In the case of humans, it seems self-evident that suffering is a consciously experienced, mental or psychological phenomenon. This makes it difficult to quantify, given our lack of access to other beings’ qualia.
I think we can actually say something about minds in general here. Suffering is tied to how we relate to certain qualia, that is, suffering is qualia about qualia, and to put a fine point on it I’d say suffering is a kind of confusion (an incorrect prediction, in the predictive processing model) we experience as aversive (negative feedback). This suggests that any thing we think shows signs of capacity to perceive its own experience is likely to be capable of suffering, though whether or not it actually suffers is harder to suss out because humans can, though extensive training, learn to not suffer under conditions that would normally cause suffering by changing how they relate to pain.
I realize this doesn’t really address the broader point of your post, but since you’re thinking about these topics I thought you might find a more precise explanation of suffering of interest since it took mea while to pick t
I think we can actually say something about minds in general here. Suffering is tied to how we relate to certain qualia, that is, suffering is qualia about qualia, and to put a fine point on it I’d say suffering is a kind of confusion (an incorrect prediction, in the predictive processing model) we experience as aversive (negative feedback). This suggests that any thing we think shows signs of capacity to perceive its own experience is likely to be capable of suffering, though whether or not it actually suffers is harder to suss out because humans can, though extensive training, learn to not suffer under conditions that would normally cause suffering by changing how they relate to pain.
I realize this doesn’t really address the broader point of your post, but since you’re thinking about these topics I thought you might find a more precise explanation of suffering of interest since it took me a while to pick t