Why do you feel that all living things need to have feelings?
Feelings are just electrical and chemical processes in our brains. These processes don't take place in carrots (they don't have a brain to begin with).
I don't think science has even been able to prove that humans have feelings. For all we know, there may simply be some brain algorithm which provides responses that give this impression.
(This is one of the difficulties studying intelligence also in birds, some of whose behavior seems to indicate that they have a "theory of mind". That is, when they hide food, whether they come back and move the food seems to depend on whether they saw another bird of their species watching them hide it.)
Frank Silbermann wrote:I don't think science has even been able to prove that humans have feelings. For all we know, there may simply be some brain algorithm which provides responses that give this impression.
Well, yeah. And that algorithm is what we call "feelings". The responses are what we observe which tell us that other organisms are having feelings. Since we don't see any such responses from carrots, we decide that carrots don't have feelings.
But that isn't the end of the story. Carrots don't have brains, so there can't be any of those brain algorithms. And hence nothing which looks like feelings to us. But perhaps we should be looking elsewhere for feelings? Or something analogous to feelings?
I love what pictures Bear Bibeault posts to topics. Most of the time these pics very correctly tells what can't be said in words.. and obviously very funny tooo..
Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking....
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