Seems to me that when we think about animals, there are two opposite mistakes one can make. First is too much anthropomorphism: “the dog that is looking at the moon must be thinking about its existential problems, because that is what I would do during a sleepless night”. Second is treating the animals as animal p-zombies: “yeah, the pig seems to suffer, but don’t make a mistake, only humans can really suffer; the pig makes the suffering-like movements and noises for a completely unrelated reason”.
As usual, the easiest way to get into one of these extremes is trying hard to avoid the other one.
“The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness” seemed to me to avoid it better than many books (I only read the first half, unfortunately), but of course, the humans in it are kind of weird themselves :)
Seems to me that when we think about animals, there are two opposite mistakes one can make. First is too much anthropomorphism: “the dog that is looking at the moon must be thinking about its existential problems, because that is what I would do during a sleepless night”. Second is treating the animals as animal p-zombies: “yeah, the pig seems to suffer, but don’t make a mistake, only humans can really suffer; the pig makes the suffering-like movements and noises for a completely unrelated reason”.
As usual, the easiest way to get into one of these extremes is trying hard to avoid the other one.
“The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness” seemed to me to avoid it better than many books (I only read the first half, unfortunately), but of course, the humans in it are kind of weird themselves :)