RE: Does the fact that many non-human animals have pituitary disprove Cartesian Dualism?
June 23, 2023 at 10:12 am
(This post was last modified: June 23, 2023 at 10:18 am by Anomalocaris.)
We know humans with some form of brain damage, for example from carbon monoxide poisoning, can continue to react to damage, but have no conscious perception of either the pain or of the reaction, even though they clearly are conscious and do otherwise have normal conscious perceptions of other senses or of their own actions.. These humans still have all the neurological structures of normal humans who do have conscious perceptions of pain.
So associating conscious perception of pain to existence of particular neurological macrostructures seems problematic.
Similar observations that brain damage can cause conscious individual to retain the ability to react to other sensory inouts, such as sight, but deprive them of conscious perception of the these senses, as exemplified by the condition called blind sight, also suggest identifying whether a different animal actually has a conscious perception of pain can be quite problematic.
So associating conscious perception of pain to existence of particular neurological macrostructures seems problematic.
Similar observations that brain damage can cause conscious individual to retain the ability to react to other sensory inouts, such as sight, but deprive them of conscious perception of the these senses, as exemplified by the condition called blind sight, also suggest identifying whether a different animal actually has a conscious perception of pain can be quite problematic.
