Do animals have emotions like us?
Do animals have emotions like us?
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Shenanigans. Cats are just like “now that you are home, feed me, peasant.”
I was also like that when I was a child. Along with "did you bring anything?"
Yes. Science is the difference between knowing and feeling.
We feel like animals have emotions but is often because we are projecting ourselves on them. We inject emotional motivations on them because of how it makes us feel. Breaking that illusion would likely reduce the emotional benefit we experience from allowing these little creatures in our homes.
https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2021.622811/full
From all this research, it seems that the similarities between human and animal emotions might be closer than we would have expected a few decades ago. Animals react to their environments much as humans do. They respond emotionally to others and they evaluate situations in a similar way, becoming stressed and anxious in times of danger. While we may never know exactly how animals feel, studies have found that there are definite behavioural and physiological similarities in emotional expressions between humans and animals. We can thus infer, with quite some confidence, that animals can feel emotions. The more we discover about the behavioural and physiological components of emotions in animals, the more we understand about emotions, including our own ones, and how they affect the way we behave in our world.
You're right, but in that vein it's incredibly difficult to scientifically confirm that other humans have emotions outside of explicit communication. If you follow that line of thinking, you might as well assume that babies can't really feel pain or something (which up until somewhat recently was the going assumption). You might not know, but it's not unreasonable to assume they do unless proven otherwise, even if you don't know what they're feeling or to what extent.
There is a vast difference between human emotions and feeling pain. I think it's ridiculous that anyone could equate the two. The nuance is in whether a cat can feel love or if it's something more basic.
We actually know that some people don't feel normal emotions. That is a strong indication that emotions are not innate to all animals.
This is a pretty strange stance to argue. As far as I can see you're saying:
- we can't know another animal's emotional state
- some humans rarely have abnormalities in how they feel emotions
- from 1 and 2 it is possible that emotional capacity is not universal in animals
- from 3 it is unlikely non human animals are comparable to human animals in emotional capacity
I just don't see how you get from 3 to 4. It would seem to me given how similar humans are to at least other mammals, specifically in the neural structures we believe to be where emotions arise and in the behaviours we believe to be emotionally driven, we should strongly suspect they have emotions highly comparable to us and not the reverse.
Why would the default assumption be they don't?
There are levels to emotion. I postulate that there comes a point where language is required to achieve a higher state of emotion.
For example remorse. It's required understanding one is able to cause others harm. Can you reasonable state this is an innate emotion? I would strongly argue it requires understanding of cause and effect that requires verbal communication to understand.
With animals we train them with reinforcement techniques. Which children we do the same but continue to expand upon it on with verbal reasoning
I postulate that there comes a point where language is required to achieve a higher state of emotion.
Right, just so we're clear you're making shit up and clothing it in the language of science.
I am not banning you yet because I'm not sure you quite understand what you just implied but it's hard not to read this as a claim that humans with different capacities for language don't reach your enlightened heights of emotional complexity.
That is a very dangerous attitude which has been used to justify absolutely horrendous stuff.
Do you uh, wanna backpedal from that claim?
I postulate that there comes a point where language is required to achieve a higher state of emotion.
Ah finally! A justification to eat my own child! Thank you kind stranger!