You're mistaken. Noxiception is the evolutionary adaptation. That is the response of an organism to a potentially hazardous stimulus. Sometimes called "pain response", but it's not suffering.
> Suffering of a cow is certainly very similar to suffering of a human being, but suffering of an ant? Probably not.
Probably probably probably probably. You know science?
So noxiception has been proven in organisms as simple as C. Elegans.
Suffering has been proven in organisms as simple as snails. They were subjected to painful but non-damaging stimuli (hot needle) for a prolonged period of time and this measurably reduced their ability to learn (learning very simply maze puzzles, which snails can do). It paints a pretty clear picture of trauma.
Out of your insulting tone (I should frankly tell you to GFY), that doesn't explain the less why "pain" should be the measure of all things. And recently plants have been showed to display response to aggression, too. So far this is all a bunch of smug, moralistic bullshit that leads nowhere.
I actually tried to explain what you can measure beyond simply "pain" (noxiception) about suffering. Because like you said, noxiception is present in many organisms and in many cases it can be (IMO very reasonably) argued they are simple stimulus-response mechanisms (without moral value), while in other cases (say, a dog suffering) it can be (also reasonably) argued that there are more complex things going on and morality comes into play.
The question is where to draw the line, which is hard. But you can estimate bounds of what constitutes suffering. I agree that merely having a specific response to a noxic stimulus isn't suffering. But I do believe that the fact that you can (long-term) damage the learning ability of a snail by applying otherwise non-harmful (but painful) stimuli, is something that at least to me comes awfully close to what I'd consider psychological trauma in a human. So it's not really a matter that it responds to some stimulus (like plants), but that the way in which it does shows a higher level function that to me seems somewhat analogous to how we suffer.
Doesn't tell me where exactly to draw the line, but does give me a clearer picture somewhat, at least leads me somewhere further than simply "does it have a pain-response?".
You're mistaken. Noxiception is the evolutionary adaptation. That is the response of an organism to a potentially hazardous stimulus. Sometimes called "pain response", but it's not suffering.
> Suffering of a cow is certainly very similar to suffering of a human being, but suffering of an ant? Probably not.
Probably probably probably probably. You know science?
So noxiception has been proven in organisms as simple as C. Elegans.
Suffering has been proven in organisms as simple as snails. They were subjected to painful but non-damaging stimuli (hot needle) for a prolonged period of time and this measurably reduced their ability to learn (learning very simply maze puzzles, which snails can do). It paints a pretty clear picture of trauma.