Re: One Cow Crying

Silly man. Of course animals have emotions. Anyone who has ever observed animals can see that for themselves.

But cows don't cry. There is no credible evidence that supports a claim that they do, as far as I know. Their eyes do run a lot, probably as a protection against dust.

However, there is ample evidence that elephants do cry when they are under stress.

So tell, me, what do you think that cow was crying for?

tetrehedronicrystal wrote:
Emotion in animals
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Emotion in animals considers the question of whether non-human animals
feel emotions, in the sense that humans understand it.

Different answers have been suggested throughout human history, by
animal lovers, scientists, philosophers, and others who interact with
animals, but the core question has proven hard to answer since we can
neither obtain spoken answers, nor assume anthropomorphism. As a
result, on the one hand society recognizes animals can feel pain, by
criminalizing animal cruelty, and yet on the other hand it is far from
clear whether we truly believe animals "feel" in a meaningful sense.
Often expressions of apparent pleasure are ambiguous as to whether
this is emotion, or simply innate response, perhaps to approval or
other hard-wired cues. The ambiguity is a source of much controversy
in that there is no certainty which views, if any, are "right". That
said, extreme behaviorists would also say that human "feeling" is a
meaningless, hard-wired response to external stimuli.

In recent years, research has become available which suggests strongly
animals have emotions as people do, albeit lacking certain cognitive
insights. This matches recent advances that have revolutionized prior
understandings of animal language, cognition and tool use, and even
sexuality. Emotions arise in the mammalian brain, or the limbic
system, which human beings share in common with other mammals as well
as many other species. This presents both a scientific dilemma -- how
can we tell? -- and a potential ethical one -- if true what does it
mean?

Whilst different sections of humanity have had very different views on
animal emotion, the examination of animals with a scientific, rather
than anthropomorphic eye, has led to very cautious steps towards any
form of recognition beyond the capacity for pain and fear, and such
demonstrations as are needed and engendered, for survival.
Historically, prior to the rise of sciences such as ethology,
interpretation of animal behavior tended to favor a kind of minimalism
known as behaviorism, in this context the refusal to ascribe to an
animal a capability beyond the least demanding that would explain a
behavior. Put crudely, the behaviorist argument is, why should humans
postulate consciousness and all its near-human implications in animals
to explain some behavior, if mere stimulus-response is a sufficient
explanation to produce the same effects?

The cautious wording of Beth Dixon's 2001 paper on animal emotion[1]
exemplifies this viewpoint.
"Recent work in the area of ethics and animals suggests that it is
philosophically legitimate to ascribe emotions to nonhuman animals.
Furthermore, it is sometimes argued that emotionality is a morally
relevant psychological state shared by humans and nonhumans. What is
missing from the philosophical literature that makes reference to
emotions in nonhuman animals is an attempt to clarify and defend some
particular account of the nature of emotion, and the role that
emotions play in a characterization of human nature. I argue in this
paper that some analyses of emotion are more credible than others.
Because this is so, the thesis that humans and nonhumans share
emotions may well be a more difficult case to make than has been
recognized thus far."

In a similar tone, according to Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson:[2]
"While the study of emotion is a respectable field, those who work in
it are usually academic psychologists who confine their studies to
human emotions. The standard reference work, The Oxford Companion to
Animal Behavior, advises animal behaviorists that 'One is well advised
to study the behaviour, rather than attempting to get at any
underlying emotion'."

There is considerable uncertainty and difficulty related to the
interpretation and ambiguity of emotion: an animal may make certain
movements and sounds, and show certain brain and chemical signals when
its body is damaged in a particular way. But does this mean an animal
feels - is aware of - pain as we are, or does it merely mean it is
programmed to act a certain way with certain stimuli? Similar
questions can be asked of any activity an animal might undertake, in
principle. Or indeed, of any human being as well, Philisophically.
Though it is accepted by scientists that humans do in fact feel pain
and have emotions based on all study. That animals have emotions as we
understand them is not a view generally held by most scientists.
Instead instinct is seen as the driving force behind most animals,
though primates are accepted as more sentient than other animals by
many scientists. Such philosophical questions as emotion implies are
difficult to address with reductionist methods, compared to the
relatively exciting and verifiable advances being made elsewhere in
neuroscience at the time. Because of the philosophical questions of
consciousness and mind involved, many scientists have stayed away from
examining animal emotion, and have studied instead, measurable brain
functions, through neuroscience. For this reason, although many lay
people will advocate that animals they know have emotions, in fact the
matter is not considered accepted scientifically.

[edit]
Current research and findings

Research suggests that animals can experience negative emotions in a
similar manner to people, including the equivalent of certain chronic
and acute psychological conditions. The classic experiment for this
was Martin Seligman's foundational experiments and theory of learned
helplessness at the University of Pennsylvania in 1965, as an
extension of his interest in depression:
A dog that had earlier been repeatedly conditioned to associate a
sound with electric shocks did not try to escape the electric shocks
after the warning was presented, even though all the dog would have
had to do is jump over a low divider within ten seconds, more than
enough time to respond. The dog didn't even try to avoid the "aversive
stimulus"; it had previously "learned" that nothing it did mattered. A
follow-up experiment involved three dogs affixed in harnesses included
one that received shocks of identical intensity and duration to the
others, but the lever which would otherwise have allowed the dog a
degree of control was left disconnected and didn't do anything. The
first two dogs quickly recovered from the experience, but the third
dog suffered chronic symptoms of clinical depression as a result of
this perceived helplessness.

A further series of experiments showed that (similar to humans) under
conditions of long term intense psychological stress, around 1/3 of
dogs do not develop learned helplessness or long term depression.
Instead these animals somehow managed to find a way to handle the
unpleasant situation in spite of their past experience. The
corresponding characteristic in humans has been found to correlate
highly with an explanatory style and optimistic attitude and lower
levels of emotional rigidity regarding expectations, that views the
situation as other than personal, pervasive, or permanent. Such
studies highlighted similar distinctions between people who adapt and
those who break down, under long term psychological pressure, which
were conducted in the 1950s in the realm of brainwashing.

Since this time, symptoms analogous to clinical depression, neurosis
and other psychological conditions have been in general accepted as
being within the scope of animal emotion as well.

Animals that display emotion reveal at least some sense of self or
self awareness-an ego. The psychological states we call emotion arise
from an appraisial or evaluation as to whether that situation is good
for us or bad. It's the mind at light speed determining if something
will enhance our existence or threaten it. In other words it's good
for me, it'll make me bigger and better and preserve me, so I'm happy
or this will diminish me and that makes me depressed.


References
^ Ethics & the Environment, Volume 6, Number 2, Autumn 2001, pp.
22-30, Indiana University Press [1]
^ Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Susan McCarthy: When Elephants Weep: The
Emotional Lives of Animals ISBN 0-385-31428-0

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