Can I just say, and I'm just being honest...

[Edwardo Piet]

It doesn't seem to me that you've spent much time around them if you aren't aware that birds exhibit behaviors consistent with feeling pain.

Pain is not a behavior. That's my exact point. You can react to stimuli and have all the bodily sensations of pain without having the consciousness to actually feel it.

Show me where I ever suggested any such thing, and you might have a point.

Well then what's your problem with my position if we hold the same position? The only real difference seems to be that you can't differtinate between "has the sentience required to actually feel pain" and "reacts the same way but without the sentience".

Again, not sure -- especially about fish, reptiles, and salamanders. I err on the side of assuming they might be. 

So how are you judging that fish and reptiles might be but birds are? And how is it absurd for me to put birds on par with reptiles?

Are they? Tell me more about what I think on this subject we've never previously discussed. 

They're arbitary enough that you aren't differentiating between the difference between an organism reacting to stimuli in a way that appears like they're in pain, and an organism actually having the sentience able to experience pain.

I agree that sentience must be tied to a certain degree of nervous development. I also think you draw the line incorrectly in the case of birds.

And I think you draw the line incorrectly in the case of birds. So where did the "Why on earth do you think that?" come from, and where did your comments about them behaving like they're in pain come from. A robot could be programmed to behave like they're in pain, just as natural selection does the same thing to organisms, behavior is not an indication of sentience. It's even possible to not behave like you're in pain but nevertheless experience it, of course. What's required is a brain complex enough to give rise to the sentience required to experience pain... regardless of what the behavior is like.

Sounds to me like someone is straining for a rhetorical point. I assume so, since that sentence has fuck all to do with thinking.

The point is that you're the one who isn't doing enough thinking. Hence why you haven't differentated between "feels like" and "behaves like it feels like" and you agree with me that fish and reptiles probably don't feel pain, but apparently it's absurd for me to think that birds don't either and you haven't done anything to justify your own position. And you don't have to. I haven't justified mine, but you are pretending like the fat birds behave a certain way is the same thing as what they actually feel and I am focusing on pointing out a distinction that you have failed to recognize.

First, my apologies. I didn't realize -- lowly pleb that I am -- that I was in the presence of nobility. Second, before you start in about how I'm an unthinking nutjob, you might want to learn the most basic fucking thing about domains.

Anyway, I'm glad you like animals -- even the bacterial 'kind'.

Sarcastic and irrelevant and yet still missing the actual point! 3 out of 3, bravo!

Again, to quote from this article again: https://www.academia.edu/411597/The_self..._Explained

It may seem obvious that vision, say, has survival value. But a creature could enjoy all the benefits of vision without having any actual, conscious visual experience. It could
have light-sensitive organs that enabled it to register information about its environment without having any visual experience (machines that do this can be easily constructed). The same can be said about pain. Experience of pain seems obviously useful because it motivates one to avoid sources of damage. But the tendency to avoid sources of damage could evolve without involving pain. Damage-recognition mechanisms could trigger damage-source-avoidance behaviour without there having to be any actual feeling of pain, or any other sort of experience. Perhaps some actual organisms on earth are like this.

^ Makes the exact distinction I'm taking about.