The thing is, this raises much bigger and far reaching issues.

Science operates under the false assumption that animals don't really experience human-like or complex emotions. Its why they can be used for testing, used for food and their habitats can be destroyed. If that assumption goes away things are going to get interesting.

 

I'd agree that if it's got a spine, and central nervous system with a brain larger than both its eyes, chances are it feels and is self aware.

That said, animals don't have souls, and you can't disprove that with yer booklearnings.

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Sure I can. When i pour Unilever's Soul Away on animals, it fizzes...and that's how you know its working!

Seriously though, I think they'll find emotions exist in all warm blooded animals even if their brain isn't larger than their eyes.

This will get me flamed, but its true....I've seen chickens formulate and carry out a complex plan that involved team work and sharing. Friends of mine own a farm animal sanctuary, and I've volunteered there on occasion. My favorite thing to do was mow, because they have a bad *** 24hp 60inch deck zero turn mower (which is all kinds of fun). Anyway, mowing the chicken yard, spits out all kinds of bugs and grubs as the grass is cut. As I'm mowing this chicken is pacing side to side in front of the mower forcing me to go slow. While that's going on, I notice all the other chickens are eating the bugs and grubs shooting out form under the mower without missing any because I'm having to go so slow. At this point I think its coincidence, until the pacing chicken stops, calls out and one of the other chickens comes over while that one goes with others. The new chicken in front continues the pacing. This kept happening until I was done with the yard. They each took turns to slow down the mower and made sure everyone got a chance to eat.

Then there's Alex the African Grey parrot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_%28parrot%29

[video=youtube_share;7yGOgs_UlEc]http://youtu.be/7yGOgs_UlEc[/video]

 

Dolphins hunting. Nuff said. Though I think it's just an instinctive form of propagating/protecting the collective species.

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Yeah...but chickens. Their brains are the size of a pea. These chickens came form a factory farm where they were in stacked cages. They didn't know what a mower was when they got there so it wasn't learned behavior from generations of chickens. Over time they learned not only what happened when someone mowed, but how to collectively alter the situation to their biggest advantage and created a coordinated effort. All with pea-brains.

It makes Jets fans' existence and behavior all the more unacceptable.

 

Sadly. Jets fans cannot earn Darwin Awards. Real shame.

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animals have been more and more to be showing humans that they are smarter then we thought. Having said that, I'm not sure that means much since the bar wasn't that high to begin with.
I think if you are looking scientifically, an emotion would be some electrical interaction on the nervous system, which would lead me to believe that animals might be able to have emotions. I'm just not sure due to their lack of intelligence it would be as complex as ours, or complex enough to be considered an emotion.

 

What do you think qualifies as complex emotion?

 

that's a little warped in some ways:

- Science does not operate under a false assumption that animals don't experience complex emotions, the federal gov't absolutely mandates that any new drug must be tested in two sub-human species.
Most scientists (especially me) despise testing in dogs and monkeys, but testing in rodents isn't good enough for FDA.

- Science has nothing to do with the willingness to destroy animal habitats. If anything, it's a religious view that the earth and all it's animals are put here to serve and be used by mankind. Religion is the one that puts humans at the top of the pyramid, not science.

 

You're correct in that animals, especially canines, swine, monkeys... definitely have the scientific networking to have emotions. I would disagree that they don't have emotions. Some of the stuff that all life-long dog owners experience, and stuff I've seen regularly with my 15 dogs I've owned

1) you go on vacation, you come back, your dog is excited as hell to see you, but he then goes into a pouting phase for you abandoning him for a week.
2) I go on a business trip and my dogs stay home with my family. my dogs sit by the door everynight until late, waiting for me to come home because they miss me. my one dog won't barely sleep at night because he waits up for me.

 

I'm sure you personally don't feel that way about animals, but its not the norm or widely accepted theory. Its hard to deny, the ethical implications that would arise should it become accepted fact that animals have complex emotions.

I didn't mean to imply science's goal is to destroy animal habitats. However, many scientific disciplines are human centric pursuits, like medicine, food, communications, etc. I don't think I need to point out what often happens to nature when human interests are placed at the top of the list.

FTR, I'm an atheist who thinks the world would be better off looking to science for answers instead of religion, but its not like science is free of sin either....science after all, is conducted by people.

 

I think there's some disconnect in your 1st statement. While your 2nd statement is very true - science is not free of sin by any means, destroying habitat has a different root cause than the issues of medicine, food and communications. Destroying habitat has more to do with the religious belief that God put the earth here for us (which I blatantly disagree with). A long time ago drug (medicine) discovery tested new compounds in humans, not animals. It was the religious based scientists who eventually incorporated animal testing so humans wouldn't get hurt. I think that comes across too lopsided, there's always fault/spillover across the two, but it's mostly religion IMO.

The fact of the matter is, most animal models done in other species typically doesn't translate to humans and most scientists know this.

 

Science and industry have been responsible for a lot of destruction of the environment. From pollution to resources to weapons and weapons testing, you cannot tell me science doesn't have a lot of the blood on their hands. Yes, religion as a whole, has a very human centric view of things, but if you think, (as I do) that religion is essentially made up, then its not "religion" that created that human centric view, but it was humans that did it. If you see that, then you must also see how science can be human centric as well since the one thing science and religion have in common is...well...the humans.

Granted, science has a system of checks and balances that religion generally doesn't, which is why, as I said, science should be the way of all things, but that doesn't mean it cannot have an agenda, even a human one.

As for vivisection and experiments on human/animals, there has to be a disconnect between the scientist and the subject otherwise experiments and results can be compromised. That disconnect is easy to accomplish if you're testing two different circuits, but if you bring an animal or human into the equation it then becomes more tricky to not have emotional connections/reactions/bias/etc. One of the most common of human flaws is to break or avoid emotional connections/reactions/bias/etc. is to view the subject as lesser or beneath the viewer. Even when experiments were run on humans a long time ago, the human subject certainly weren't the white, wealthy and noble. They used the poor, the brown, the alone because it was easier for the scientist to distance themselves from the subject.

The toughest challenge science will face is not the tough questions it strives to answer, but the ones it does not, like the complexity of animal emotions, for the sake of easy ethics.

 

The ability to realize and think critically about said emotions.

 

WADR, I think that's a little off. To experience complex emotions, one has to be able to think critically about events and one's self...not to think critically about the emotions.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/11/emotion.aspx

 

I'd say both. Thinking about the emotion would also involve thinking about ones self and the reaction to said emotion. You however, have to think about the emotion as it is defined.

 

I still disagree. Assessing the emotion happens AFTER you've already begun to experience it.

Like in the link I provided, take shame. I don't have to be able to acknowledge and reflect upon shame as an emotion to experience shame. The opposite is true though. I cannot acknowledge or reflect upon shame unless I've experienced it. To that end, I'd say you cannot say a complex emotion needs the requirement of analyzing the emotion.

 

Well for something like shame, it would need something to be assessed as shameful. You may not think " I am ashamed" , but since it is not as basic as say fear, there are automatic physiological reactions attached and logical progressions. Since the emotion is more complex, and attached to ones morals (per your link) it would imply more processing is done, hence more assessment of shame, just how we as the individual define it, and so on would occur.

 

I know that when Max passed away, Pudy was "down" for a couple days. I kept his body overnight before taking him in to be cremated and she laid next to him most of the night. It didn't help that I was crying to whole time either.

 

I don't have any scientific evidence to prove...but I know Dog's have an emotional connection to their families just as we do to them. I know this like I know what a glass of water is. And honestly, no scientific evidence would convince me otherwise. Ive had dogs my whole life, and I can feel the connection Ive always had with them, as Im sure most dog owners would agree. As for the OT....watch this...and tell me Dogs don't mourn over their masters. The first time I saw this....I cried like a baby.

[video=youtube;61uWdERyOZs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61uWdERyOZs[/video]

 

If I'm outside, I can hear Spook, Storme and Pebbles wine inside.

 

This. This. This. x1000


We for some reason think animals have a lower sense of being or self....my favorite example of this falsity is the decoy spider that actually creates a rough (much larger) decoy of itself in its web to scare away predators. Even plants click their roots when herbivores are approaching and self regulate their food stores based on weather using advanced math.

We don't give nature enough credit for it's sentience.

 

The choice will be to embrace your apex predator status or embrace veganism...

Of course, if it's then discovered that plants also have complex feelings and/or emotions, there will really be a single choice... ;)

 

Okay Frummundah, you win. We agree you are justified in wanting to marry a billy goat for the way your eyes meet whenever either of you enters a room.

 

I actually do believe plants are alive (whether they feel complex emotion or not) in a way we don't fully understand, comprehend or appreciate. It actually is the only reason I eat meat still, because I don't make a major distinction between forms of life. I mean life is life whether we can relate to it or not.