Philosophical Vegan Forum

May we now talk about pain in fish?

Let's start with the most obvious question: Why isn't saying "Maybe bony fish feel pain in spite of not having type-C neurofibers, by type-A-delta neurofibers playing the same role in bony fish as type-C neurofibers do in birds and mammals." an obvious ad-hoc hypothesis?

No, start with: Fish are sentient beings regardless of whether they feel conventional technical pain like most mammals or not, because pain is only one kind of sensation and not a prerequisite for sentience or moral worth (to make this very clear, many humans do not feel pain either, but retain moral value). Fish exhibit all of the important behavioral indications of reward seeking behavior and true learning needed for an undeniable smoking gun of sentience. Fish also exhibit undeniable signs of physical discomfort (such as itching) and psychological stress regardless of whether any of those negative qualia qualify as "pain" in the technical medical sense, so even to a strict negative utilitarian fish should still have moral worth. Fish experience pain in the informal sense of the word which most people understand.

Whether fish experience exactly what we call "pain" in the technical medical mammalian sense of a particular response to tissue damage is of very limited to no philosophical significance, and amounts to an academic debate.

If you accept all of that, Teo, then you may present your argument that "fish don't feel technical medical pain" in understanding that it's not a particularly interesting topic in philosophy and has virtually no impact on whether it's OK to kill and eat them without dire need.
Such an argument, FYI, will probably be ignored as uninteresting. Also, it should be confined to this thread only.

brimstoneSalad wrote:many humans do not feel pain either, but retain moral value

Sure, but that's because human beings have complicated brains capable of other types of suffering. Fish do not have that.

brimstoneSalad wrote:Fish exhibit all of the important behavioral indications of reward seeking behavior and true learning needed for an undeniable smoking gun of sentience.

I don't know what you are talking about.

brimstoneSalad wrote: Fish also exhibit undeniable signs of physical discomfort (such as itching)

And, yet, James D. Rose has, in his paper "Why fish (most likely) don't feel pain" cited a dozen of observations of parasites doing all sorts of horrible things to fish'es body without apparently affecting the fish'es behaviour.

brimstoneSalad wrote: Fish experience pain in the informal sense of the word which most people understand.

What? I think that most of the people would say that people with congenital analgesia "don't feel pain". FIsh "don't feel pain" in precisely the same sense.