Does a dog bark because it is happy, or because you think it is happy? That is the real distinction. If you show it a biscuit, it wags its tail and salivates. But to a chimpanzee, what use is the biscuit? For a human...you reinforce behavior you see as positive and give others your own opinions. So how can you say anyone truly has their own sense of Self? See what I mean? Exactly my point!
This is a kind of a joke post, but the point is that the question is seeking either a biological explanation, or a psychological explanation.Originally Posted by Santa Claus
We can fairly easily answer why a dog salivates in a biological way. But if we want to know why a dog is "happy" or why a dog salivates in a psychological way... then it needs the psychological theory of dogs (if it even has one...). I'm sure most dog-lovers would disagree, but I'm sure no one would come up with one because dogs don't likely have psychology, at least on the level of our own.
It's the same with humans. How do we know that one is "happy", or whether he's just putting on an external mask, but he really is unhappy on the inside? We may be able to associate a dog wagging its tail as an external behavioral marker for "happiness", and that may work because dogs are simpler, but it's not so for humans. We may associate smiling as "happiness", but he may simply be forcing a smile and is really a depressed person.
Why can we easily answer why someone would salivate in a biological way, but we can't even answer whether someone is happy or not?
The answer is that we already have a biological theory of why someone would salivate, while we have no psychological theory of why someone would be happy, or even know what happiness is. So somebody needs to come up with a theory explaining what happiness is. And if you don't think that's possible, then the reason why people salivate were quite mysterious before there were theories about it.
Last edited by Singu; 09-15-2019 at 12:06 AM.
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