jbone

Animals are people, too. At least it's fun to treat them as if they are. It is possible for humans to relate to and mentally connect with animals almost as well as they can relate to and connect with other humans. With imagination, you can actually get a sense of what it's like to be another animal and see the world through its eyes.

I relate to and connect with other humans even though it's impossible for me to know what it's like to actually be another human. For example, I don't know if having a full stomach is the same sensation for you as it is for me. I just assume it is. I can make this and other assumptions with other animals if I want to relate to and connect mentally with them also.

Humans are, after all, animals. I don't believe it's correct to divide all living things on this planet into plants, animals, and humans. There are only plants and animals. And it's not true that animals only "act on instinct" and humans "act on reason." Humans act on instinct too. The very fact that you are alive right now shows that you are acting on the survival instinct. That's an instinct most humans are rarely, if ever, conscious of even though it influences everything they do. The instinct to have sex is another huge influence. Oh, but we can override that one. Yeah, right. For a while, maybe. And humans don't act on reason as often as we think, either. When I decide to pause a video and get up from the couch to grab a beer, I'm using thought in order to decide that but I'm not using reason. Reason is a special type of systematic decision making that involves induction and/or deduction. Deciding when and what to drink doesn't require reason. So when I observe my dog decide to leave his doghouse, get a drink, and then walk to my front door, I can assume that what is going through his mind is similar to what sometimes goes through my mind when I decide to stop what I'm doing, get a drink, and go do something else. Other animals do have thoughts as well as instincts, even though they don't reason.

Do other animals have feelings? This is debatable. Elephants have been observed expressing what appears to be grief over the deaths of other elephants. They've also been observed paying attention to dead bones which have later been shown through DNA testing to belong to other blood related elephants. Another way to investigate would be to study our brain and understand the chemical/electrical processes that create feelings, then study the brains of other animals to see if the same processes occur. I choose to believe that animals have feelings because it helps me relate to them. I believe that when my dog is behaving like he's happy I'm home, he is actually feeling a sense of happiness. Similar to the way I might feel when I'm happy to see a friend.