From: jhoskins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (James M Hoskins)
Subject: Re: swan hunting
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 21:58:38 GMT

In article <1992Sep10.210140.3255@cbfsb.cb.att.com> motto@cbnewsf.cb.att.com (m
ary.rita.otto) writes:
>In article <1992Sep10.191602.5784@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> jhoskins@magnus.a
cs.ohio-state.edu (James M Hoskins) 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.
>
>

Ok, Mary, I think I understand what you're saying here.  Empathy is
uniquely human behavior, adaptive because it fosters societal bonding.
If we are hiking around and about a forest and notice the wolf-pack
ripping apart the fawn (mentioned in an earlier post) we're observing
natural animal behavior.  Some people would have a tug-at-the-heartstrings
empathetic reaction, try to shoo off the wolves, and perhaps put the
fawn out of her misery.  In doing so, we would be exhibiting a human
empathatic reaction irrelevant to the workings of nature.  Additionally,
we would naively be reading into our analysis of the situation purely human
reactions such as the fawn must be "frightened," "feeling pain," "scared,"
or that the wolves are "savage" and "vicious" creatures.  Is this close?

I still don't understand entirely what you are saying.  Human
society is strengthed by peoples' capacity to feel empathy toward one
another.  Any extention of empathy to non-human species is ________ (fill
in the blank)?  Stupid, non-adaptive, naive, the pathetic fallacy, wrong.
This is where I lose you.

This started in your statement that Russell Lawrence did not have a "true
understanding" of nature.  If he did he would not worry so much about deer
being shot etc.  Then I mentioned the logical extention of your view placed
no sanction on possible human behavior toward non-human species.  I assume
that you would prefer to kill a rabbit with a knife--quickly--rather that
use your teeth to gnaw across its throat.  Why?  If you saw a non-empathetic
person (say for example a sociopath) out in his rural back yard with his
goats, burning their fur off with kerosene and matches so they would be easier
to butcher--after smothering them, would it simply be too much human-human
interaction and the operation of the pathetic fallacy that would cause
most people to find other methods of killing the goat perferable?
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals