Are humans the only species in which individuals lie to themselves?
It turns out that human tool making is not unique and our speech is not as unique as once alleged. Our morality does not look that special and our criminality and wars also have parallels in the animal world.
The experiments that tried to say humans are the only animals with a sense of self look seriously flawed in their methods and interpretations from my point of view.
It was once suggested that humans were the only animals that lie but that has been shown to be wrong.
Animals, particularly their young at play show some signs of imagination and fantasy by deliberately reacting to things that don't exist as if they existed for fun.
You can use pride and shame to train a dog though pride and shame do not seem as separated from reward and punishment in dogs as they are in people.
Human self deception and human group self deception might be uniquely human. We have religions and fictitious histories. We convince ourselves that we are more important or in some other way different from how we are. A husband and wife may both distort their memory and understanding of an argument or event for psychological reasons. I have seen no signs that other animals actually deceive themselves though I don't know how we could look for signs of animals deceiving themselves.
It turns out that human tool making is not unique and our speech is not as unique as once alleged. Our morality does not look that special and our criminality and wars also have parallels in the animal world.
The experiments that tried to say humans are the only animals with a sense of self look seriously flawed in their methods and interpretations from my point of view.
It was once suggested that humans were the only animals that lie but that has been shown to be wrong.
Animals, particularly their young at play show some signs of imagination and fantasy by deliberately reacting to things that don't exist as if they existed for fun.
You can use pride and shame to train a dog though pride and shame do not seem as separated from reward and punishment in dogs as they are in people.
Human self deception and human group self deception might be uniquely human. We have religions and fictitious histories. We convince ourselves that we are more important or in some other way different from how we are. A husband and wife may both distort their memory and understanding of an argument or event for psychological reasons. I have seen no signs that other animals actually deceive themselves though I don't know how we could look for signs of animals deceiving themselves.