FWIW the late Donald Davidson, most recently or Berkeley, rightly regarded as one of the most distinguished analytical philosophers of mind and language of 20th century, and certainly one of the most influential, denied that they would think at all because they cannot talk. (I suppose he'd exempt chimps, gorillas, where there is demonstrable language use.) I don't think he'd deny that they could feel pain or pleasure, but I am not sure about that. I agree that this view is insane, and, btw, I never heard that Davidson was cruel to animals; in older days, when I did this sort of work, Davidson was a favorite stalking horse of mine.
--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I think denying that "higher" animals are capable of
> empathy is willfully perverse and borderline insane.
> One might as well deny that they are capable of
> sight.
> "Well, we do not actually know that they are seeing
> anything. They can't tell us about it after all.
> They
> may act like it, but that is just behavior and tells
> us nothing about their subjective state."
>
> --- Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:
>
> > Miles:
> >
> > The way that most psychologists finesse this is by
> > assuming that
> > people can accurately report their psychological
> > states. In empathy
> > studies with children, researchers show them a
> > scenario and ask them
> > what the person in the scenario is feeling or
> > experiencing. If the
> > child provides a meaningful report ("someone said
> > something mean to
> > her, so she's sad"), then most psychologists will
> > say the child has
> > empathy.
> >
> >
> > [WS:] So what makes you think that animals are
> > incapable of experiencing
> > emotional states similar to those reported by
> > children? You seem to fall
> > into the fallacy of interpreting the absence of
> > evidence as the evidence of
> > absence.
> >
> > Consider the following:
> >
> > http://www.avam.org/exhibitions/home.html
> >
> > "CHIMPS, BONOBOS & US
> >
> >
> > We humans share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees
> and
> > bonobos. It turns out,
> > chimps and bonobos are even more closely related
> to
> > humans than they are to
> > gorillas. Christian Bernard, M.D., the great
> pioneer
> > in human-to-human heart
> > transplant, had an encounter with lab-housed
> > chimpanzees that was to forever
> > change his life:
> >
> > I had bought two male chimps from a primate colony
> > in Holland. They lived
> > next to each other in separate cages for several
> > months before I used one as
> > a [heart] donor. When we put him to sleep in his
> > cage in preparation for the
> > operation, he chattered and cried incessantly. We
> > attached no significance
> > to this, but it must have made a great impression
> on
> > his companion, for when
> > we removed the body to the operating room, the
> other
> > chimp wept bitterly and
> > was inconsolable for days. The incident made a
> deep
> > impression on me. I
> > vowed never again to experiment with such
> sensitive
> > creatures. "
> >
> > Wojtek
> >
> > ___________________________________
> >
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
>
> Lyubo, bratsy, lyubo, lyubo, bratsy, zhit!
>
> ËÞÁÎ, ÁÐÀÒÖÛ, ËÞÁÎ, ËÞÁÎ, ÁÐÀÒÖÛ, ÆÈÒÜ!
>
>
>
>
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