The idea that animals might not experience pain or suffering as humans do traces back at least to the 17th-century French philosopher, René Descartes, who argued that animals lack consciousness.[14][15][16] Researchers remained unsure into the 1980s as to whether animals experience pain, and veterinarians trained in the U.S. before 1989 were simply taught to ignore animal pain.[17]

I was clearly referring to the past view, which is why I said we're not in those days anymore. I was indicating the pretty benighted attitude that science used to have about animal pain, and that some scientists apparently still do about ToM.

As of this moment there is no clearly accepted theoretical model on how animals or human consciousness works. Just lots of open to debate hypotheses. Because for all we understand about neurons and processing of the mind.

You're tangling up separate issues. The computational process which indicates that a creature's mental model includes other entities which are doing their own processing has nothing to do with consciousness. Even AIs can have a "theory of mind" about other entities or not.

You seem really committed to the idea of lecturing me on this. Not sure why. Anyway, I've sent you enough citations that you can educate yourself on the topic if you feel like, I'm pretty much done with talking about it.

[–] HumanPenguin@feddit.uk 1 points 3 days ago

Actually when you discuse the 187th century. You are talking about pre revisionist science. IE before the definition of the scientific method.

And all the articles you shared were dated 1990s to late 2010s so no you were in no way talking about past views. But instead questioning hypothesis and reviews that has so far failed to form scientific theories on the subject.