Comment on Isn’t the use of strict behaviorism to explain animals kind of obnoxious?
MolochAlter@lemmy.world 6 months ago
even for a mollusk
Yeah LMAO no.
Mollusks are basically meat plants, they have barely a nervous system to speak of.
Also having eyes and a face has nothing to do with brain activity or neural capacity to process what you’d call an “inner life.”
A mannequin has eyes and a face, a simulacrum of something need not share anything with it other than appearance.
You can absolutely extend this kind of empathy to mammals and primates as we know they have the brain structures we have observed to be necessary to have certain emotions, but it’s not because of this asinine notion that if they look similar to us they have similar properties.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 6 months ago
There are plants that can get “scared” and warn other plants of danger. Even plants that can uproot themselves and move if they feel threatened. They don’t even have nervous systems in any way that we understand and are capable of locomotion, sensing their surroundings and communication.
Even plants may have feelings.
Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world 6 months ago
My phone warns me that the battery is low, does that mean that it has feelings and doesn’t want to die?
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 6 months ago
It may. Can you prove it doesn’t?
neatchee@lemmy.world 6 months ago
They aren’t warning other plants of danger. That’s an anthropomorphic interpretation.
They are releasing a chemical. Other plants respond to that chemical in a predictable, biological way.
There is no motive. No intent to save or protect. It’s not a warning. It’s just an evolutionarily advantageous sequence of cause and effect.
all-knight-party@kbin.run 6 months ago
While I don't think plants or certain animals actually experience life similarly, aren't our own emotions basically a product of chemicals being released in our brain as a result of certain stimuli?
neatchee@lemmy.world 6 months ago
“Emotions” is a very nebulous term. But we know that abstractions like guilt require certain types of brain function that is only found in humans, dolphins, etc
For the record I believe that dolphins are non-human-persons. So I’m not a “humans are completely unique” kind of guy. But I also don’t anthropomorphize lower order animals :D
MolochAlter@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Feelings in the sense of “they feel things through a sensory organ and react to that”, same as sight, hearing, touch? Sure!
Feelings like fear? No.
Aversion from pain is not the same as fear, fear is aversion from pain that hasn’t happened yet, it requires the ability to abstract the concept of negative outcomes and expand the aversion from discomfort to possible discomfort.
No plant has been observed reacting to something that it hasn’t experienced at least once before.
Decoy321@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Your bias is showing. The fact that we have not observed something is not evidence that it doesn’t exist.
MolochAlter@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Ok, have you accepted the lord Jesus Christ as your lord and saviour?