3 ms·

I was going to downvote out of disagreement, but, on second thought, this makes good sense. We probably wouldn't hesitate to say "I don't believe $NONHUMAN_ANI

I was going to downvote out of disagreement, but, on second thought, this makes good sense. We probably wouldn't hesitate to say "I don't believe $NONHUMAN_ANIMAL parents love their children, and vice-versa...." about most animals. There might be hesitation when it comes to apes, monkeys, and maybe dogs, but I can imagine people would say it about, say, hyenas, and it would seem plausible.

ComputerGuru 6y ago
I don’t know about “love” because it has a lot of connotations but try to take a baby from a litter from any animal and watch how crazy mama animal gets. Swans, cats, birds, dogs, bears, whales, whatever.
Sharlin 6y ago
It's easy to anthropomorphize animals, but it's also easy to go overboard in the other direction. In general, as our understanding of animal cognition has increased, we have moved away from human exceptionalism, finding that traits once thought to be unique to humans are anything but. Certainly we've come far from the Cartesian viewpoint of non-human animals as mindless automata. "Love" in particular, of course, is both a highly loaded and acutely ill-defined concept, so "can a <non-human animal> feel love" is probably a wrong question [1]. By the way, it's rather appropriate that you mentioned hyenas given how misunderstood they are by laypeople, in no small part due to their presentation in a certain Disney film. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XzrqkhfwtiSDgKoAF/wrong-questions https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XzrqkhfwtiSDgKoAF/wrong-ques...
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Yeah, I agree. It's a difficult enough philosophical problem to understand the mental states of even another human, much less an animal with a completely different brain structure. There has been some work purring dogs in fMRI machines that shows that their brains respond to humans in ways that indicate they like us, but that's pretty far from conclusive. After all, I know my dog likes dinner, so she'd probably display activity in the pleasure center when presented with a bowl of her food. In any case, what matters is that I love her, and she is doing nothing to disabuse me of the notion. ;) Oh, and, yes, I did choose hyenas specifically because they're a misunderstood species. Glad you picked up on that.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    Ugh. s/purring/putting/g

ComputerGuru 6y ago

I don’t know about “love” because it has a lot of connotations but try to take a baby from a litter from any animal and watch how crazy mama animal gets. Swans, cats, birds, dogs, bears, whales, whatever.

Sharlin 6y ago

It's easy to anthropomorphize animals, but it's also easy to go overboard in the other direction. In general, as our understanding of animal cognition has increased, we have moved away from human exceptionalism, finding that traits once thought to be unique to humans are anything but. Certainly we've come far from the Cartesian viewpoint of non-human animals as mindless automata. "Love" in particular, of course, is both a highly loaded and acutely ill-defined concept, so "can a <non-human animal> feel love" is probably a wrong question [1]. By the way, it's rather appropriate that you mentioned hyenas given how misunderstood they are by laypeople, in no small part due to their presentation in a certain Disney film. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XzrqkhfwtiSDgKoAF/wrong-questions https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XzrqkhfwtiSDgKoAF/wrong-ques...

pmiller2 6y ago
Yeah, I agree. It's a difficult enough philosophical problem to understand the mental states of even another human, much less an animal with a completely different brain structure. There has been some work purring dogs in fMRI machines that shows that their brains respond to humans in ways that indicate they like us, but that's pretty far from conclusive. After all, I know my dog likes dinner, so she'd probably display activity in the pleasure center when presented with a bowl of her food. In any case, what matters is that I love her, and she is doing nothing to disabuse me of the notion. ;) Oh, and, yes, I did choose hyenas specifically because they're a misunderstood species. Glad you picked up on that.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Ugh. s/purring/putting/g