Daphnids are freshwater crustaceans used in toxicity tests. Although lethality and
immobilisation are the most commonly used endpoints in those tests, more sensitive …

Debates around fishes' ability to feel pain concern sentience: do reactions to tissue damage
indicate evaluative consciousness (conscious affect), or mere nociception? Thanks to …

Pain is a negative affective state arising from tissue damage or inflammation. Because pain
is aversive and its relief is innately rewarding, animals may learn to avoid a context in which …

We argue that pain is not needed to protect the body from damage unless the organism is
able to make free choices in action selection. Then pain (including its affective and …

This paper assesses two different theories for explaining consciousness, a phenomenon
that is widely considered amenable to scientific investigation despite its puzzling subjective …

Understanding the neural bases of subjective experience remains one of the great
challenges of the natural sciences. Higher-order theories of consciousness are typically …

Whether insects (Insecta) have the subjective experience of pain is difficult to answer.
Recent work in humans demonstrated that the experience of pain occurs due to the …

The appearance of consciousness in the universe remains one of the major mysteries
unsolved by science or philosophy. Absent an agreed-upon definition of consciousness or …

How subjective experience is realized in nervous systems remains one of the great
challenges in the natural sciences. An answer to this question should resolve debate about …

It is often assumed that in the collapse of the Aristotelian distinction between art and nature
that results from the rise of mechanical philosophies in the early modern period, the collapse …