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Comment by User23 | Hacker News Reader

All animals are sentient by definition:

  Having a faculty, or faculties, of sensation and perception.

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This is a really sweeping statement. Some animals like jellyfish or corals do not have brains. Even if they are sometimes responsive to their environment, is that "perception"? Even if you think the answer is "yes", I hope you can see that it's not a trivial or obvious conclusion, and an unqualified statement about "all animals" may not be warranted.

How do you prove that an animal has sensation?

What does sensation mean in this context and how is it different from perception?

Sensation is perception related to direct contact, so for humans for example it would include the senses of touch, pain, and taste, among others.

So you don't say that you percieve stimuli with touch, taste and pain receptors? Instead you should say that you sense it? I'm not a native speaker. That's why I'm curious about the distinction.

Yes, you perceive things you touch, because perception encompasses each and every sense. "To sense" does not mean exactly to use sensation. "To sense" can either be used as a synonym of "to perceive" or as a vaguer form of awareness. For example, you could say that you "sense danger" even when nothing is immediately threatening, if you can see various signs that all put together point to something being wrong.

Capacity to suffer.

How do you prove that a human has sensation?

Even in other metrics like the mirror test, plenty of children in various cultures fail because they don’t know what you want them to do, or care

And then we try to get an animal half that age to prove to us the same thing, for our own inconsequential hubris

It is pretty ridiculous

You can't.

see if it reacts to touch?

Similarity with our own physical constitution? Similarity of behavior when we are in pain and they are in pain? And all the other cues that tell us that, indeed, they are sentient beings?

Ever watched someone work on a chickens feet that have a staph infection? Seems like the infection must hurt like hell because chickens won’t stand on it and limp around. Watching someone treat these infections you’d think chickens pretty much don’t feel pain. I don’t think your suggestion is as clear-cut as you think it is.

Not having sensation would be a massive evolutionary disadvantage...

Isn't it going out on a limb to say that...

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