As for animals enjoying attention and being petted, if you are looking for an evolutionary reason for it, it is probably due to the parent child bond, or group families as a way to bond. Both dolphines and dogs often travel in groups, and a lot of animals play to learn new things, and to improve survival instincts.
My point is: is it not possible to describe everything a human does, in such an "instinctual" manner? I mean, we can assign evolutionary meaning to almost anything an animal does, even if we don't know why they're actually doing it. Contrarily, we can can attribute anything a human does to "free will." A mature human is miles more complex than most animals (mostly due to life experiences), so it is convenient to attribute some actions to "choice." But is that "choice" a product of free will? Or is the choice made simply a conditioned response?
Without a definite answer to that question, how can we see ourselves as any different from other animals? As was said, there's really no way to draw that line. Whether we want to believe it or not, we are all products of our environments - man and animal, alike.
Another quote from the Matrix: Reloaded (seems like I've been using them a lot, lately. They are just so damn relevant, though. Haha)
Oracle: "Candy?"
Neo: "Do you already know if I'm going to take it?"
Oracle: "Wouldn't be much of an Oracle, if I didn't."
Neo: "But if you already know, how can I make a choice?"
Oracle: "Because you didn't come here to make the choice, you've already made it. You're here to try to understand why you made it. (Neo takes candy) I thought you'd have figured that out by now."
Are the choices we make nothing but ourselves analyzing our own instinctual responses? Can we ever actually do the OPPOSITE of what we "choose" to do? (Ooh. I just blew my own mind. Lol.)
Originally Posted by Lucidness
Let me tell you an example of what i mean.
Theres a frog near a river.
A scropion walks up to it and says "Can i please have a lift across the river".
The frog says "What if you sting me?"
The scorpion says "I promise i wont."
The frog gives the scorpion a lift over the river and half way across the scorpion stings the frog.
The frog says "Why did you sting me"
The scorpion says "Because i'm a scorpion."
I understand the example, but it's more rhetoric than anything else. Such a scenario would never happen, so it can't be used as a model for reality.
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