> I'm not anthropomorphizing frogs. I'm saying frogs have an instinct to survive, like any living creature.
Ah, here's the problem. They don't have an instinct to survive as such. They have a variety of evolved instinctual behaviors that have a net effect of increasing survival rate, but there's no evidence that any of these instincts involve an awareness of mortal danger an in intermediate mechanism. That is, it's not a direct instinctual response to a realization of mortal danger, like you'd get in humans and perhaps some other larger-brained species.
Particularly for smaller brained animals, to say that there's one instinct to survive ("an instinct to survive") is a sloppy over-generalization from a bunch of specific corner-case instincts.
Particularly for more simple-brained creatures like frogs, you can't reason about behaviors as if they've evolved a sense of mortal danger and then deductively reason their response to mortal danger. They have a bunch of evolved survival-enhancing responses to specific stimuli, but it's an over-generalization to say they have a generalized instinct to survive.
Take domestic sheep, for example. Given the chance, they'll often get them stuck on thin cliff edges while looking for grass, and then need to be rescued by humans or else fall to their deaths. You can't just say that sheep have evolved a generalized survival instinct and cliffs are a mortal danger and then use deductive reasoning to conclude that sheep avoid cliffs.
This sort of misuse of deductive reasoning held human civilization back for millennia, until the enlightenment brought much more widespread use of inductive scientific methods. Deductive and inductive reasoning both have their places, but I find it's human instinct to over-use deductive reasoning. (That is, there's a tendency to take overly general high-level axioms and assume they say things about all specific cases.)
> Particularly for more simple-brained creatures like frogs, you can't reason about behaviors as if they've evolved a sense of mortal danger and then deductively reason their response to mortal danger. They have a bunch of evolved survival-enhancing responses to specific stimuli, but it's an over-generalization to say they have a generalized instinct to survive.
I really think you're making something out of nothing, and this is no different from humans, and the entire argument over sense of self is an irrelevant tangent to everything I've said.
My ability to avoid dangerous situations and survive is philosophically no different from an amoeba, and I think all your arguments to the contrary are nonsensical. You can easily concoct situations where humans would die too. I'm getting weird Bible vibes honestly, since you seem to think humans are somehow special.
Well, not just humans, but large-brained animals that show evidence of understanding of their environment and an some degree of planning ahead.
If we were talking about great apes, cetaceans, or perhaps cephalopods or corvids, maybe we could find some middle ground.
But, if you believe a frog's ability to survive is greatly enhanced by its ability to understand and plan ahead, or a human's ability to survive isn't fundamentally altered by their ability to understand and plan ahead (to the extent that analogies between frog and human survival behavior break down), then we're at a fundamental impasse and we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Ah, here's the problem. They don't have an instinct to survive as such. They have a variety of evolved instinctual behaviors that have a net effect of increasing survival rate, but there's no evidence that any of these instincts involve an awareness of mortal danger an in intermediate mechanism. That is, it's not a direct instinctual response to a realization of mortal danger, like you'd get in humans and perhaps some other larger-brained species.
Particularly for smaller brained animals, to say that there's one instinct to survive ("an instinct to survive") is a sloppy over-generalization from a bunch of specific corner-case instincts.
Particularly for more simple-brained creatures like frogs, you can't reason about behaviors as if they've evolved a sense of mortal danger and then deductively reason their response to mortal danger. They have a bunch of evolved survival-enhancing responses to specific stimuli, but it's an over-generalization to say they have a generalized instinct to survive.
Take domestic sheep, for example. Given the chance, they'll often get them stuck on thin cliff edges while looking for grass, and then need to be rescued by humans or else fall to their deaths. You can't just say that sheep have evolved a generalized survival instinct and cliffs are a mortal danger and then use deductive reasoning to conclude that sheep avoid cliffs.
This sort of misuse of deductive reasoning held human civilization back for millennia, until the enlightenment brought much more widespread use of inductive scientific methods. Deductive and inductive reasoning both have their places, but I find it's human instinct to over-use deductive reasoning. (That is, there's a tendency to take overly general high-level axioms and assume they say things about all specific cases.)