Submitted by Throwaway2354o t3_zxqfro in askscience
Cultist_O t1_j238i9p wrote
In addition to the other excellent coment, I'd like to point out that "emotions", along with other subjective experiences, even including consciousness itself, are extremely difficult to measure.
We can really only measure an organism's responses to stimuli (including, increasingly, physiological/neural responses). We can't really say for sure "this dog is experiencing loneliness because she was left home for two days", so much as we can say "this dog is whining, laying about, and staring off into space more and more the longer she's left alone". We can't even "prove" other humans experience consciousness the same way we do, as we don't actually kniw what causes it, but they act similarly, so the simplest explanation is that they do.
It's not hard to imagine an organism that experiences the same emotions as us, but that reacts to those feelings completely differently. In that case, how would we know what they're feeling? Similarly, how do we know trees don't have complex internal lives, but because they can't move, we've no idea?
Ultimately, we assume more complex nervous systems mean more complex consciousness and emotions, but the details aren't well established.
Telltwotreesthree t1_j256lfb wrote
Complex emotion is impossible without a high level of intelligence because the "complex" part is dependent on self awareness or even more abstract thinking (object permanence, cause effect, etc)
So splitting hairs about complex emotion is redundant. Any emotional complexity is dependent to a high degree on intelligence, bringing the discussion back to neuroconnectivity
[deleted] t1_j23iqia wrote
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