex enough to experience fright, then
>> they must be complex enough to experience pain. After all, fright is
>> experienced by a bit of the brain, in humans, which doesn't exist in the
>> same form in fish, and yet you have no problem accepting that fish feel
>> fright.
>
> Amoebas move away from dangerous things it encounters are you saying
> they have a brain too.

No. As I've said REALLY FUCKING CLEARLY, in amoebas the tendancy to move
away is not governed by a brain or by emotion or by intention, it is purely
mechanical. Do you still not understand what that means?

>> Yes, they are different responses; you're missing my point.
>> Think of it this way; if I say to you "That child over there can't walk,
>> his legs don't work", that's fair enough, right? If his legs don't work,
>> then certainly he wouldn't be able to walk.
>> However, if I then say "He skips everywhere", that's a bit dubious; if
>> his legs work well enough to skip, he should _also_ be able to walk, not
>> because they're the same thing, but because someone whose legs work well
>> enough to skip should have the where-with-all to walk.
>
> That proves nothing because your saying that if a brain can d a more
> complex task it must be able to do a simplier one, that just doesn't
> make sense.

Yes, that's exactly what i'm saying, and yes, it does make sense.

One last thing you need two legs to walk but not to skip.
> But hen again I guess you'll insist that your version of skipping
> requires two legs.

Yes; I don't mean skipping with a rope, I mean skipping as in moving along
using one-legged jumps, and alternating legs.

>
>> Similarly, fear and pain are not the same thing, but they both involve
>> similar bits of the brain;
> No they don't.

Yes, they do.

> You could assume amoebas move away from dangerous substances
> because of fear, but I'm not sure how you'd define fear beause they don't
> have a brain but they would do the same thing as if they did face fear.

If you assumed that, you'd be an ignorant moron. Amoebas don't have a
nervous system. Shall we say that again? AMOEBAS DON'T HAVE A NERVOUS
SYSTEM. Would you like that once more with feeling, or have you got it yet?

>> *sigh* Do you deny that the nervous system is in any way involved in the
>> experience of pain? Do you think that nociceptors and pain transmitters
>> have nothing to do with pain?
> They have to do with pain as radio recivers do to getting music.
> But if the transmitter is off-air you won't get the radio station.

Right (well, wrong, actually, in the case of pain, since the signal starts
at the nociceptors and is received at the brain, in this analogy the
nociceptors are transmitters and the brain is the receiver, but it doesn't
really matter...). Now, can you imagine a company building up a complex and
expensive network of radio transmitters if there were no receivers anywhere?
Or building a complex network of receivers, when there were no transmitters?
Would that make sense?

>> The brain is part of the nervous system. Did you not know that?
> Depends what you mean as part of doesn't it.

No, it really doesn't. By any definition you care to use, the brain is very
definitely and clearly part of the nervous system. This is one of those
occasions where you made a little mistake, and you can either accept that it
was a mistake and move on, or you can make a complete and utter tit of
youtrself by trying to defend your error to the hilt. Which is it to be?

>> Yes, it does. Now, why would the nervous system be designed in such a way
>> as to transmit information about painful stimuli if the brain couldn't
>> translate that information?
>
> If evolution found something a waste of time it may well dispense with it.
> It's happened in humans so why not fish.

Because nature hasn't dispensed of it, quite simply. Fish's nervous systems
still detect noxious stimuli exztremely efficiently, and they still transmit
pain signals extremely efficiently. In addition to that, it is blindingly
obvious to anyone who knows even the slightest thing about evolution, that
pain is extremely useful to any animal that can move, hide, or defend itself
in any physical way, and that therefore it would _not_ be dispensed with,
because dispensing with it would result in a much higher death rate and a
much lower rate of reproduction, which would favour those individuals which
had not dispensed with it.

> We've effectively lost a lot of our sense of smell and replaced it with
> site, we have lots our ability to swing through trees and our bodies
> started to walk upright, this is all whinin a few 100,0000s of years or so
> where as fish have been going for millions of years, they may well have
> perfected themsleves more than humans.

Except that they haven't; actually an awful lot of fish haven't evolved at
all in millions of years; sharks are an excellent example of this. The
fossils that we find of early sharks (several million years ago) are very
very similar to modern sharks. It's a good design, so why mess with it?

H


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