toads and gender roles

[yippeecahier]

In November, as I have brought to the attention of everyone I have talked to in the past month, I adopted a toad. I am just pleased as punch about this. She is a lovely toad, though understandably a little skittish. I think she needs a little more living space, and maybe a rock to burrow under and a bit of hollow log to hide in. I am doing my

Comments

[anonymous]

I actually think it could make sense to talk about the personality of an animal meaningfully. I don't think that personality implies personhood - even if whoever created the word "personality" thought so

[yippeecahier]

I think we’re agreeing here. Note that I fully accept the idea that animals have identities, and rich emotional lives. It weirds me out, though, when people insist that the emotions, behaviors, intentions, etc., of animals mirror people. Maybe they do in some cases and maybe they don’t. That’s why I single out the word “personality.” I’m saying that the word denotes something unique to people, even though we share many of the attributes it encompasses with non-people. The over-arching point here is that by comparing what animals do to what people do, you are making a metaphor; constructing a narrative. I have no problem with that, it’s just not the science people seem to take it as.

[anonymous]

Ok, but psychology, the science of people's emotions, isn't all its cracked up to be either. It might be science, but it's not as rigorous as I'd like it to be. Actually, I just finished "The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments" (the book is so-so) and one part about Pavlov's thoughts stood out to me.

"'What facts give us the basis for speaking of what and how an animal feels?' The same, [Pavlov] poignantly observed, applies to people. 'Does not the eternal sorrow of life consist in the fact that human beings cannot understand one another, that one person cannot enter into the internal state of another?'"

- Sam

http://books.google.com/books?id=71Y1-5p7MmkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=ten+most+beautiful+experiments&ei=jFUcS6DsM57AzgSljYWMAg#v=onepage&q=eternal&f=false

[thalerian]

Just to throw in my semantic two cents: do remember that the words "person," "personality," etc come from the Greek word "persona"--the masks an actor wore on stage. So "personality" doesn't come from "person" as much as it comes from what we'd now call "character," which animals certainly have.

But I recognize that there's a difference between a word's origins and its modern usage/connotations.

[yippeecahier]

That’s a fair point. Let’s pretend, then, for the sake of argument, that I invented a new word with the meaning I ascribed to “personality.” Let’s call it “humanbeingality.” I don’t think switching out the word hurts my argument; although, it makes it less artful, because I was relying on people recognizing a common word they take for granted.

[thalerian]

Your argument does still hold, but it's worth keeping in mind that we create characters for people, too, and often project onto them our own feelings and experiences. Without realizing it, our judgments of people are as likely to be a priori (derived internally, through reasoning) as a posteriori (derived through external observation). Of course, we don't always even have a true awareness of our own feelings and experiences--you once said that reading friends' reviews on Goodreads told you more about the friends than about the books. This is probably even truer of how we see each other, since books are more objectively knowable than people. And, of course, we write characters for ourselves. I know that I've steeled myself to do things by reminding myself that Liz Thaler is strong and brave, and that heuristic cuts both ways. Our self-written characters/narratives can help or hurt; the same is true of the characters/narratives we put together for others. So, the etymology of the words "person" and "persona" is fascinatingly accurate--

[yippeecahier]

In fact, it supports what I say about toads!

Feel better!