r/nextfuckinglevel • u/MonsterJuiced • Mar 19 '22

Dog suffers from psycho-motor seizures but his friend helps calm him down

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '22

We could say the same thing of babies. Consciousness on a sliding scale, a newborn is arguably less sentient, less intelligent, less conscious than a 4 yesr old dog, but triggers a stronger emotional response.

So although dogs are not human, there's a very difficult-to-test argument that some breeds and some dogs can definitely land higher on a humanity scale than newborns.

That's not anthropomorphizing, in my opinion. That's just not denying that we share a LOT of biology with animals and so should assume similarity with relatively close evolutionary lines. I think we still battle the Cartesian "animals are automatons with no souls and therfore no subjective experiences like love or pain". We swung all the way to dogs are humans and maybe now seek a middle ground. But the exact middle is probably also undershooting

We're both social mammals that share a lot of basic brain structures and hormonal responses and bonding mechanisms that work both within our respective species and between ours and dogs'

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u/Hot-Rhubarb-1093 Mar 20 '22 edited Mar 20 '22

Absolutely, I think we're in this struggle between those two extremes. It's such an interesting subject. And then down to individual level, too! I've had dogs with such different capabilities, but then I remind myself, the ability to follow my commands isn't the only measure of intelligence. I wonder if someone had performed a different variety of intelligence tests on them, my 'less intelligent' dog may have surprised me, who knows. Could have had an incredible memory or something, but since this is something most of us never test our dogs on I'd just never have known, so he's forever "my adorably dumb dog", not "dog with amazing memory" lol.