I think most men can easily prove that their dog loves them more than their wife/girlfriend does. Just lock both in the trunk of your car and see which one is more affectionate when you open it an hour or two later.
And how, exactly, does this differs from love as expressed by humans?
[MPSIMS Hijack]If you haven’t already, watch Wendy and Lucy. It doesn’t answer the ‘Do dogs love their owners?’ question, but it certainly makes a case for humans loving their dogs. [/MPSIMS hijack]
The precise question under discussion is how human love is different from dog love. As you have a clear answer to this, would you care to enlighten us?
This is the fantasy – that we are so unique and special that no animal has any trace of any quality or ability we prize in ourselves.
We were wrong when we thought the earth was the center of the solar system, we were wrong when we thought “lesser” humans were dumber than the dominant culture’s humans, we’ve been wrong almost every time we assert we occupy the unique center of creation. And it’s been our wise men and scientists making those assertions, often as not.
Dogs are no more hard-wired than other social animals such as humans. This argument – usually tinged with a certain defensive anger – is repeated to make us feel superior, not because of observation or human experience. It’s the kind of thing Archie Bunker would assert.
My dog loves me. Just ask her.
Exactly. I mean it’s not like mothers choose to love their children; it’s hardwired. If a mother is hardwired to “love” her child and does all the things that we associate with love for the child, and a dog is hardwired to “love” its pack members and does all the things we associate with love for the pack members, why should we conclude that one is different from the other?
It is that hardwired parental love that keeps us from killing our kids at between the age of 18 months and 18 years.
Sure, since you asked nicely, and without any trace of snarky superiority; one is based on instinct, and one is based on—or at very least, influenced by—intellect.
Dogs ‘love’, such as it is, because they don’t have a choice.
Wow. You have a choice of who you love? You’re a better man than I. Or your heart is more obedient, anyhow. I can alter my actions, but I’ve never once successfully stopped feeling love for someone at will.
I think his point is that dogs start feeling love without a choice. Once they’ve identified the pack leader they love that entity regardless of all other factors.
An analogy might be the boy from that bad move AI. If you can push a button on a robot and have it feel authentic (from its point of view) love for you, is it really love?
“really love” meaning the free will sort of love that humans engage in.
You know, I may be a lesser man for it, but I find I can’t let this slide. You’ve taken care to poison the well so thoroughly that one can hardly do anything but shit into it, and then have the gall to accuse me of dishonest debate? I find that incredible.
My position is not an unreasonable one – love is a facilitator of social coherence, and dogs and humans have different social structures, thus there’s no reason to assume their concepts of love are identical. I’ve taken care to point out that that doesn’t imply any one’s concept to have prevalence over the other’s, or be superior to it. Dog love is as valid as human love. But to assume both to be identical is to over-generalize, and to disregard the dog’s individual nature. It can even be dangerous – most, if not all, of dog attacks on humans are due to misunderstandings of and incorrect assumptions about their nature. And it certainly does a disservice to all dogs to think of them as four-legged people with a waggy tail.
I asked you some questions and you still have not responded to them preferring instead to dance around the subject.
Can you tell when a dog is angry? Scared? Happy?
I can. It is abundantly obvious. I am not anthropomorphizing when I see these things. They are recognizable emotions because we share them and we recognize them correctly. Why would love be a special case?
I’ve answered your questions in a previous post of mine, which you even quoted in response. I do, however, acknowledge that there is a greater similarity in emotions such as fear or anger, because they are designed to evoke a response to certain stimuli – to run away from danger, for instance, or to raise heart rate, blood pressure and distribute adrenalin throughout the body in preparation of a fight – common to the experience of both dogs and humans. However, dogs don’t fear the future, or are angered by social injustices; and I’ve given a justification for why I think love is a different case in my preceding post.
“Free will love”? Maybe on Vulcan. Here on Earth, people stay with partners that beat them, physically and emotionally, because they started and keep feeling irrational love for them, same as dogs. Not every person, sure, but enough. And not every dog loves or loves unconditionally - some do indeed turn on their owners when enough is enough. Same as people.
That sort of makes me think of baby ducks or other animals who imprint. Is that kind of like pushing a button? It is an instinct with them.
Then again, you could argue that to a degree, it’s like that with babies–our love for our parents grows out of what we felt when we were small, helpless, and not really in a position to choose. And we often feel love for people quite different from ourselves. Would we really love our parents if we met them as adults?
I’m not even sure what you are arguing.
The question posed to us here is “Do dogs love their owners” or, reduced to its logical basis, “Can dogs experience love?”
Your experience of love is different than my experience as well as everyone else. We experience love differently to different things. Your love for your spouse/SO, your love for your children and your love for your pets all have a different character.
What of it?
You seem to acknowledge that doggie fear can have the same character as human fear. Doggie happiness is akin to human happiness. What makes us afraid/happy and how we respond to it are of course different. Yet at the root of it we are simply afraid or happy.
We recognize these emotions in dogs clearly and are not mistaken in our assessment that the dog is afraid/happy because we share those emotions. We spot it immediately in the dog because we have the same emotions. There is no anthropomorphizing here. The emotions in the dog are real and evident. How the dog may respond to those emotions are of course dictated by doggie behavior. They will not respond as a human would and to expect them to would be a mistake on our part.
Biologically dogs are rather similar to humans in many respects. Their brains work on the same principles. Dogs are intelligent and social creatures. Whatever triggers in the brain that occur in humans that evoke a gestalt defined as “love” certainly exists in dogs. If you want to say this is all just a biological trick mother nature programmed as a survival trait fine. The end effect is it is experienced as “love”. A dog need not ponder on the implications of the feeling for it to be real anymore than it needs to ponder on the inner workings of a car for the car to be real.
We see our dogs expressing love as readily as we see them express fear because it is a common trait we both share.
What about other creatures, then? Elephants, chimpanzees, rats, cats, giraffes – do all of them feel love just like humans? Or do you think there may be degrees, different kinds of love, depending on their social structures? And if there are such differences, what meaning does it have to identify the human and doggie versions of the feeling?
I think, at minimum, every creature which nurtures its young or protects its weak and old members can be meaningfully said to experience love. Probably those which mate (either biologically or socially) for life, as well. So that would include elephants, chimpanzees, rats, cats and giraffes, but probably not snakes or fish.
As noted how YOU experience love is almost certainly different than my experience. How strongly you feel it, why you feel it and so on differ from me. Nevertheless I would characterize your emotion as love if I saw it.
Again not sure what you are arguing.
I have seen chimps express love. Seen them with a broken heart at the loss of a loved one. Ever see Koko the Gorilla express her sense of loss over the death of her cat? Literally told her keepers about it.
I have seen elephants express love to their young.
It is not anthropomorphizing…they are experiencing love.
Actually Koko is a fantastic example. I suppose in your world Koko is really feeling something else entirely and we are misinterpreting her explicit statements on the subject: