If fish live in a world we don't understand, with different senses and realities, how can we truly know what it means to be a fish, and does our limited understanding affect our treatment of them?
They have their own way of life. The ocean is vast, the majority of our planet is water. There are so many fish we don’t even know about.
We treat them badly, polluting their homes. It is terrible. We do it to ourselves, also.
Are fish and humans one in the same?
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GQ. You are opening the door to looking at the world through empathetic eyes. Humans do a poor job most of the time taking care of our planet and the beings on it.
I am a student, and no these are not homework classes.
“how can we truly know what it means to be a fish”?
– We can’t.
“does our limited understanding affect our treatment of them?”
– Certainly. As with animals, and other people, but with even more limited understanding.
“We treat them badly, polluting their homes. It is terrible.”
– Yes.
“We do it to ourselves, also.”
– Yes.
“Are fish and humans one in the same?”
– Not exactly, but also in some essential sense, yes.
Not just fish, but non-human animals in general.
As seemingly the only species on earth capable of creating technology, coupled with millennia of superstition and mysticism building up their unwarranted self-importance as “special creations by god”, they have brainwashed themselves into believing that they are separate and above nature, and all the other lifeforms that comprise it.
Coupled with their scientific ignorance, it has led to still persisting dismissal of animals as dumb automatons, in some cases, fish for instance, so far as to believe that they are incapable of feeling pain.
I mean, really? The most basic mechanism to tell an organism to avoid danger is something that fish do not have? Get out of here!
Chuang Tzu is a Chinese philosophical work written around 300BC that tried to answer this question.
Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu were strolling on the banks of the Hao River when Chuang Tzu said, “See how the minnows come out and dart around where they please! That’s what fish really enjoy!”
Hui Tzu said, “You’re not a fish – how do you know what fish enjoy?”
Chuang Tzu said, “You’re not I, so how do you know I don’t know what fish enjoy?”
Hui Tzu said, “I’m not you, so I certainly don’t know what you know. On the other hand, you’re certainly not a fish – so that still proves you don’t know what fish enjoy!”
Chuang Tzu said, “Let’s go back to your original question, please. You asked me how I know what fish enjoy – so you already knew I knew it when you asked the question. I know it by standing here beside the Hao.”
Humans share a common ancestor with fish.
There is so much of this world we don’t know or can understand.
Scientists still have not unlocked all the way human Brains work.
That said, humans treat the earth and its other inhabitants (including other humans) terribly.
The Earth will survice humans as will many other species. Check back in a billion years.
Well, I don’t eat fish or seafood…
Of course fish feel pain, people really say that they don’t?
That Chinese philosophy seems like a paradox.
Pretty soon we are going to have no fish :(
To be honest, I have zero care or empathy for the feelings of fish, if they have feelings at all. Their brains simply don’t have the capacity for higher thought or action. All they do is eat, poop, and try to survive. I don’t think they ‘enjoy’ in the sense that humans do—they haven’t the capacity to compare with not enjoying.
It’s not like at the end of the day, a fish comes home and says ‘whew, I survived being eaten by another fish today’ or something like that.
If I were religious, I could observe that fish were put here by god for our use and sustenance.
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