Since we have a higher state of awareness as humans, might we also have more intense experiences of pain / pleasure / emotions?

Why do you assume we have a higher state of awareness? I would start by defining what you mean there because it’s relative. Elephants are very aware, dolphins have fucking sonar, birds can feel the magnetic fields of the earth. Humans tend to think how they experience the world and reality is a “higher state” but that is a false assumption, imo.

Probably the opposite.

Our "higher reasoning" and "state of awareness" (needs defining) gives us the ability to do thigns other animals can't. For example chronic pain sufferers are taught how to manage their pain with a variety of CBT techniques. Not something you can teach a dog or cat.

People in intense periods of intense suffering may have thw ability to dissociate from the experience ("go to their happy place") to lessen the pain experience.

We're not aware animal shave this ability.

If anything mammals of all kinds that feel pain don't have our higher cognitive ability to help manage and supress it.

Having said that it's possible we feel more emotionally complex pain. Pain induced from our own minds by remembering trauma or imagining painful situations. As someone pointed out below a dying animal probably isn't thinking about the loss of it's family as it's dying. But it will be feeling the pain of dying acutely.

Having seen my dogs uncontained levels of excitement and euphoria as well as grumpy and depressed days first hand I would say not.

I think we are more capable of analyzing the emotions we feel, which probably makes them more intense.

If I'm dying, and I know I'm going too die, I will be thinking about my family and what my death might do to them. If I'm a deer, I doubt I'm thinking about all that while I'm doing. I think that adds a level of intensity to it.

We say that we as humans have “higher reasoning” but most of, if not all of, our reasoning is predicated on animal instincts. People are capable of thinking through their actions and emotions and such, sure. Those same people also don’t always do so. How many times have you or someone you know let their emotions get the better of them, even if they are “aware” of them? That’s not really any different from a spooked horse running off or a hurt dog trying to bite the person trying to help.

“Higher awareness” is much the same. In fact many animals have senses far greater than ours (like a dog’s sense of smell) or which we lack entirely (like sonar.)

All mammals at least have similar brain structures with the same general set of glands and functions. Even the way humans think and feel and reason is different from one another, but we can still identify core emotions in one another. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that just because animals don’t experience the world exactly like us, doesn’t mean they don’t have similar feelings and reasons for feeling those things.

My guess is that awareness plays into it through humans' perceptions of time. We can both anticipate and recollect pleasurable/painful experiences in ways fish probably can't. We can use our imaginations to torture ourselves, or mentally escape painful circumstances.

How this balances out in terms of intensity? Idk lmao

I'm not sure tbh. I think our level of consciousness is probly more intense empathetically. It's a web and we can all be connected on the same frequency.

But I'm not a fish. I think they are more steady going, while we trip over ourselves. So I would say yes to your question. I'm not a scientist (:

I think we are immensely biased being human, and not being able to communicate that well with animals.
Other animals don't cease to surprise us, and there are so many species that have heightened or entirely different senses than we do.
I feel like there's so much we don't yet know about these things and that there are many things that are accepted with hand wavey reasoning

Emotions evolved a long time ago and pain and pleasure are even older. They are essencial for survival of organisms and the intensity is apropriate for their function. It is therefore reasonable to think other organisms feel them with similar intensity. If anything, they need to rely on them more, so the experience could be more intense for them. There's surely going to be quite a bit of diversity though.

Edit: Let me add that this is an awsome question. Thanks for making me think about the way other people, animals and different organisms experience the world. I love it!

Depends on several factors and your definition, specially physical vs. psycological.

For example raw fear and happiness is usually quite a bit lower in adult humans than animals. Animals will do things like pass out from excitement, soil themselves out of fear, etc. and although this does happen a bit with human children it is much more rare in adults.

Maybe pain and pleasure resulting from emotions/psychological sources? Pain and pleasure are pretty essential for creatures to not do the bad things and to do the good things for the survival of their species. Otherwise, they die of hunger or get permanently maimed without even realizing it.

Not more intense, but deeper and more complex. There's still the pain stimulus, but it comes with the burden of knowledge. "Will I survive this? What will happen to my family? Why is this happening?" I'm sure pain is quite intense in lesser animals, but the intellectual response is simpler or altogether absent.

Ive heard ppl say stuff like "oh that animal doesnt feel pain it's not intelligent" but idk i always just assume the animal has feeling and could be hurt.. so thats why i havent been able to kill bugs. (Bc you can see their eyes and stuff! Theyre alive and everything.)