NielsBohron

Voyager is the closest Lemmy app to RIF, in my opinion. Plus it's open source and has zero ads.

I get Ross from Friends.

Also, you said a yellow suit, and now I'm seeing the Man in the Yellow Hat from Curious George.

You seem unable to distinguish between nuance and pedantry, so it's unlikely that we will be able to have a productive conversation on a topic that revolves around nuance.

Have a nice day.

Fair. I could have been more accurate by saying "they are exhibiting behavior that has been reinforced by certain positive responses," but that's a little wordy.

Do all of us experience ennui for that matter? Envy, to the same level as one another?

As noted elsewhere, this is an ongoing philosophical discussion called The Problem of Other Minds. I'd link it, but since you can't be bothered to read the links already present, I don't think there's much point.

Which leads to a paradox of how one defines a conscious, human mind at all, if it were indeed based only on what emotions are present when presented with a similar stimulus.

You're missing the point that all humanity, collectively, as a species has largely the same senses, evolutionary history, and brain structure. Therefore, despite experiencing the emotions differently and to different extremes, we are mostly capable of experiencing the same emotions. Take away that shared brain structure and shared evolutionary history, and it's a very large, unfounded assumption to think that other species have the same emotions.

Further, I’m noticing that you’re focused on dancing around “are they human”, not “are they conscious”

No, I literally agreed with you that consciousness is a spectrum and that most life falls somewhere on that spectrum. Buy hey, go ahead and ignore that so you can build yourself a strawman. I never said anywhere that I eat meat, so you're just imagining things so you can build an argument against a statement I never made.

Do you think animals are capable of being curious, even when there’s no impetus for them to be? I certainly do.

This sentence right here is everything I need to know about your stance. You're either not willing to consider or able to understand that different species experience consciousness and emotion as an evolved trait, and when the evolutionary drivers are different, the emotions are different. Any species that evolves the ability to be curious will have done so because it's an evolutionary advantage, but if the evolutionary pressure and the senses and the literal brain structure is different, then the emotion of "curiosity" will be different. Assuming that other species experience curiosity the same way as humans is exceptionally close-minded.

You're not doing other species any favors by anthropomorphizing them; you're just limiting your own understanding.

No problem! I'm just glad my semi-obsessive reading of wikipedia is helping others, too

I believe you just hit upon what is called The Problem of Other Minds in philosophical terms

using names of human emotions instead can be a good approximation

It can be, but it can also be a gross misrepresentation. Outside of higher mammals, it seems safer to me to assume that their emotions are extremely dissimilar and human emotions are poor analogues at best.

My pets express themselves pretty clearly, despite having much more limited ability to communicate across species lines.

They express wants and needs, not emotions. Assuming that they have emotions that are the same as human emotions is anthropomorphization. They might have some analogous emotions, and boredom in a mammal might seem similar to human boredom, but where do you draw the line? Can a dog experience ennui? Can a cat experience a lack of fulfillment? Can a snake experience depression?

I feel reasonably confident in stating that I believe animals are conscious, just to varying depths.

I don't disagree, but you can't say that animals that evolved consciousness in completely different environments and with different senses and neurology would experience emotion in the same way as humans. Apes, sure, they are really close and probably the easiest argument for human emotions in non-human species, but other mammals get farther and farther from human experience and emotion, and it's presumptuous of humans to assume that they experience emotions the same way. Read "What Is It Like to Be a Bat" for some of the philosophical and scientific issues with assigning human emotions to other mammals.

And other intelligent animals that are further removed from humanity on the evolutionary chain would have even more alien emotions. Humans can feel empathy for an octopus or African Greys, but can either of those animals feel empathy for humans? What about curiosity? They seem curious, but how can we know if they experience curiosity that is anything like human curiosity?

But they are not human emotions, so to assign human emotions to animals is a misnomer.

This one is always a delight.

Well, it was completed in 1941 while the US was still strongly isolationist. We didn't enter WW2 until after the attack on Pearl Harbor, which was December 7th.

So yeah, there was a world war going on, but the statue was planned and completed while it was largely "business as usual" in the US.