[jbrown]

> What living things do you know that go actively out of their way to experience pain and suffering?

There are plenty of masochists out there in the world. Recently there was a pretty clear example of this described in the popular podcast S-Town.

[freeflight]

Masochists are the outlier that pretty much always exists and are a rather bad example because humans are the only species with the luxury of possibly having such a, rather destructive, trait among their population.

Afaik there are no wild animals exhibiting behavior that's comparable to human masochism if animals with comparable traits existed they most likely went extinct because going out of your way to actively look for "pain and suffering" is a rather big disadvantage in the grand game of survival.

[jbrown]

> Afaik there are no wild animals exhibiting behavior that's comparable to human masochism

The context of this whole discussion is hedonism, utilitarianism, ethical theory, and philosophy in general. These ideas don't exist (to our knowledge) amongst animals, so I don't find it convincing to use animals to support your argument.

[freeflight]

>These ideas don't exist (to our knowledge) amongst animals, so I don't find it convincing to use animals to support your argument.

But aren't we humans just that, animals? While the concept of ethical hedonism is of a rather philosophical nature, I still think the basic definition of hedonism translates very well into actual nature.

At least when hedonism is defined as "strive for pleasure and happiness" while evading "pain and suffering" there should be no issue applying this to other animals because we know for a fact that animals, besides humans, are able of these emotions and feelings.

What we don't know is if other animals actively reflect about these things. But that's a matter of motivation and not actual observed behavior, if we go by observed behavior than pretty much all living things are living a "hedonistic lifestyle".