My wife saw a scientist on television who claimed that dogs don't feel shame, which struck me as odd. The scientist reminded me of Descartes, a great philosopher, who declared that dogs don't feel pain (but he added that they can fake it). In other words, if you believe dogs feel pain, you are projecting human attributes onto a mere automaton.
What would Wittgenstein, a great philosopher, say? He didn't write on this topic, as far as I know, but he would probably have said something like this.
First, we need to identify what shame is. That part is easy: shame is a word. We use the word to name a certain emotional/mental reaction. We learn how to use the word correctly from other people. When we are young, people tell us we should be ashamed or they observe our expressions and say that we look ashamed or whatever. Second, we learn to associate the word with a bad feeling we harbor. We can often tell if other people are ashamed by how they behave. (This behavior can be faked, of course.)
Many of us look at dog behavior and see that it resembles our own behavior, so we say that the dog is feeling shame. But we can't be sure what bats, ants or dogs feel or don't feel. Or what other people feel, for that matter. We observe and make a guess. My guess is that dogs do feel pain.
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