Talk:Emotion in animals
Here is some terminology from the Animal Rights community. I think some of it would provide a good contrast to the other terminology. Anthropocentrism could be used in conjunction with anthropomorphism within the intro to the article.
HELPFUL TERMINOLOGY
Anthropocentrism: This is routinely defined as: 1.Regarding human beings as the central element of the universe. 2.Interpreting reality exclusively in terms of human values and experience. It is worthwhile to compare this definition with Ethnocentrism, which is usually defined as: 1.Belief in the superiority of one's own ethnic group. 2.Overriding concern with race. Anthropocentrism can then also be redefined as: Belief in the superiority of one’s own species. (sometimes referred to as Speciesism, Human Chauvinism, Spiritual humanism, Secular humanism)
Human Supremacy myth: the conviction that human beings as a species or group, are superior in value to all other life, based upon arbitrary or subjective criteria conveniently determined by those who stand to benefit from the discrimination.
Anthropocentric myopia: This may be defined as the condition demonstrated when the ethical and practical arguments used in an attempt to ethically justify the harm caused to non humans, fail to address and counter the effects these very same arguments would have if applied fairly and equally to situations involving humans.
Oh come on!, this is the biggest bit of crap I have yet to see. Somebody seems to have written directions on how to write with a giant POV. What in the world does the jargon of some animal rights groups have to do with an encyclopedic view of animal emotion?. I am not in the habit of removing anything from talk pages and won't do so now, (the single instance I have was somebody yelling a racist slur, without signing it) but I think this is terribly biased and encourages bias in other wikipedians. Wikipedia is not a propaganda tool.Colin 8 19:18, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Taken from here: http://www.animalliberationfront.com/ALFront/FAQs/weeblerFAQ.htm
--Steele the Wolf 21:15, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Animals Have Feelings!!
ANONYMOUS EDIT: The absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence. Saying that for animals to have emotions they must feel things as we do, is like saying that for plants to absorb energy they must do digestion in the same way we do. If we accept our emotions as part of a necessary evolutionary process, then why is it that other species have sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste as we do... they also have fear and curiosity and panic... but they don´t have the evolutionary privilege of emotions? compare the human genome with a rat´s, a monkey´s, dog´s, or a kangaroo´s and see how much we have in common... so we are more than 90% the SAME, we all share a common biology and evolutionary context, but not emotions? is there a practical reason for nature to be SO SELECTIVE about us? tell me of one single major evolutionary trait that is exclusively present in one species trough out this planet. END OF ANONYMOUS EDIT. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.130.130.54 (talk) 04:28, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Not Objective
Other than the first paragraph, this article is fairly biased towards the position of animals having emotions equatable to human emotion.
True this article is not objective - it is fairly antropocentric (ie humans are a priori more important and complex than animals).Arnoutf 08:36, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I concur with this, I think this article should be labeled as Not compliant with the NPOV policy. The "animals have no emotions" POV it's not present.
Under the section "Approaches to studying animal emotions" the quote from "When Elephants Weep" seems to me like a classic example of begging the question; assuming in advance the animal emotion as a fact rather than the matter in discussion. Therefore, I think it should be deleted, it's logically flawed. Alexander Baez 05:22, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
This whole article is biased, it assumes something that may or may not be so and attempts to prove it. It makes grudging attempts at NPOV which all point toward the fact that from a scientific, quantifiable perspective animals have no emotions. It gives citations with no external links, I can't even be certain the editor isn't making them up. And the last two of three references seem biased and unscientific (if they are biased they have to be unscientific, regardless of whether there true). Also, it doesn't mention a real problem with animal emotions, that without sentient thought how can one have emotions?. If an animal can't think as we understand thinking than how can it feel in a non physical way?. And what about instinct?, which this article fails to mention at all. Instinct is still accepted as the driving force behind animal behaviour I believe. If an animal is just acting under internal survival programming than can it have emotion? (based on clinical definition of emotion). I am not saying it can't, I personally believe that higher animals like dogs and apes can feel emotion in a semi-comparable way with humans, whereas I feel that smaller animals like lizards ans spiders and such cannot. But this is just my own opinion, with no science behind it whatsoever. I don't intend to write an article with a few citations from like minded people that can't be linked to that says this, because its an opinion and two other individuals agreeing with me is three opinions, but its still not science.Colin 8 19:09, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Emotion vs. Instinct
Aren't emotions simply instincts given depth with human intelligence? For instance, fear is a survival response, as is the bond between mother and child that we humans call love. --M.Neko 08:25, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Animals have feelings!! Why don'tsome people understand this?! User:Mitternacht90
- I have had many pets, and I can see from the way they act that they have distinct personalities. The fact that we don't have a common language with animals makes it hard to prove scientifically that they have feelings.
From Vegetarianism in Buddhism: "Those are humans, elephants, horses, dogs, snakes, lions, tigers, leopards, bears and hyenas because these animals can be provoked by the smell of the flesh of their own kind or the eating of such flesh would generate a bad reputation for the Sangha."
To the extent that this is correct of some animals (not all in the list, and probably more than this), this would indicate certain emotional responses that are analogous to such in humans (though humans, and all animals [even herbivores] can be cannibalistic under certain circumstances or in certain cultures). If animals in fact do have emotions, whether these are fully analogous to human emotions (and which ones are, in which circumstances) is the real question.
"It is curious that the study of animal behavior should demand that its practitioners turn themselves into alexithymics." -- I think this is actually an artifact of the abstract empirical (not, per say, scientific) method. --24.16.251.40 23:45, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
- What does that mean? FT2 (Talk) 00:27, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
This comment (Uppercase mentioning piggies) seems spammy (it's repeated at the end of this page). If there's no objection i will delete it. Alexander Baez 05:26, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
References
The paragraph starting "For example, an animal may make certain movements and sounds"... was tagged as a reference. I think it probably needs a reference, but it isn't one. I've kind of fixed it,[1] but it still needs more work. The sentences starting "Put crudely, the behaviorist argument is,"... and "Publishers description states that the book:"... were also marked as references.[1] It might be worth the editors of this article having a read of wikipedia's verifiability policy[2] and references style guide [3] - this is the sort of article that really needs references if it's to avoid turning in to an essay from one point of view.[4]. I've referenced this paragraph up because I thought it might be a useful example of Cite.php references[5] - I find them the easiest way to add sources. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 18:47, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
This article needs a lot of work. The references are not by true emotion researchers. Important authors (Frans de Waal; Panksepp) are lacking, furhtermore we should at least mention "The expression of emotions by animals and Humans (1871)" By Charles Darwin as this is a seminal work on emotions by a biologist. Arnoutf 08:39, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
- Then add these :) Or describe them here for those who aren'taware of the major researchers you're thinking of. Who were they, and what were the main points they made? That sort of thing, in summary.
- On a more down-to-earth note -- that said, I don't get the impression there are such things as "true emotion researchers" as opposed to "false emotion researchers" or "spurious emotion researchers". There will be credible researchers and notable parties in the debate, who approach from different angles, and with different conclusions. A good article presents and summarizes them all. If we're presently missing or understating a major credible viewpoint, then it's worth reviewing that lack. FT2 (Talk | email) 14:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
IF ANIMALS TRUELY CAN FEEL...
THEN THAT IS EVEN WORSE IT'S REALLY BAD
THAT MEANS WE HUMANS ARE WAY WORSE THAN ANIMALS , IF WE KNOW THAT THEY CAN FEEL EVEN IF WE DO KNOW WE STILL KILL AND CHOP AND CONTROL THEIR BODY PARTS LIKE THEY DON'T EVEN FEEL SO IT MEANS WE ARE TRULY MONSTERS WE ARE LESS THAN ROBOTS AT LEAST ROBOTS CAN'T FEEL WE CAN. SO WE KEEP RIPPING CONTROLLING AND EATING THEIR BODY PARTS EVEN IF WE ARE KNOWING THAT THEY CAN FEEL HOW CRUEL AND SAD IS THAT? IT'S GONNA BE BETTER IF WE JUST KILL THEM ALL FAST AND QUICK AT ONCE INSTEAD OF SLOWING CHOPPING THEM OFF AND THEIR SONS AND DAUGHTERS WE ARE DISGRACE TO WHOLE UNIVERSE
THERE ARE PLENTY OF OTHER KINDS OF FOODS WE CAN EAT FOREVER(ENOUGH AMOUNTS FOR EACH AND EVEYRONE OF HUMANS LIVING IN EARTH) LIKE COOKIES AND CHOCOLATES AND NOODLES, AND WE DO NEVER EVEN NEED FURS (THEY ARE EVEN WORSE THAN ANIMAL EATERS THEY DON'T DESERVE TO LIVE) SO WHY WE KEEP TALKING IF THEY CAN FEEL OR NOT WHEN WE ARE NOT GONNA STOP KILLING THEM????HUH!?
I WOULD BE GLAD IF THEY CAN'T FEEL LIKE ROBOTS, I REALLY HOPE THAT THEY DON'T FEEL A THING
YOU LITTLE SICK PSYCHOTIC PIGS(NO PIGS ARE BETTER THAN YOU PEOPLE)
Okay, STOP TYPING IN CAPS. I do agree that things like fur, leather, etc. are unnecessary. But meat is. If animals feel, which I do think they do, we need to stop Tigers and owls from killing other animals. We don't do that because meat is a natural part of their diet. It has also been proven that humans, like any other omnivorous animal, are meant to eat a combination of meat and other foods.
That being said, I don't agree with hunting animals for the use of making fur clothes, leather, just hunting for fun, etc. FinalWish 03:04, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
Re: approaches to studying animal emotions
this section is yet another problem with this article, it doesn't actually give an approach to studying animal emotions, instead it makes a point that appears to be designed to get the reader to assume that animals must have emotions because we can't prove it. That is, that we can't know if animals have emotions because they can't tell us, but we can't know humans have emotions either (the fact that scientists are as certain about human sentience as about anything to do with human behaviour, whereas animal emotion is not largely accepted, eccept perhaps on an intuitive level) an therefore animals must have emotions because humans do but we can't be sure that humans do and we can't be sure that animals do so animals must. Its an incredibly circular argument. regardless, these are not approaches to studying animal emotions because it doesn't explain approaches to study animal emotions and even if it did its not approaches its an approach which is clearly not encyclopedic. Besides, as I put forth earlier the book in question is biased, unsientific (in that its not accepted by most scientists as fact) and can't be linked. For all these reasons I am deleting this section. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Colin 8 (talk • contribs) 20:07, 16 April 2007 (UTC).sorry I forgot to sign again Colin 8 20:07, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Back again, I keep reading this article and finding problems the farther down I go. How can a book that is not notable enough and an author who is not notable enough to have an article on wikipedia be worth several paragraph's?. It refers to Jonathan Balcombe as a leading animal behaviourist, if true wouldn't he be notable?, or his book?. It does not say if this book is accepted science or has been peer reviewed and then gives a quote that apparently came from Wayne Pacelle from the Humane Society, I have no way of verifying if he actually said this, if the book referenced actually exists, or its validity. it says the book combines rigorous evidence, elegant argument and amusing anecdotes. If the evidence is rigorous then explain it, and again is it accepted by the scientific community, has it been peer reviewed. Of course whether the arguments are elegant and the anecdotes amusing are opinion, nothing more. I am removing it.Colin 8 20:23, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Jaak Panksepp on mammal emotions
Here are some sources. I heard this guy talk on Radio Open Source, episode "New Zoology."
Jaak Panksepp, Ph.D Baily Endowed Chair of Animal Well-Being Science Professor Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Bowling Green State University Head, Affective Neuroscience Research, Falk Center for Molecular Therapeutics, Northwestern University Phone: (509) 335-5803 Email: jpanksepp@vetmed.wsu.edu Office: McCoy Hall
But I haven't yet read his work yet,
but here: http://www.vetmed.wsu.edu/depts-vcapp/Panksepp-endowed.asp
He mentioned seven bioloically based maammalian emotions: 1 seeking or exploring 2 fear 3 panic 4 rage 5 lust 6 nurture 7 joy or play
which he would say each of those have tangible regions in the brains. were i not such a spaz I'd wread his stuff and make an entry myselr but i am tired tired iterd. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.227.164.128 (talk) 01:44, 9 May 2007 (UTC).
"in the sense that humans understand"
First we must define in which sense, particularly, do we understand it; then we can address the question. --VKokielov (talk) 03:06, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Elephants-Animal's Feelings
I think another good piece of evidence about animals feeling are elephants. Elephants are known for mourning for a loss in their herd. The herd of elephants will cry for their loss ones.
This is my soft spot. I do believe animals have feelings. I think that they understand just as much as we do about hopelessness, sadness, etc.. I think that to live emotions is a key importance of survival. You need to survive socially, but also you need to survive as an animal.71.142.242.233 (talk) 01:50, 3 March 2008 (UTC)Cardinal Raven
Actually, I agree there's a big (heh) gap here. Elephant mourning has been extensively studied, as has adoption outside the herd, and, of course, memory. --Relata refero (disp.) 18:21, 14 July 2008 (UTC)