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"If a lion could talk, we would not understand him." I would differentiate being able to characterize the behavior from being able to 'understand' the behavior
by JackFr 7y ago
"If a lion could talk, we would not understand him."
I would differentiate being able to characterize the behavior from being able to 'understand' the behavior. If for the sake of argument, we assume orcas and humpback whales have higher brain functions around the level of humans, I would argue it's still impossible for us to understand the humpbacks motivation because his mind is completely alien to ours.
- dmix 7y agoAll life on earth comes from the same competitive biology though. The motivations of all species and organisms follow some predictable trends and patterns. The ROI of preemptively attacking a predator while the dolphins are busy/tired from hunting while also taking food away from them in the process isn't a giant mystery. The chances of it being Occam's Razor competition being species is just as likely as it crossing some higher abstract threshold for actually caring about some other 3rd party specie's individual survival because they're 'nice' or disgusted by the site (as others in this thread have implied). Ultimately they don't seem to face much personal risk while doing this as the Killer Whales aren't big enough to take them on.
- circlefavshape 7y agoI think Wittgenstein was probably wrong about lions.