• PhilipTheBucketOPA
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    edit-2
    21 hours ago

    Yeah. This stuff where animals don’t know what’s going on, and it’s a surprising breakthrough when we find out they do, must come from people who either don’t know up from down or have never interacted with animals.

    Unlike us, they have to survive on their own and so they can’t afford to be clueless about stuff. We have the fancy fancy brain, but they’ve still got all the standard stuff for understanding the world.

    • HumanPenguin@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      21 hours ago

      Team the medias indicators that science has just discovered it. Is crap. Its more science has just proved or documented something ot has suspected for a long while.

      Anyone with a dog knows they have such ideas and thoughts. But recognising it via anecdotal evidence and actually proving it in a way that stands up to challenge are 2 very different things.

      Unfortunately modern media really dose not benifit fro pointing that out.

      • PhilipTheBucketOPA
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        21 hours ago

        Well… we’re not still in the “animals don’t feel pain” days of science, but apparently:

        The existence of theory of mind in non-human animals is controversial. On the one hand, one hypothesis proposes that some non-human animals have complex cognitive processes which allow them to attribute mental states to other individuals, sometimes called “mind-reading” while another proposes that non-human animals lack these skills and depend on more simple learning processes such as associative learning;[4] or in other words, they are simply behaviour-reading.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind_in_animals

        • HumanPenguin@feddit.uk
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          20 hours ago

          Ask any vet about that and honestly nope that is not what science thinks. But some scientists do propose other explanations for events that how science works.

          Technically you don’t feel pain. Your body sends signals to your brain and muscles. Your muscles react to those signals. And your brain interprets them in a way that results in you changing actions. IE your mind creates pain you don’t feel it.

          The destination seems non existant in the mind of yourself with your hand on a hotplate. But it is a scientifically accurate one. One that must be considered when considering how pain killerssuch as opiates work.

          And it is this gap in human vs scientific language that media loves to sell articles on.

          • PhilipTheBucketOPA
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            20 hours ago

            I literally sent you an article with citations, for the idea that ToM in animals is controversial within “science,” with some alternate explanations like associative learning, and you’re still in the mode of trying to explain it to me, to help me out of my ignorance about it.

            Read the article. If nothing else, just read the “History and Development” section where it talks about particular researchers and papers. I get where you’re coming from, because it’s hard to believe, because most sensible people (probably including pretty much all working vets, yes, or at least I would hope so) understand that animals have a ToM. But within “science,” it’s considered controversial. I think the question of what the psychology is that leads some people who do science to think that, would be a fascinating question that I don’t really have a firm answer for.