like i’m watching blue planet and i’m yelling at the tv!
there’s all these yimmer yammer hand-wavey scientific rigor lines where it’s like ‘we may believe that these animals do on occasion have a base brain-related impulse that allows them to experience feelings somewhat like to those of friendship’ or whatever in the script on top of footage that they then describe as ‘it seems as though these two groups [of fish, different species] are old friends…’ in an almost whimsical manner.
can’t they give them some credit! they have eyes and a face, why is it so insane to think they can’t experience friendship or love or joy just like us? ‘buhhu uhhh its only accurate science if we only observe observable behavior’ why?? you’re neglecting a whole part of any living thing’s experience! inner life can’t be hand waved away! even for a mollusk!
and people loved doing this on reddit as well – oh actually your cat doesn’t understand love or joy or humor, it is simply reacting to the physical warmth of your lap, they don’t actually care for you. don’t worry, depth and emotion does not exist!
They aren’t warning other plants of danger. That’s an anthropomorphic interpretation.
They are releasing a chemical. Other plants respond to that chemical in a predictable, biological way.
There is no motive. No intent to save or protect. It’s not a warning. It’s just an evolutionarily advantageous sequence of cause and effect.
Just because object A’s behavior helps object B’s survival doesn’t mean it has feelings. Complex cause and effect can be emergent phenomena without specific intent
While I don’t think plants or certain animals actually experience life similarly, aren’t our own emotions basically a product of chemicals being released in our brain as a result of certain stimuli?
“Emotions” is a very nebulous term. But we know that abstractions like guilt require certain types of brain function that is only found in humans, dolphins, etc
So yes, human emotion is indeed a sufficiently complex series of cause and effect. But that complexity is really important. And certain structures in the brain are necessary for things like self-awareness, abstraction, empathy, etc
For the record I believe that dolphins are non-human-persons. So I’m not a “humans are completely unique” kind of guy. But I also don’t anthropomorphize lower order animals :D