Hume explains in this section of the book his view on animals. He states that if an animal (for example a dog) goes by fire and gets burned, or does any such action in which the dog will feel pain.. it will learn from the experience and know not to go by this cause again. I feel that Hume is stating the obvious here. If any animal/person goes by a certain object and feels pain or gets hurt in any way, they know not to go by the object again.
As discussed in class, our Professor gave us an example about monkeys. If a mirror was placed in front of the monkey, some might actually go try to grab the mirror. They think the mirror is another monkey. Comparing that example to humans.. a human would catch on that its their reflection in the mirror, not another person.
3 comments:
I think you actually could compare the monkey example to humans. If a mirror was placed in front of a baby then I'm sure that that baby would think that it was another person not the reflection of themselves
animals do catch on to their reflections in the mirror. When my cat was a kitten she used to attack her reflection and she soon realized it was herself. although we see animals trying to attack their reflection, we forget that they are learning, just like we did. when we were babies we too had to learn that mirror images were merely a relfection of ourself.
But i dont know if animals learn from getting harmed.. because if a dog does something its not supposed and gets hit by its owner the next day it may do the same thing until maybe over and over again it realizes. but animals have very short memory spands to remember some little details or what to do.
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