From: motto@cbnewsf.cb.att.com (mary.rita.otto)
Subject: Re: swan hunting
Organization: AT&T
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 21:01:40 GMT

In article <1992Sep10.191602.5784@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> jhoskins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (James M Hoskins) writes:
>In article <1992Sep10.130631.11041@clpd.kodak.com> black@che.serum.kodak.com (R
>obert Black (x37236)) writes:
>>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>
>>
>>.... Humans project their own emotions
>>about the suffering onto the animal because it is an instinctive
>>behavior that has enabled us to live in societal groups.  When we
>>have little or no interaction with animals in the wild, we have
>>all our interactions with humans.  It affects our behavior.  It
>>causes us to react to the animal as if it were human, simply because
>>there is no other pattern of behavior.
>...If I'm
>misunderstanding Ms. Otto I wish she's explain more.  As for the final
>quotation you copy from her, I didn't understand it.  I'd invite her to
>clarify.

I accept your invitation.

I couldn't find "malinformed" in Webster's. %)

Empathy: (from Webster's Unabridged, under fair use)
1.  the projection of one's own personality into the personality of
another in order to understand him better;  intellectual identification
of oneself with another
2.  the projection of one's own personality into an object, with the
attribution to the object of one's own emotions, responses, etc.;
also called pathetic fallacy (pathetic fallacy in turn is described
as the literary device of portraying inanimate nature as having human
feelings and character.  Example:  the angry sea)

[EEmpathy is a positive adaptive behavior which assists human beings
in relating to one another and in the formation of societal groups.
It assists in survival in providing a means for understanding;
that is, a human being can empathize with another human being in
difficulty and recognize that difficulty in the absence of a direct 
communication.

Empathy is a projection of emotions and understanding based on our
own biases.  For example, we may see nothing wrong with something
that is extremely offensive to someone else, because our biases and
experience are greatly different; our understanding very different.
So it is with humans and animals.  Humans project their own biases
onto the observed behavior of animals.  This is worsened with the
isolation of humans from other animals in the wild; there is no
knowledge of natural animal behaviors, and a predominance of
human-human interactions in the working model of behavior "interpretation"
from which the world is interpreted.

If my dog acts in a certain way when I return home, I can choose to
say that my dog is "happy to see me" or I can say that the dog's
behavior is a conditioned response to the regular sequence of events
of coming home, letting the dog out, playing with the dog, and feeding
the dog.  I prefer to let the dog be a dog without any projected emotional
baggage.  Much of a dog's behavior in instinctive, and is how dogs
interacted in dog packs before they were incorporated into human groups
as pets.
Mary Otto

BTW - only people who hate my guts refer to me as Ms. Otto.


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