> In my experience, those who claim animals don't have emotions are usually justifying some kind of behaviour
I agree. Similar things were said historically to justify slavery.
This poses an interesting ethical question.
If a subject is not known to have emotions or not. Should the party that would be inflicting emotional pain on the subject have the burden of proof (that the subject does not in fact have emotions)? Or the party that would not inflict it?
If there's a plausible chance of the entity being able to experience emotion, then the burden of proof needs to be on the inflicter. "Plausible" because inanimate objects like rocks obviously cannot ever have emotions.
Things get a little more complicated with plants, such as trees and flowers, but even there I would say it's pretty implausible that they experience emotion.
I agree. Similar things were said historically to justify slavery.
This poses an interesting ethical question.
If a subject is not known to have emotions or not. Should the party that would be inflicting emotional pain on the subject have the burden of proof (that the subject does not in fact have emotions)? Or the party that would not inflict it?