Humans have feelings, why can’t animals feel the same as we do?

onder This past week, as the time escaped me while doing a different kind of writing called - scripting, “Finding Dori” was playing in the background for some color to the, otherwise, very quiet atmosphere. When I would need to take a moment from my ‘scripting,’ I would glance up and watch, at this point in the movie, cute and little blue fish named Dori, swimming about trying to find her parents. Well, I suppose I looked up at the screen right as the narrative in the movie took a “flashback” and Dori had remembered certain memories, even if minute, of her mother liking a purple shell.

As the reminiscent comes to more shallow depths of thought, my mind wonders as to if those blue fish actually have a known memory loss issue. This might be a quandary that suffices the laughter of my inner monologue. To quelch it’s relief in wondry if I truly believe that fish could have the mental capacity enough to forget. Humans do tend to anthropomorphize. Truly, this is what just happened. But that just means that my imagination is in a healthy spot. To empathize and sympathize with nonhuman beings. I believe it is a good trait to have. My real quandary now is why is it that humans tend to anthropomorphize animals, among other things? Let’s take a look into the inner workings of the mind.

First, what is anthropomorphism? It is the attribution of human characteristics and/or human behavior onto nonhuman beings or objects. One article spoke

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of humans in early childhood that are encouraged to develop the metaphorical thinking modality by imaging ourselves as different animals. It is good development of our imagination and is important that young children engage in such activities, to not only empathize, but sympathize with others. “... Projecting ourselves onto animals is a developmental achievement for the human mind,” says Maria Popova, from “The Marginalian.” Why wouldn’t it be? The article goes on to talk of how anthropomorphism can be theoretically thought of as a form of arrogance and narcissism, according to Max Planck Institute Director Lorraine Daston and science historian Gregg Mitman in “Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism.” “...We’re beginning to recognize the complexities of animal consciousness, there is a different kind of arrogance in projecting our own souls onto nonhuman animals.” In the way that humans tend to think solely of themselves, and so with creating a narrative that has your beloved animal, or inanimate object, only thinking of you.

I tend to disagree with the latter statement. If you can imagine yourself as another form of being on this planet, or any other planet, isn’t that making room for other experiences? That leads me to leave you with this last quote, “In certain historical and cultural contexts, the longing to think with animals becomes the opposite of the arrogant egotism decried by critics of anthropomorphism. Instead of projection of one’s own way of thinking and feeling onto other minds, submersion of self in the genuinely other is fervently attempted—but never achieved. It is a virtuoso but doomed act of complete empathy… This extreme form of thinking with animals is the impossible but irresistible desire to jump out of one’s own skin, exchange one’s brain, plunge into another way of being.” - Alan Watts

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