[robbiep]

I grew up on a farm and I have seen animals free from human interaction display playfulness, happiness, fear, pain and anger - Dogs, horses, cattle, sheep. In all cases I found these behaviours unambiguous and demonstrating a relatively rich inner life, that I find not at all unexpected from their neurobiology

[gweinberg]

I think mammals have pretty much the same set of emotions that we do. Insects, probably not.

[sovande]

That’s a very Cartesian world view on biology, luckily abandoned a long time ago. Animals where merely automatons and scientists dissecting dogs alive could gleefully ignore their cries as nothing more than automatic response stimuli. Today we know that physiologically humans are not very different from other mammals, even if we want to be. We all have a limbic system and that means we all have the same emotions. Animals have feelings and emotions. When things happen to them, they react with emotions be it sorrow, anger, happiness, fear.

[robbiep]

Carl Segan at the end of The Demon haunted World talks extensively about this mechanistic worldview, where animals were once thought of as clockwork.

I’d just note that your comment reads a bit like I endorse this view - whereas the intention of my post was to refute it. Perhaps you meant to reply to my parent?

[sovande]

Yes, sorry. I managed to click on the wrong link in the HN iOS app.

[antidesitter]

What you’re claiming of the comment you replied to is the complete opposite of what it states.

[brennebeck]

Exactly. The op is essentially agreeing with the gp, but seems to be saying that the op’s view was ‘luckily abandoned a long time ago.’

[darkerside]

What other animals have a limbic system. Are some species' more developed than others or are the base components the same in every species that has one?