butterfly emotions

[John Acorn]

Bill Cornelius,

I too am interested in the topic of how insect minds compare to our own, but
I thought it might be helpful to point out a few things about your last
posting, in the interest of facilitating further discussion.  

First, we should be careful not to commit what philosophers call the
black-or-white fallacy.  The error here is to assume that since two things
differ only in degree, they might as well be considered the same. 
Obviously, human and butterfly brains share certain physiological
similarities, but that does not lead direstly to your conclusion of "so
what, who does?"

Second, the word is "agonistic," not "agnostic."  "Agnostic" means you think
that there is no way to know for sure if God exists or not.  "Agonistic" on
the other hand, is used to refer to the act of fighting, not the angry
motives (and it is used widely in animal behaviour studies, not just for
butterflies, to help focus our attention on the observations we make, not
the motives we infer).

Hope this helps.  I'd be interested to hear other people's opinion on this
interesting topic.

John Acorn