Can't say I'm a big fan of the heavy handed, holier-than-thou style of the presentation, but I broadly agree with the sentiment.
People who seem to know only one thing about animal behaviour know that you must never attribute human thoughts and emotions to other species. Well, I think that's silly, because attributing human thoughts and emotions to other species is the best first guess about what they're doing and how they're feeling, because their brains are basically the same as ours. They have the same structures. The same hormones that create mood and motivation in us are in those brains as well. It is not scientific to say that they are hungry when they're hunting and they're tired when their tongues are hanging out, and then say when they're playing with their children and acting joyful and happy, we have no idea if they can possibly be experiencing anything. That is not scientific.
Via Joe Carter.
https://www.ted.com/talks/carl_safina_what_are_animals_thinking_and_feeling
Method is not as important to me as message to me, although I agree, the ham fisted "I'm so smart compared to you, I will now coyly posture and point that out to signal my superiority" approach says more about the deliverer than it does the content of the information.
ReplyDelete"Don't attribute human reasoning to animals" is the most basic, most important advice because otherwise people will look at "this big fluffy cat" and will want to pet it because it obviously wants company. Or they will give food to "that poor fluffy bear" outside of the fast-food restaurant because it looks so sad, and it will be so happy for such generosity.
ReplyDeleteThe second one is worse, in fact. While in the first case people will mostly darwin themselves, the second one is an an incentive for bears to wait outside of restaurants and attack anyone who doesn't give them food.
"Don't attribute human emotions to animals" is the stupid version, as emotions is one of the few things we really have in common. Then again, people tend to confuse emotion, feeling, thought and morals.
Also, behavior and body language are very different, which makes us apply wrong emotions and thoughts to the animals - exacerbating a common problem with applying wrong emotions and thoughts to our fellow humans whose body language we have been tuned to understand by millennia of evolution. Say, interpreting "stays calm and composed in normal circumstances" as "obviously planning a misdeed".
Elie Thorne Indeed. The key word here is "never". Normally such an extreme would be a straw man argument, but here it really seems to be that people (still, though more rarely nowadays) believe that animals aren't thinking or feeling anything at all, or if they are, then they can't have any thoughts or feelings similar to humans at all.
ReplyDeleteA better way to phrase it would be to be cautious about using human psychology to understand animal psychology. Animals inhabit a different world from us and their motivations and morals are often different. But this guy seems to be suffering from a sort of animal version of the noble savage myth; he doesn't cite any animal behaviours that, by human standards, are as rehprehensible as anything we inflict on each other. (such is unfortunately often the way of TED talks - optimistic to a serious fault). The bear sitting outside a restaurant is, for example, neither dumbly responding to the pattern of humans chucking away food, or necessarily starving and unhappy, but possibly doing the equally human tasks of manipulation and deceit.
It's crazy to think animals don't think, but also crazy to think they never think like humans in any way. Human psychology seems like a decent enough rough guide in the broadest possible sense, but with the serious caveats that animals are even harder to read than humans.