I guess it just seems to me that it’s meaningless to talk about what someone would prefer if they knew about/understood X, given that they are incapable of such knowledge/understanding. You can talk about what a human in similar circumstances would think, but projecting this onto the animal seems like anthropomorphizing to me.
You do have a good point that physiological damage should probably still be considered harmful to an animal even if it doesn’t cause pain, since the pre-modified animal can understand the concept of such damage and would prefer to avoid it. However, this just means that giving the animal a painkiller doesn’t solve the problem completely, not that it doesn’t do something valuable.
I guess it just seems to me that it’s meaningless to talk about what someone would prefer if they knew about/understood X, given that they are incapable of such knowledge/understanding. You can talk about what a human in similar circumstances would think, but projecting this onto the animal seems like anthropomorphizing to me.
You do have a good point that physiological damage should probably still be considered harmful to an animal even if it doesn’t cause pain, since the pre-modified animal can understand the concept of such damage and would prefer to avoid it. However, this just means that giving the animal a painkiller doesn’t solve the problem completely, not that it doesn’t do something valuable.