Re: are we humble enough to know how little we know?

Oh, gosh, I don't know. Heidegger? It sounds like the kind of thing he'd say. Or perhaps someone a little more recherché like Uexküll (what a name!). I wouldn't know. I didn't respond to your previous post on this subject, because I agree with you on what you wrote, but still think that I was right in what I wrote. Let me explain. I quite agree that the inner lives of animals are almost unimaginable. I find it impossible to imagine what it would be like to have no verbal language (actually, dolphins might have a language, but that's another matter - in any case, cats certainly do not). I find it difficult to imagine what it would be like to go around without that constant verbal chatter in one's mind. Then, of course, there's the alienness of the emotional lives of animals. What does my cat feel when he's high on catnip (he requires his fix every evening nowadays)? I have no idea. When he thinks he's spotted a vole in the undergrowth, and suddenly gets incredibly excited and focused on hunting, how does that feel? Again, I find it difficult to understand. The senses of a cat are quite different to human senses as well. In fact, in almost every respect the senses of cats are superior to human senses, more acute at detecting their environment. But I find that I do not need to anthropomorphise my cat in order to love him. Nor do I see why I should care that animals would not be "grateful" for my empathy. Since when does love require payment? And yet, admitting the mysteriousness of the inner lives of animals, it does not follow from all this, for me, that the life of a cat is so mysterious that it is utterly beyond my comprehension! When I get back from shopping and my cat trills with pleasure at seeing me, I understand perfectly what this means! When he curls up next to my head on the pillow and purrs loudly I know what that means as well. We are all mammals, after all, and the true arrogance, for me, is denying our kinship with the animals because of some Abrahamic superstition that humans are uniquely created in the image and likeness of God and that Adam and his progeny have therefore been given 'dominion' over the animals to use them as they please without the slightest regard for their welfare. I would respectfully suggest that the Book of Genesis has been rather superseded by The Origin of Species. And when I see a dolphin carrying its dead calf for days I know that the mother is feeling what humans would call grief. What other conceivable explanation is there for such behaviour? It is not as though this behaviour has any survival value - quite the contrary - so it must stem from an emotion. What name would you give to this emotion? So you see, for me the statement on the Beeb website that the mother is feeling grief is a perfectly sound inference from the evidence of our senses, and I see no reason to deny it.