Quote:
Originally Posted by Pierre
But then no animal I'm aware of wants to be killed and eaten.
The instinct of every animal, I think, is to survive.
They know they cannot do that if they're dead. So they try to avoid lions and sharks. Therefore they are aware that they are alive, and if they are eaten they are dead.
So wouldn't that suggest they are aware of their mortality?
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it
could suggest an awareness of their own mortality. However, I see staying alive for most other animals as being instinctive rather than as a result of contemplating self-mortality, as is mating (the animal doesn't know
why it's doing it, it just has the urge and overwhelming drive to do so). I don't believe frogs, for example, wonder about what might happen when they die, or consider in depth what they should do in life before passing on. They, like most animals, go about their business as part of instinctive or learned behavioural patterns.
animals and humans alike, regardless of cognitive ability, tend to live by the 'freeze, flight or fight' rule. these three reactions, in that order, are a direct result of a perceived threat to the self, absolutely. but because an animal contemplates mortality as humans do? I don't think so. it's more likely that the reactions are either a result of instinctive reactions (such as the avoidance of high temperatures as evolution has developed nervous systems that make it uncomfortable, and therefore create a necessity for avoidance), or because of learned behaviours from the group, herd or parents (such as running when a lion comes near because that's what is experienced any time time a lion is near).
---------- Post added at 23:16 ---------- Previous post was at 23:02 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by arcimedes
I think it is sloppy thinking to consider that it should be regarded as a sound theory, I would go as far as regarding it as an hypothesis as it would be difficult to gather enough evidence either way.
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true, it would indeed be hard to gather evidence. you may even be right that calling it a sound theory is perhaps too far.
but although we cannot yet prove one way or the other the internal thoughts of any species without relying on introspection (which in turn requires a bi-directional and mutually understood communicative method), I personally believe that the most likely hypothesis is that which humans are probably the only species on this planet to contemplate the self and self-mortality. an example that goes towards this could be that we are the only species, who actually repeatedly, observably and to a point, predictably plan for the event of our own death.