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Anything with a fear of death knows it is mortal (can be killed). I think even the most basic creatures understand this.
by RobertKohr 15y ago
Anything with a fear of death knows it is mortal (can be killed). I think even the most basic creatures understand this.
- hackermom 15y agoThe very core of self-preservation, which indeed is one of the most basic insticts, shared by even the simplest of the vertebrate, and quite possibly also by many other animals of "lower rank" taxonomy.
- Strilanc 15y agoFor loose enough definitions of 'understand'. For example, when I hold my breath, the urge to breath increases steadily until I am forced to start breathing again. Is this because my body explicitly understands that not breathing eventually results in death, or is it more appropriate to say the response is automatic?
- hackermom 15y agoIt's a case of both. The diaphragm muscle in your abdomen is both controlled manually by yourself, and automatically by your brain.
- JacobAldridge 15y agoThat seems a fairly circular argument - after all, can you be afraid of something happening to you without knowing that it can happen to you? Anything with a fear of asteroids or boogey monsters 'knows' that those exist. So I disagree that "even the most basic creatures understand this", even for very broad definitions where understand can be interpreted as 'act, instinctively or not, as they would should they have consciousness'. I suspect many understand pain and have a fear of pain (again, where very loosely pain is 'bad things' they have previously experienced). Death is often a corollary of that pain, so they will act similarly, but I don't believe creatures at a most basic level understand death. Having said that, this was a fascinating article on a topic that has interested me for years, so I'd love to see more research supporting either your thoughts or mine.