Wednesday 22 November 2017

Do animals have human qualities?

This first and foremost a philosophical/linguistic question:  first, "Human qualities" must be circumscribed by some limitations.  Is locomotion a human quality?  How about thinking?  How about actions for the collective good? etc.  The question of "human nature" often reduces to a discussion of whether altruism (thinking and acting for others) has contributed more to the survival of the species "homo sapiens" or whether pure self-consideration "(let us say "selfishness") is more conducive to our survival.

Secondly, the term "qualities" is ambiguous at best.  Are we speaking of social "persona" or ethical/moral "values," etc.? What are "human qualities, then?  In the Grerman language, the word "Eigenshaften" is used to denote those features of our actions and choices that give us our "personality," our distinct persona.


However, after this sort of erudite discussion, your real inquiry is about whether animals share human "emotions" such as disappointment, loneliness, worry, joy, anticipation, etc. -- those emotions that we call "feelings" Does my dog "miss" me when I'm gone?  Does my cat "wish" I would fill up her bowl?  Is my parakeet singing because he's happy the sun is shining? etc.  Scientists would divide these responses to outward stimuli into two kinds:  Shared mental phenomena (a subject on which there is very little research), and the human "quality" of personifing the outside world:  We imagine our dog is smiling when he quivers his muzzle; we take our cat's haughty posture as disdain for our pets, we see a face in the moon, etc.  Consequently, our own human imagination accounts for much of what appears to be "human qualities" in the animals near us.   

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