[ExI] The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill

[William Flynn Wallace]

point - neither habituation nor sensitization are learning - both are
temporary effects - bill w

On Mon, May 1, 2023 at 8:26 AM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> https://www.gov.uk/government/news/lobsters-octopus-and-crabs-recognised-as-sentient-beings
> https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220720-do-octopuses-feel-pain
>
>
> In light of the quite incredible debate that has raged on ExI
> regarding sentience and consciousness for the past few weeks, I
> thought this was interesting. Apparently, the government of the UK has
> a list of animals that are deemed sentient for legal purposes such as
> protection from cruelty, etc. Notably, it has most recently added
> certain invertebrates to the list like cephalopods and crustacean
> based on 8 explicitly stated criteria for whether an animal can feel
> pain gleaned from over 300 scientific studies:
>
> 1. possession of nociceptors (receptors that detect noxious stimuli –
> such as temperatures hot enough to burn, or a cut)
> 2. possession of parts of the brain that integrate sensory information
> 3. connections between nociceptors and those integrative brain regions
> 4. responses affected by local anaesthetics or analgesics
> 5. motivational trade-offs that show a balancing of threat against
> opportunity for reward
> 6. flexible self-protective behaviours in response to injury and threat
> 7. associative learning that goes beyond habituation and sensitisation
> 8. behaviour that shows the animal values local anaesthetics or
> analgesics when injured
>
> While obviously, LLM and AI are not equipped to feel pain, the fact
> that a government is enlightened enough to use scientific research in
> order to spare sentient beings pain and suffering is impressive and
> forward thinking. So way to go, UK! :)
>
> Stuart LaForge
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20230501/9ce9165d/attachment.htm>