If an animal can learn to avoid pain (not just avoid it right now, but memorize what happened at given conditions and avoid these conditions), then the animal can suffer.
Is it any easier to determine if an animal is in “pain” than if it is “suffering”? The quotes are because I can’t be sure what you mean by these words, which have a range of uses. “Pain” is sometimes broadened to mean the same as “suffering”, and “suffering” broadened so far as to mean “not getting what one wanted.”
How do other entities fit into this, such as plants, self-driving cars, and configurations in Conway’s Life?
First of all, it is my mistake—in the paper they used pain more like a synonym to suffering. They wanted to clarify that the animal avoids tissue damage (heat, punching, electric shock etc.) not just on the place, but learns to avoid it. To avoid it right there is simply nociception that can be seen in many low-level animals.
I don’t know much about the examples you mentioned. For example, bacterias certainly can’t learn to avoid stimuli associated with something bad for them. (Well, they can on the scale of evolution, but not as a single bacteria).
Is it any easier to determine if an animal is in “pain” than if it is “suffering”? The quotes are because I can’t be sure what you mean by these words, which have a range of uses. “Pain” is sometimes broadened to mean the same as “suffering”, and “suffering” broadened so far as to mean “not getting what one wanted.”
How do other entities fit into this, such as plants, self-driving cars, and configurations in Conway’s Life?
First of all, it is my mistake—in the paper they used pain more like a synonym to suffering. They wanted to clarify that the animal avoids tissue damage (heat, punching, electric shock etc.) not just on the place, but learns to avoid it. To avoid it right there is simply nociception that can be seen in many low-level animals.
I don’t know much about the examples you mentioned. For example, bacterias certainly can’t learn to avoid stimuli associated with something bad for them. (Well, they can on the scale of evolution, but not as a single bacteria).