Then self-aware is quite a bad word for it. I suspect that fish and newborn babies can feel pain and pleasure, but that they’re not ‘self-aware’ the way I’d use that word.
Nociception has been demonstrated in insects. Small insects.
Edit: Not to mention C. elegans, which has somewhere around three hundred neurons total.
So the Buddhists were right all along!
(FWIW, I assign a very small but non-zero ethical value to insects.)
Then self-aware is quite a bad word for it. I suspect that fish and newborn babies can feel pain and pleasure, but that they’re not ‘self-aware’ the way I’d use that word.
Nociception has been demonstrated in insects. Small insects.
Edit: Not to mention C. elegans, which has somewhere around three hundred neurons total.
So the Buddhists were right all along!
(FWIW, I assign a very small but non-zero ethical value to insects.)