Opposition? That's weird. Depends on how one defines "emotion", of course, but as far as I'm concerned:

Emotion = body chemistry (a leap, I know, but everyone will get what I mean anyway),
Fear = instinctual emotion.

So yeah, I'd say animals feel emotions.

Yeah, I thought it was a foregone conclusion animals experienced emotions. Part of the master/animal relationship is based on fear and reward. But, certainly, just because you experience emotions doesn't mean you have a grasp of reason, and certainly I wouldn't confuse instinctual intuition with reason.

I've heard from many animal lovers that dogs or cats are just as smart as us if not smarter. If this were so, my cat would've packed his Meow Mix and set off on his own years ago. He would've learned to build a complex structure for him to live. Et cetera. Et Cetera.

I do love animals. They are sweet, empathetic, wonderful creatures, and also none too bright.

of course. i simply believe that animals (at least mammals) do in fact experience emotions. Obviously they are more primitive, and less elaborate than human emotion, that goes without saying (just like animal language and the use of tools) but to say that animals do not feel anything and simply instinctual react with their environment (which many people do) frustrates me. If that is the case, then I group Humans to be the same, and just have very elaborate and complex reactions to their environment...in a way, thats all emotions are.

Point: Animals feel emotion (whatever feeling emotions means) in a similar context as humans, but on a less evolved, simpler level. (this varies from species to species also)

Also see my all-time favorite (and terribly underrated) example of animal emotion on the Sift:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Koko-and-All-Ball

Emotion does not equal reason. And while I can agree that animals do experience some emotions, that still doesn't make them people.

When some jackass dresses up her poodle and says something to the extent of "My fifi wuvs her little outfit, doesn't she?" She's anthropomorphizing the dog and attributing it emotions it simply doesn't have.

I can surely agree that many animals experience simple emotions. Emotions are simply extensions of responses to physical stimuli, which are controlled in part by the complexity of the organism, mostly the brain. Simpler brain = simpler emotions. Emotions are also responses to memories of physical stimuli; a dog remembers that rolling over gets it a treat, so it learns to do that to gain a treat.

Bacteria does not experience emotions, but they respond to physical stimuli too.

One could argue that our human emotions are simply very complex physical and chemical responses, which manifest themselves in our consciousness and/or subconsciousness as emotions, and are completely determined by causality. This is in the end plainly obvious, if you believe there is no such thing as a soul or "ethereal" aspect of the material world.

Also: PETA sucks, I like to eat meat, animal cruelty is terrible thing, human cruelty is worse.

I have pontificated!

I think it's a problem to make the distinction of animals / humans, because animals is a HUGE spectrum of different species. I think we can all agree that the level of emotions of a fly is quite different to that of a chicken, which again is quite different to that of an ape.

(Sorry for bogarting the thread )

*this is only if your comments are directed at my comments if not then ignore this* well u pretty much just said what i said so its nice to come to an agreement. Also i never claimed animals are people or that they feel on the same level as people do or that emotion equals reason.

i agree that emotional capacity differs from species to species -as I stated

ps. dressing up poodles is wrong

pps. PETA is even more wrong

^My above rant was basically what I tried to convey in the other thread as well. I don't deny that "lower animals" may have some form of emotions, but they are quite different from what we humans feel, and they are far more direct. I was not really directing it at you, just in general. I'm on my soapbox.

We also have to be careful not to see patterns where there are none - when a dog "responds to you" it does not necessarily respond to your face, emotional stance or mood, it could just be doing what it always does, and you notice what it does for the exact reason that you are different than normal. This is the same with religious experiences. I will wager good money that all personal "evidence" of God are a product of either coincidence ("I heard a voice and stepped to the right, and then a car zoomed by. I was saved by God!") combined with selective memory (What about all the other time the voice told you to move and nothing happened? Note that this is not necessarily a conscious choice. Boring things tend to be forgotten, while extraordinary things are clearly remembered.) or simple retconning where more elaborate details are imagined and exaggerated (1 feather becoming 5 chickens).

Goddammit, why do I have to make everything about religion. Damn you, Jebus!

lol jebus

Today I was in my philosophy of religion class. My professor began to talk about religious figures trying to separate animals such as chimps and Bonobos from humans. He said that every reason they have given has crumbled in their hands (he mentioned things like emotion, use of tools, problem solving) He brought up Pope John’s claim that humans are different from Chimps because God gave us souls. Since there is no proof of a “soul” per say, he asked the class of other differences. I put up my hand and said “many people use the defense that Chimps do not have self awareness and humans do.” To this he mentioned a study which as conducted on Chimps. What they did was they put a blue mark on a Chimps forehead. Then they put him in front of a mirror, and the Chimp stared…and raised his finger to his forehead touching the mark. He knew that that was him in the mirror, he was aware of his body. They did this to monkeys and other animals like dogs and cats, and they just thought the mirror was another animal. I found this super cool and interesting as evidence that Chimps are self aware of their existence in the sense that they know who they are when they see themselves, they know their body (unlike other animals mentioned above) now in the sense of questioning their existence, that’s probably a level only humans have achieved thus far.

That's interesting about the chimp and the mirror, but I don't think that's an all inclusive indicator of self-awareness. I think that dogs and cats interact differently with mirrors for other physiological reasons. For instance, a dog won't attack it's own reflection. I think they do recognize themselves, but they just don't give it the same weight as chimps or humans. Just my two cents.

For instance, there's a big mirror in my room, and when I'm in here with my pups, they can see the reflection of me in the mirror, but they don't think it's another me. I think that dogs and cats consider reflections as some kind of superfluous state of being that just doesn't interest them as much as, say, the smell of your clothes after you've been around other dogs.

Anger is an emotion, and isn't it true that octopuses change color when they're provoked? I think that emotion is inseperable from awareness, and I think it precedes intelligence, and most creatures possess at least some degree of intelligence, however modest.

also very cool, monkeys having a sense of fairness http://www.videosift.com/video/Monkeys-Play-Fair

a while ago now in england they made it illegal to test on chimps because they have emotion. recently they found the same for octopuses and squid (they are also smarter than animals like dogs and can do things like problem solving) so now its illegal to experiment on octopuses and squids also. (my prof mentioned this in lecture also) very cool!

summary http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrobest/3509504985/sizes/o/

I win.



http://io9.com/5937356/prominent-scientists-sign-declaration-that-animals-have-conscious-awareness-just-like-us