People have been imagining animals have complex inner lives for thousands of years. It's a natural thing for us to do in our want to relate to things.
People disagree with each other, sure, but I think that's fair that people disagree on a contentious topic. There is hardly an answer to whether fish have complex inner worlds yet.
Are you talking about scientific thought about it?
>possess various degrees of cognitive ability
I can't say I agree with this. I agree with you that perhaps people failed to recognise and test for variances within the species. (Im not in this field either so I can't say for sure...) but again, the majority of people would know that different animals of the same type don't have different quirks and differing intelligence. Anyone who has had some pet fish has recognised some as being more shy or more aggressive than the other. Cow farmers know some of their cows are dumber and smarter than the other.
To take that thought and say "well therefore some fish have rich inner lives and others dont" is a bit of a stretch to me. I would suppose that there is a limit to their capacity and variance.
Sure, Chimps, Dolphins, Elephants - very easy to convince people they do and I'd believe it easily.
Convince me that a trout does? I'm not so sure, and would need to be convinced in some way. I can imagine it, but I won't believe something just because of my want to anthropomorphise.
While I can understand that many people are too dismissive of animals as being basic or unfeeling, that doesn't invalidate the idea that animals have a more limited mental capacity for what we perceive to be conciousness, and that includes sense of self at least somewhere along the line of complexity.
People have been imagining animals have complex inner lives for thousands of years. It's a natural thing for us to do in our want to relate to things.
People disagree with each other, sure, but I think that's fair that people disagree on a contentious topic. There is hardly an answer to whether fish have complex inner worlds yet.
Are you talking about scientific thought about it?
>possess various degrees of cognitive ability
I can't say I agree with this. I agree with you that perhaps people failed to recognise and test for variances within the species. (Im not in this field either so I can't say for sure...) but again, the majority of people would know that different animals of the same type don't have different quirks and differing intelligence. Anyone who has had some pet fish has recognised some as being more shy or more aggressive than the other. Cow farmers know some of their cows are dumber and smarter than the other.
To take that thought and say "well therefore some fish have rich inner lives and others dont" is a bit of a stretch to me. I would suppose that there is a limit to their capacity and variance.
Sure, Chimps, Dolphins, Elephants - very easy to convince people they do and I'd believe it easily.
Convince me that a trout does? I'm not so sure, and would need to be convinced in some way. I can imagine it, but I won't believe something just because of my want to anthropomorphise.
While I can understand that many people are too dismissive of animals as being basic or unfeeling, that doesn't invalidate the idea that animals have a more limited mental capacity for what we perceive to be conciousness, and that includes sense of self at least somewhere along the line of complexity.