Do primitive sentient organisms feel extreme pain? Disentangling intensity range and resolution
Welfare Footprint Institute. (2025)
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Abstract
Ultimate question: Do primitive sentient organisms experience extreme pain intensities, or fine-grained pain intensity discrimination, or both? Scientific framing: Pain functions as a biological signalling system that guides behavior by encoding motivational importance. The evolution of Pain signalling —its intensity range and resolution (i.e., the granularity with which differences in Pain intensity can be perceived)— can be viewed as an optimization problem, where neural architectures must balance computational efficiency, survival-driven signal prioritization, and adaptive flexibility. Mathematical clarification: Resolution is a fundamental requirement for encoding and processing information. Pain varies not only in overall intensity but also in granularity—how finely intensity levels can be distinguished. Hypothetical Evolutionary Pathways: by analysing affective intensity (low, high) and resolution (low, high) as independent dimensions, we describe four illustrative evolutionary scenarios that provide a structured framework to examine whether primitive sentient organisms can experience Pain of high intensity, nuanced affective intensities, both, or neither
Recommended citation:
Alonso, W. J. & Schuck-Paim, C. (2025). Do primitive sentient organisms feel extreme pain? Disentangling Intensity Range And Resolution. Welfare Footprint Institute Technical Paper Series. 253