Question: is it possible for an animal to have same emotin as humans

Ben Brilot answered on 11 Mar 2013:

That is a massive question and it’s one that doesn’t yet have an answer I’m afraid. Some people say that animals don’t have consciousness and without that they can’t experience emotions in the same way that we do. So they’d say that without consciousness it can’t possibly feel bad to be depressed, and since feeling awful and sad and lonely is the big thing about being depressed, it’s impossible that an animal could have that emotion.

There are two arguments against this: one is that we have no idea whether animals are conscious or not and it may well be that lots of them are conscious to an extent, so they might experience emotion in a way that we might recognise. Another argument is that maybe consciousness isn’t the most important thing for emotions: maybe it’s really important for us because we’re conscious, but actually depression could be an unpleasant thing for an animal even if they aren’t aware that they’re depressed in the way that a person is aware.

Personally, I think the last bit might turn out to be the case, and in the meantime we can always test ideas about how animals should behave if they do have emotions (they should be very pessmistic about life if they’re depressed for example).