[veryworried]

I don’t see why they bothered drugging the brains. Even if they became conscious, the pig’s bodies are dead and gone. There is nothing to feel, one is simply alone with their thoughts, perhaps even dreams.

[keithwhor]

You have no way of really understanding the magnitude of endless existential dread or physical pain a disembodied brain might perceive, which I think is the primary concern of ethicists.

In order for these sorts of experiments to be ethical with an apparent consciousness we definitely need BCI technology that can simulate input / output stimuli, at least reasonably.

[Sharlin]

We don’t know what a brain disconnected from all sensory inputs feels. It could be agonizing pain for all that we know.

[dpatrick86]

It sure seems like patterns of cortical activation (or something like that) could be compared to some sort of waking standard to take a very good measured guess at some point.

[charlieo88]

Fear of being blind and alone, unable to even draw a breath to bleat out a cry for help perhaps? Plus, the pig WAS dead. Even if they are just alone with their thoughts, there probably was some trauma surrounding become an ex-pig.

[peterwwillis]

Not all pain is physical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pain

Technically, the medical community only considers physical injury with the term 'pain', but there is growing consensus that pain can be more general (especially considering it is often subjective). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2952112/

[matchbok]

Pain exists in the brain, not the body.

[tannerc]

All response experience exists within the brain, yes, but it is only ever made possible through external stimulus. The brain itself doesn't feel anything, but generates those feelings as a response to events outside of itself.

"If it seems strange that nerve signals coming from the back can represent vision, bear in mind that your own sense of vision is carried by nothing but millions of nerve signals that just happen to travel along different cables. Your brain is encased in absolute blackness in the vault of your skull. It doesn’t see anything. All it knows are these little signals and nothing else. And yet you perceive the world in shades of brightness and colors. Your brain is in the dark but your mind constructs the light." — David Eagleman in his book Incognito.

Without the nerves connecting your toe to your brain, you are unlikely to feel the otherwise agonizing pain of having had stubbed it against a coffee table.

[veryworried]

No matter how hard I think, I cannot seem to manifest any true pain in my mind. I doubt a pig could either.

[equalunique]

Perhaps the fact the the brain was disconnected from the body was a major factor in why no signs of consciousness were recorded. Consciousness may be the byproduct of a living body sending signals to a living brain.

[TeMPOraL]

> Consciousness may be the byproduct of a living body sending signals to a living brain.

Might be, but unlikely. Both our medical and legal (executions) experience shows that most parts of the body can be removed or paralyzed without impacting consciousness. It really seems like the obvious model - that the brain alone is the center of consciousness - is the correct one.

[scotty79]

Phantom limb can hurt. Phantom body might hurt too.

[nkrisc]

That's quite the extraordinary claim. Is there any evidence to backup that assertion? As far as I'm aware nobody knows what a living brain detached from the body actually experiences.