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!
“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