Nevertheless, the fact that we share, basically, a similar physiological structure with other chordates (four limbs, a dorsal nerve chord, bilateral symmetry, etc.) has always suggested to me that we have a pretty good chance of “reading” animals emotions accurately in many situations. Their brains, though not identical to ours, must work similarly to ours at least some of the time, because their bodies do.

Fortunately for me, there are people who have actually begun to study how animals’ brains work in a more rigorous fashion than me musing on whether my friend’s dog is smiling at me. National Geographic has an article online about some of these scientists’ work. It’s accompanied by a set of animal portraits that bring up the anthropomorphism question beautifully. Can we really read the expressions of these animals, or are we deceiving ourselves?

The portrait of “JB,” a Giant Pacific Octopus, is especially strange and beautiful, and perhaps the most prone to my anthropomorphizing instinct, as it’s so different from us it seems a much greater leap to imagine that we can know what it’s feeling. But maybe it’s not so different after all. It turns out, according to this article on ScientificBlogging, that octopi are among the most intelligent of the invertebrates, but their relatively large brains are structured more simply and have fewer nerve cells than ours, so they are perfect for studying how brains, even our brains, memorize and learn things.

(Via Norm via Andrew Sullivan.)

The underlying problem, I suspect, is that our public culture has become so infected with subjectivist assumptions that people don’t realize that there’s a difference between desires and reasons. Sentiments are taken as given; no-one ever stops to question whether their reactive attitudes are warranted. Any kind of negative emotion is not just evidence, but constitutive, of suffering injustice. You’re offended, therefore they’re in the wrong.

A similar phenomenon, perhaps the flipside of this unquestioned subjectivism, is the way people seem to believe that their own anger about an issue is some sort of proof that they’re right about it. Very often among left-wing “viewers with alarm,” and probably among right-wingers, too, though I don’t pay as much attention, we hear that the country needs to see how angry they are. It’s summed up perfectly in the bumper sticker I’ve made fun of before: “If you’re not completely outraged, you’re not paying attention.” Those who are outraged are obviously the best informed, and if you’re not exploding with anger, well, you must not know what you’re talking about.

But isn’t anger generally an unreliable guide to what’s right? Certainly you can be outraged over true cases of injustice, but if I were to look over all the times I’ve been angry and the proximate causes thereof, I’m quite sure I’d find that often I was angry for no good reason at all. Anger and passion can certainly motivate (though they can also exhaust and depress), but they’re only worth celebrating if they’re motivating something worthwhile.