noumenal animal

It struck me, yesterday, as I revelled in my delights about Kant’s critique of pure reason finally clicking for me (well, as much as it is going to for now), that I had actually been putting forward, what I think is, a Kantian argument for some years now.
It revolves around the question of pain in animals. My argument being that we cannot even being to use the word “pain” when talking about animals. Pain is a purely subjective, a priori condition of the human mind which it makes no sense for us to associate with animals. I guess, metaphorically, I could say that Kant would have included animals as part of the noumenal realm. Apart from seeing their reactions (scientifically measuring them) we can never comprehend anything more. The only way we can say anything about them, is via the use of human terminology, comparisons with human reactions, and by the use of human understanding. I regard as a pretty anthropocentric take on the world.
When we try to define pain we don’t define it as “ouch, that hurts”; because this could apply to an infinite number of things, and then there is also the whole pain/pleasure aspect. However, what we can define it as “I don’t like this experience, and I want it to stop happening to me”. Can we conceive of an animal going through the same thought processes? Can we conceive of animals being able to think of “me”, themselves, think about their identity, and how pain is related themselves?
No we cannot possibly conceive of this, as we don’t have access to what is like to think in such a way. However, this is in no way a denial that animals can feel pain, but rather a critique of the way humans impose their phenomological view onto the rest of the world.
For humans, we have self-consciousness, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the individual, yet we have no way of assessing this in animals. Yet we claim that an animal feels pain in the same sense that we feel pain, and this seems problematic.
The is along the lines as saying that a dog is happy when it wags its tail, we can measure certain chemicals in that dog, but I think this is a question of self-consciousness rather than a science lab.

watchmaker

Seriously, I cannot believe that I am stillllll hearing these trendy psuedo-intellectuals and scientists use the “argument from design” as a last resort so as to not completely be seen as utter nihilists………there are other ways out you know!
Science is perfectly compatible with religion anyway!
So according to this argument, the very fact that the universe has been so perfectly coordinated to allow for our existence, and the fact that a zillion specific details had to be in place, at just the right moment in time and space (if we are to ignore Kant here), then this must be more than just chance or luck; there must have been some kind of intentionality, a designer which organised this.
BUT, what we forget, is that we have no idea of what we could have been, if something else tiny may have been in place. There is nothing essential about humans, or life on this planet, who knows, if it the temperature had been different at the time of the big bang we may have had an immunity to cancer, yet we would know no difference. Basically, things could have been otherwise, yet we would still apply this argument, and that defeats its point!

also, at what point do dirty drawings of children, or as is more relevant, virtual children as in 2nd Life, become subsumed under the title "child abuse"?