Why do you assume we have a higher state of awareness? I would start by defining what you mean there because it’s relative. Elephants are very aware, dolphins have fucking sonar, birds can feel the magnetic fields of the earth. Humans tend to think how they experience the world and reality is a “higher state” but that is a false assumption, imo.
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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By asking "why", you have proven the basis of my assumption.
How?
We barely understand how other humans feel. I'd venture to say it's pretty profound to really make that connection. Usually it's in retrospect when you can see how someone really felt or what they meant in a moment. Then we're talking about other animals? Who fucking knows man. Pandimensonial shades of the color blue
Probably the opposite.
Our "higher reasoning" and "state of awareness" (needs defining) gives us the ability to do thigns other animals can't. For example chronic pain sufferers are taught how to manage their pain with a variety of CBT techniques. Not something you can teach a dog or cat.
People in intense periods of intense suffering may have thw ability to dissociate from the experience ("go to their happy place") to lessen the pain experience.
We're not aware animal shave this ability.
If anything mammals of all kinds that feel pain don't have our higher cognitive ability to help manage and supress it.
Having said that it's possible we feel more emotionally complex pain. Pain induced from our own minds by remembering trauma or imagining painful situations. As someone pointed out below a dying animal probably isn't thinking about the loss of it's family as it's dying. But it will be feeling the pain of dying acutely.
I have been stung by bees/wasps several times, and the times when I was youngest and the least self aware were the worst. I was in absolute screaming agony as a small child. Then one day as an adult I was startled to be stung and found the experience to be completely different. Sure, it hurt and was really sharp like someone just jabbed a needle into me, but my response was to laugh, not cry. I also have the capacity to just not give a fuck (I recognize the cause of the pain isn't going to kill me) when I'm in a fair bit of pain and just do something else (provided I can still physically move, which isn't always a given) and this is helpful for tuning it out.
So from my personal experience, I would say absolutely: animals have it worse, not better.
Emotions evolved a long time ago and pain and pleasure are even older. They are essencial for survival of organisms and the intensity is apropriate for their function. It is therefore reasonable to think other organisms feel them with similar intensity. If anything, they need to rely on them more, so the experience could be more intense for them. There's surely going to be quite a bit of diversity though.
Edit: Let me add that this is an awsome question. Thanks for making me think about the way other people, animals and different organisms experience the world. I love it!
We say that we as humans have “higher reasoning” but most of, if not all of, our reasoning is predicated on animal instincts. People are capable of thinking through their actions and emotions and such, sure. Those same people also don’t always do so. How many times have you or someone you know let their emotions get the better of them, even if they are “aware” of them? That’s not really any different from a spooked horse running off or a hurt dog trying to bite the person trying to help.
“Higher awareness” is much the same. In fact many animals have senses far greater than ours (like a dog’s sense of smell) or which we lack entirely (like sonar.)
All mammals at least have similar brain structures with the same general set of glands and functions. Even the way humans think and feel and reason is different from one another, but we can still identify core emotions in one another. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that just because animals don’t experience the world exactly like us, doesn’t mean they don’t have similar feelings and reasons for feeling those things.
Not more intense, but deeper and more complex. There's still the pain stimulus, but it comes with the burden of knowledge. "Will I survive this? What will happen to my family? Why is this happening?" I'm sure pain is quite intense in lesser animals, but the intellectual response is simpler or altogether absent.
Having seen my dogs uncontained levels of excitement and euphoria as well as grumpy and depressed days first hand I would say not.
yep, I dont know that i've ever been as excited about anything as my dog did when it was time to go on walkies - or as excited about dinner time.
My guess is that awareness plays into it through humans' perceptions of time. We can both anticipate and recollect pleasurable/painful experiences in ways fish probably can't. We can use our imaginations to torture ourselves, or mentally escape painful circumstances.
How this balances out in terms of intensity? Idk lmao
Depends on several factors and your definition, specially physical vs. psycological.
For example raw fear and happiness is usually quite a bit lower in adult humans than animals. Animals will do things like pass out from excitement, soil themselves out of fear, etc. and although this does happen a bit with human children it is much more rare in adults.
I think we are more capable of analyzing the emotions we feel, which probably makes them more intense.
If I'm dying, and I know I'm going too die, I will be thinking about my family and what my death might do to them. If I'm a deer, I doubt I'm thinking about all that while I'm doing. I think that adds a level of intensity to it.
Maybe pain and pleasure resulting from emotions/psychological sources? Pain and pleasure are pretty essential for creatures to not do the bad things and to do the good things for the survival of their species. Otherwise, they die of hunger or get permanently maimed without even realizing it.
Ive heard ppl say stuff like "oh that animal doesnt feel pain it's not intelligent" but idk i always just assume the animal has feeling and could be hurt.. so thats why i havent been able to kill bugs. (Bc you can see their eyes and stuff! Theyre alive and everything.)
But they have less nerves and brains so shouldn't they be a lot LESS aware? Aren't there more nerves in my finger than most bugs?