As promised last Tuesday I'll report about the new inhabitant of my backyard in RL.
I have bought special hedgehog food and a hedgehog house for my winterguest. Since November 10 I put food on a saucer and tap the saucer, which makes a clear bell sound.
I have been tapping on the saucer for several days now when I put the food on it around 17:30h. Usually he then showed up for his dinner around 19:00h.
Yesterday, however, again, "tap, tap, tap" on the saucer and my cute hedgehog was there in no time! Pavlov is also there for hedgehogs.
Later that evening I saw him again eating the leftovers of his dinner. That's how hedgehog "Sprinter" gets through the winter.
But what is happening to me here? I am definitely empathic related to my hedgehog. It is going to be a cold winter and I share its "feeling" to avoid the cold and enjoy a warm place to sleep, for instance.
What is driving me, emotions or feelings or both? I came to these considerations because of a question from the audience after the lectures. Someone asked for an explanation of the difference and the relationship between emotions and feelings.
Never thought about it myself so explicitly, but when I delved into it I came across some very interesting ideas and observatoins.
Emotions are complex physiological responses to stimuli, both internal and external. They are often automatic and involuntary, triggered by specific events or situations.
Emotions are typically classified into primary emotions such as joy, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust, and secondary emotions, which are more complex and often blends of primary emotions like anger.
Feelings are the conscious experience of emotions. They are the subjective interpretation and labeling of our emotional states.
Feelings are influenced by our thoughts, beliefs, memories, and cultural background. They can be conscious or unconscious, and they can vary in intensity and duration.
And that is the fascinating part of the story. While emotions are physiological responses, a quality we share with many other biological organisms, feelings are the input from the (sub)conscious MIND regarding our emotions.
This morning there was an article in my newspaper with the headline: Intelligent animals are not just like humans, they are cunning differently.
This made me think one step further. Empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings and emotions of another, is not exclusively a human trait.
While it may manifest differently in different species, there is growing evidence that suggests empathy is a biological feature shared by various social animals.
While the exact mechanisms and motivations behind these behaviors may vary, they demonstrate that the capacity for empathy is not unique to humans.
It appears to be a fundamental aspect of social cognition that has evolved in many species to facilitate cooperation and social bonding.
So I came to the following conclusion: all too often we treat our pets as if they were human. We talk to them, believe that they really understand us, etc.,
but because animals do not have a Mind, like humans do, they are only empathetic on an emotional level and it only SEEMS that they behave humanly and understand us.
I once sat on a terrace next to a German lady with her dog, who barked incessantly. The lady kept saying: "Sei doch stil, sei stil!", but the dog just kept barking.
I really had to restrain myself, because I had the urge to ask this lady: "Are you sure that your dog understands German?"
What actually happened was that the dog was driven by a primary emotion, for example, fear, and was of course incapable of any self-reflection
and then come to the conclusion....yes, not good...I am disturbing everyone here on the terrace. I really have to deal with my fear differently.
Thank you for your attention again.....
Main Sources:
MacMillan The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edition
TABLE OF CONTENT -----------------------------------------------------------------
1 - 100 Philosophers 9 May 2009 Start of
2 - 25+ Women Philosophers 10 May 2009 this blog
3 - 25 Adventures in Thinking 10 May 2009
4 - Modern Theories of Ethics 29 Oct 2009
5 - The Ideal State 24 Febr 2010 / 234
6 - The Mystery of the Brain 3 Sept 2010 / 266
7 - The Utopia of the Free Market 16 Febr 2012 / 383
8. - The Aftermath of Neo-liberalism 5 Sept 2012 / 413
9. - The Art Not to Be an Egoist 6 Nov 2012 / 426
10 - Non-Western Philosophy 29 May 2013 / 477
11 - Why Science is Right 2 Sept 2014 / 534
12 - A Philosopher looks at Atheism 1 Jan 2015 / 557
13 - EVIL, a philosophical investigation 17 Apr 2015 / 580
14 - Existentialism and Free Will 2 Sept 2015 / 586
15 - Spinoza 2 Sept 2016 / 615
16 - The Meaning of Life 13 Febr 2017 / 637
17 - In Search of my Self 6 Sept 2017 / 670
18 - The 20th Century Revisited 3 Apr 2018 / 706
19 - The Pessimist 11 Jan 2020 / 819
20 - The Optimist 9 Febr 2020 / 824
21 - Awakening from a Neoliberal Dream 8 Oct 2020 / 872
22 - A World Full of Patterns 1 Apr 2021 / 912
23 - The Concept of Freedom 8 Jan 2022 / 965
24 - Materialism 7 Sept 2022 / 1011
25 - Historical Materialism 5 Oct 2023 / 1088
26 - The Bonobo and the Atheist 9 Jan 2024 / 1102
27 - Artificial Intelligence 9 Feb 2024 / 1108
28 - Why Am I Here 6 Sept 2024 / 1139
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