Abstract

… the capacity to see depends on having a rich conception of the surface, a rich conception of what it is to be a living thing and therefore how to describe what it does and what it suffers.In 2005, a Guardian news article appeared with the heading "Scientists say lobsters feel no pain."1 It was a report about findings from a group of Norwegian scientists who claimed that there is no evidence to suggest that invertebrates, including crustaceans and insects, feel pain. While the author of the news article suggested that this research might somehow dispel the ethical qualms regarding the usual way humans cook and eat lobsters and crabs, it is not entirely clear as to how a new empirical discovery can help to settle...