The idea that animals might not suffer Suffering, or pain, is an individual's basic affective experience of unpleasantness and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm. Suffering may be qualified as physical, or mental. It may come in all degrees of intensity, from mild to intolerable. Factors of duration and frequency of occurrence usually compound that of intensity. In or feel pain Pain is the unpleasant and aversive feeling common to such experiences as a stubbed toe, a headache, a burnt finger, and salt in a wound. Typically, pain is characterized by its intensity, location and duration. It is initiated by stimulation of nociceptors in the peripheral nervous system, or by damage to or malfunction of the peripheral or as human beings do traces back to the 17th-century French philosopher, René Descartes René Descartes , (31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650), also known as Renatus Cartesius (Latinized form), was a French philosopher, mathematician, physicist, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the "Father of Modern Philosophy", and much of subsequent Western philosophy is a response to, who argued that animals lack consciousness Consciousness is subjective experience or awareness or wakefulness or the executive control system of the mind. It is an umbrella term that may refer to a variety of mental phenomena. Although humans realize what everyday experiences are, consciousness refuses to be defined, philosophers note :.[1][2][3] Bernard Rollin Bernard E. Rollin is an American philosopher who specializes in animal rights and animal consciousness. He is a professor of philosophy, animal sciences, and biomedical sciences at Colorado State University of Colorado State University, the principal author of two U.S. federal laws regulating pain relief for animals, writes that researchers remained unsure into the 1980s as to whether animals experience pain, and veterinarians trained in the U.S. before 1989 were simply taught to ignore animal pain.[4] In his interactions with scientists and other veterinarians, Bernard Rollin was regularly asked to "prove" that animals are conscious, and to provide "scientifically acceptable" grounds for claiming that they feel pain.[4] Some authors say that the view that animals feel pain differently is now a minority view.[1] Academic reviews of the topic are more equivocal, noting that although the argument that animals have at least simple conscious thoughts and feelings has strong support,[5] some critics continue to question how reliably animal mental states can be determined.[2][6]
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