[lbo-talk] Mirror neurons

[John Thornton]

Doug Henwood wrote:
> On Sep 1, 2007, at 11:23 AM, Chris Doss wrote:
>
>   
>> Cats and dogs, not just hoidy-toidy
>> gorillas, appear to have empathy.
>>     
>
> I have something like 45 cat-years of experience (having lived with 2  
> for 20 years, and 1 for 5), and I've never seen a trace of empathy in  
> them. They are consummate narcissists, which, as Freud theorized, is  
> part of their charm (like children and criminals).
>
> Doug

Are you serious? I have trained many cats as therapy pets and they 
certainly exhibit behaviours that could be understood as empathy.
Since animals have a much diminished capacity for communication as 
compared to humans and interspecies communication is problematic at best 
we cannot say for certain one way or another. Actions don't always imply 
intent.
To imagine that higher animal life forms cannot experience empathy is 
every bit as wrong as imagining we know for a fact that they do.
This is currently unknowable. While empathy seems to be required for 
morality experiencing empathy does not guarantee morality.
Humans have pronounced (incorrectly) that animals cannot make tools. 
Humans have also claimed (again incorrectly) weapons specifically were 
human devices exclusively.
Humans who pronounce that animals like dogs and cats cannot experience 
empathy are full of shit. We don't know if they do and we are only just 
beginning to understand how to find out the answer to the question.
Empathy requires self-awareness and many animals have demonstrated 
self-awareness in different experiments.
I don't claim the animals I have trained are in fact empathetic but I do 
know enough to reject any claims that they do not. The jury is still out 
but I lean towards some form of empathy in higher mammals.
While I have been told by others I lean this way because of my personal 
attachment to the animals since we are speaking about emotive states it 
is not unreasonable to use emotional attachment to uncover emotive states.
I've tried an experiment of placing a cat in front of a mirror and then 
directing a laser pointer to the animals side so it is visible in the 
mirror. The animals that make the best therapy pets inevitably correctly 
discern that the dot visible on the mirror image of themselves is 
actually on their side. Certainly I look for other specific behaviours 
in selecting which animals are best suited for such work but no animals 
that have failed this test for self-awareness that I have rescued 
exhibited the other behaviours necessary to become therapy pets. I am 
well aware that behavioural scientists claim cats and dogs always fail 
this test of self-awareness. Gorilla's also always fail this test yet 
many birds pass and many behavioural animal specialists still claim 
Gorilla's are self-aware but fail the test for unknown reasons. Mice 
fail this test but have recently been shown to exhibit behaviours that 
one could attribute to empathy. The mirror test for self-awareness is 
not perfect and we make the mistake of anthropomorphizing animal 
behaviours when we label them as evidence for self-awareness. I'm not 
suggesting the test is worthless just that claiming the results are 
definitive proof against self-awareness is unfounded. "Failing" the test 
suggests but does not prove lack of self-awareness.
The animals that are the consummate narcissists do not make good therapy 
pets (and they never pass the mirror test).

John Thornton