We are, to a large extent, as shut out of other animal's minds as we are shut out of each others'. We can only judge other minds by behavior (including speech). I think we are on a continuum with other animals.

As far as I know, neurons work pretty much the same way throughout the animal kingdom. The differences among species in "thinking" is in brain mass and architecture. Birds and animals all share some architecture. A limbic system is present in birds and mammals both, for instance. Animals have emotional capacities. We all have varying sensory capacities--to a greater and lesser degree--memory, problem solving, etc.

There seems to be a distance between the brightest animals and humans, though, both in kind and quantity of intellectual activity. It isn't that we have better neurons--we have a lot more of them arranged in far more complex architecture. Presumably, our mental operations and consciousness are more complex and expansive than that of Chimpanzees, elephants, and parrots.

But... all animal species struggle to survive in a hostile world, and they all use their mental resources to do that. Once they are secure enough, they can feed, seek a mate, and rear their young. Some animals (various species) seem to engage in play--rewarding behaviors not required for survival.

How much of "a being" an animal is maybe depends on how well we know the animal. We get to know our pets very well; they seem like "beings" like us. Biologists who study animals closely find that even insects have a few individual differences. One can "befriend" a squirrel in the back yard and it being an opportunist, will interact with you for food. It's a pleasant experience to have a squirrel sitting on one's knee eating out of one's hand. It will come looking for you at the usual time. It will take on individuality.

Biologists have observed squirrels and birds that store food to fake it if they think a competitor is watching them, or if watched, they may return to a storage location and move the food. Such maneuvers seem to require a kernel of self-awareness.

I would say that intellect is required to unify, identify and re-cognize sensory input. The very fact that there clearly seem to be more and less intelligent animals (from worms or whatever to dogs, apes and cetaceans and so on) seems to necessitate an affirmative answer to your question.

The answer from science is that language made the distinct difference.

So the neural architecture is basically a standard ape brain enlarged. There is a continuum difference because our brains are bigger. But the development of an ability to structure trains of thought using gramatical rules and combinatorial word units was why homo sap started to think symbolically and rationally.

And it is not about the difference that made just at the individual level. Speech is a social thing and so speech comes to encode social learning, social structures of thought. Ideas have a place to evolve because humans have symbolic culture. Animals are stuck at a biological level where concepts evolve only at that level of existence.

So humans exist at a different level because they have symbolic speech/symbolic culture - the essence of an intellectual life that exists apart from the hurly-burly of the natural animal world.

That doesn't mean animals can't problem-solve or be smart in many ways. They just lack access to our fast-evolving culture of smartness, which completely changes what it means to be smart.

It is very non-politically-correct nowadays to assert any difference in kind between h. sapiens and other species. This is because Darwinism is thought to have shown that h. sapiens are continuous with other species, and so to say that humans are unique or special is to be accused of anthropomorphism.

So, let me say at the outset that I certainly accept the evidence of evolutionary biology - that h. sapiens certainly did involve from earlier species of homonid. But my philosophical view is that h. sapiens crossed a threshhold at some time in its development, at which point it became different in kind to other animals, or, to put it another way, it was no longer simply an animal; it transcended the merely biological (a fact which is represented in many myths and cultural tropes).

I actually think the reason my sentiment is controversial, is because the idea that we are simply animals, actually solves the existential problem identified by Erich Fromm, of 'the fear of freedom'. Underlying a great deal of existential anxiety is a sense of not knowing who we are; this is especially acute in modern times, as traditional occupations and social orders have been dissolved. So we are called on to create an identity in our day and age, in ways that simply didn't occur to our immediate ancestors; and it's easy to be scared of that, because in a lot of ways there's no rule-book any more.

So identifying humans as kinds of animals sets the bar low, and also tacitly excuses the indulgence of appetites that traditional philosophy would have considered, well, animal 1.

...my philosophical view is that h. sapiens crossed a threshhold at some time in its development, at which point it becamedifferent in kind to other animals, or, to put it another way, it was no longer simply an animal; it transcended the merely biological (a fact which is represented in many myths and cultural tropes).

Can you explain what you mean by the bolded bits? They fit in the sentence with grammatical correctness but when I try to think of what they might mean, I find myself facing a complete blank.

Well, could you discuss such a question with your dog? Or a chimp? Or with SIRI?

Forgive me if I'm being facetious, but I think the answer is 'no'. I think you could only discuss this question with another human being.

I should expand on that. When h. sapiens reached the stage of the capacity for language, representation, abstract thought, story-telling, and so on, then I think a threshold has been reached at which point humans can no longer be comprehended purely through the lens of the biological sciences. This question was the subject of a page, Does evolution explain human nature? Of the answers given on that page, my view is closest to that of Simon Conway Morris.

When we dolphins look at this question of humanity, we put it differently; we ask 'what the hell went wrong with humans?

I think a threshold has been reached at which point humans can no longer be comprehended purely through the lens of the biological sciences — Wayfarer

This isn't limited to humans. No life form can be comprehended through biology, because what we know of biology is so little of what might be out there - and that's only contemplating the known unknowns, leaving aside the unknown unknowns (thanks Donald. No, not that one, the other one). That's why biology is such a fascinating field of study. Every direction we look, there are a whole bunch of things we don't understand. Sometimes I think I should have been a biologist, because of that fact, even though I always have been much more drawn to physics because of its mathematical content.

Biology enables us to appreciate a number of very important and useful regularities that are observable amongst life forms, but I don't think many biologists would be prepared to say we understand life. I just think you are way under-selling the amazing incomprehensibility of life, relative to which, IMHO, the stand-out intelligence of h.sapiens relative to other species on Earth seems rather mundane.

I think the problem is encapsulated by the title of this discussion. "Regarding intellectual capacity: Are animals just lower on a continuum, or a distinct difference?" If the distinct difference between human and non-human animals is better put in terms other than intellectual capacity, then would this not be of interest here? Assuming it would be, the title reveals a restrictive assumption, namely that it's all about intelligence and the brain.

I think we can describe the difference biologically, in something like the way that @apokrisis and @Wayfarer have sketched out, but beneath these descriptions there is a deeper conception of human uniqueness directing the investigation, as if we already know what we're looking for. The biological descriptions do not stand on their own, because any biological capacity can be regarded as--and indeed biologically is--just another species characteristic alongside other unique capacities such as the dance of the bee, the problem-solving ability of corvids, or sonar-directed flight. What gives the biological descriptions sense in this context is that we are already looking for what makes us different. But crucially there is nothing here that rules out the conclusion that we are not very different after all. Because in a sense, we're not.*

Which is why I want to describe the difference differently. To begin with, it's more than a "distinct difference"; it's a radical discontinuity, and it has to do with society and culture, history and personhood. Framed in terms of intellectual capacity, discussions often end fruitlessly in debates surrounding intellectually disabled people, infants, and so on. The argument from marginal cases is made to show that humans are not unique in attaining moral status, and although I disagree with its conclusion, it does expose the fallacy of thinking that we can divide humans from non-humans according to certain properties of individuals, as if we grant rights on a case-by-case basis, checking off a list of characteristics, such as intellectual capacity, before we decide to treat a being as a person or not. If we rather see a human as a social person bound up in a culture, the intellectual capacity of individuals drops out of the picture and the intellectually feeble can be seen as part of the moral sphere, the sphere of persons.

History is important here too because it shows that how you understand the question of human uniqueness differs according to what you're interested in. You can discover that humans and animals are on a continuum if the continuity is what you're interested in, that is, if you restrict your enquiry to (ahistorical) biology. There certainly is a continuum in that descriptive context, and you can dismiss the discontinuities if you think they are not fundamental. Everyone would surely agree that our ways of life have changed in important ways over periods of time in which no significant evolutionary changes took place--this is history--so to avoid the conclusion of a discontinuity you would have to dismiss history as unimportant to what we fundamentally are.

So it's about what matters to us. Whether we decide on an overarching continuum or discontinuity depends on which level of description is deemed most overarching. If we see human beings primarily as moral and political agents with the capacity to change the world on the basis of reasons, we will see a discontinuity (this is not to say we cannot arrive at a discontinuity some other way). But if we see human beings as defined by neural capacities, or as determined billiard balls or hostages to their genes, then we will be tempted to see history, reason and morality as just another evolutionary endowment.

* Or, to the extent that a different kind of biology can include or gear into sociology, anthropology, and linguistics without the reductiveness of evolutionary psychology, biology itself could embrace human uniqueness. I guess that's where @apokrisis's approach comes in.

. I just think you are way under-selling the amazing incomprehensibility of life, relative to which, IMHO, the stand-out intelligence of h.sapiens relative to other species on Earth seems rather mundane. — AndrewK

Again - who knows that? Only h. sapiens.

If the distinct difference between human and non-human animals is better put in terms other than intellectual capacity, then would this not be of interest here? Assuming it would be, the title reveals a restrictive assumption, namely that it's all about intelligence and the brain — jamalrob

I don't think it is about intelligence and the brain. I'm asking if animals are capable of abstract thought (can they think about things they've never seen, for instance), and I'm asking if they are capable of thinking and analyzing their own thoughts? Can they consciously consider different courses of action, for instance?

It's been said that man's brain/thinking has a dual ability. He can sense the world around him... and he has his intellect that enables him to engage in abstract thought. He can think about his own thinking.

Do animals have an intellect (are they capable of abstract thought, and can they think about their own thinking), or are animals only capable of experiencing the world through their senses?

The reason I brought this up, is because Mortimer Adler is claiming that man and the animals are definitely NOT on a continuum. He insists that man IS in a class by himself, because he is the ONLY creature with intellectual abilities (abstract thought and thinking about his own thinking). And that every other creature on earth is ONLY capable of experiencing the world through senses.

And I'm questioning his conclusions.

Here is a quote from Ten Philosophical Mistakes

Is the human mind a single cognitive power, however complex, one that involves the functioning of our senses and whatever follows from their functioning, such as memory and imagination, or should the human mind be divided into two quite distinctive cognitive powers-sense and everything to which sense gives rise, on the one hand, and intellect, able to understand, judge, and reason, on the other?

And another that explains what Adler means by the intellect:

To the second group [the intellect] belong all purely intelligible objects, such as the objects as purely spiritual beings, for example, souls, angels, and God. It also includes such objects of thought as liberty, justice, virtue, knowledge, the infinite, and even mind itself. None of these can ever be perceived by the senses. None is a sensible particular.

Which is why I want to describe the difference differently. To begin with, it's more than a "distinct difference"; it's a radical discontinuity, and it has to do with society and culture, history and personhood. — Jamalrob

I see it as an ontological difference, and I don't think there are that many of them. 'Ontological' means 'pertaining to the meaning of Being' - it's not, as is often casually stated, the analysis of 'what exists'. So I think there's an ontological discontinuity, which actually is revealed in the fact that humans are referred to as 'beings'. The problem with this view, however, is that current philosophy and science doesn't accomodate ontological levels, as far as I can see; this is because it postulates matter~energy as the only real substance or existent, with everything including mind as being derivative from that.

So it's about what matters to us. — Jamalrob

But that is, all due respect, subjective. I will make a bold statement here: that the distinctive capacity of beings is that of self-realisation. Now, some could intepret that in terms of trans-humanism: that humans are now sufficiently skilled and knowledgeable to direct their own ongoing evolution. But I'm not thinking along those lines.

Mortimer Adler insists that man is in a class by himsel. — Anonymous66

He is Catholic, and so believes that man is 'imageo dei'. I would not defend that particular dogma, but I do believe that the underlying concept is based on a true intuition, which is the uniqueness of man qua cosmic phenomenon.

Nagel's 'Mind and Cosmos' posits that in some sense, humans are like the Universe becoming self-aware 1. Actually that is not such a novel idea, Bohr said (perhaps tongue in cheek) that 'a scientist is only an atom's way of understanding itself'. Julian Huxley said 'As a result of a thousand million years of evolution, the universe is becoming conscious of itself, able to understand something of its past history and its possible future. This cosmic self-awareness is being realized in one tiny fragment of the universe — in a few of us human beings. Perhaps it has been realized elsewhere too, through the evolution of conscious living creatures on the planets of other stars. But on this our planet, it has never happened before.'

So there is some real sense in which, in the human form, the Universe is actually becoming self-aware, and I think that's certainly unique to humans - amongst animals, anyway!

I see it as an ontological difference, and I don't think there are that many of them. 'Ontological' means 'pertaining to the meaning of Being' - it's not, as is often casually stated, the analysis of 'what exists'. So I think there's an ontological discontinuity, which actually is revealed in the fact that humans are referred to as 'beings'. The problem with this view, however, is that current philosophy and science doesn't accomodate ontological levels, as far as I can see; this is because it postulates matter~energy as the only real substance or existent. — Wayfarer

Yes I agree it's an ontological difference, because I think to be human is to be historical. But of course you're right to point out that I'm reluctant to say what I think the ontological difference most fundamentally is, because I don't like having to choose between history, society and personhood.

And when I said it's about what matters to us, I wasn't being entirely relativist. I have an opinion on what ought to matter, and on what ontology ought to be primary, even though I'm hazy as to how to put it. As for ontological levels, note that we do have the concept of local ontologies.

I see. Your question was more specific than I assumed. Broadly speaking I'd agree that abstract thought and thinking about thinking are unique and indicative of a difference in kind, but I don't know how comfortable I am with the implication that the mere sensation/abstract thought dichotomy is the central or underlying discontinuity between humans and animals.

Again - who knows that? Only h. sapiens. — Wayfarer

First, you and I, and everybody else, have no idea what all non-human animals know. We don't even know what most other humans know.

Secondly, even if it were true, what would be its relevance to the claim that humans are especially special. I could as easily say
'Who could hear that statement if it were transmitted at a frequency of 40,000 Hz? Only a bat'

The question remains: what is a 'difference in kind'?. So far you have not answered the question, but just given two questionable examples. Examples are not definitions.

That view is a form of reductionism which treats all other lifeforms as "matter" or "energy" in comparison to humanity's Being.

But what of the Being of other lifeforms on the Earth? Are all other animals mere matter and energy used to fuel human bodies and factories? Do other animals not have a life of awareness with a logical expression beyond the bodies we observe?

. Examples are not definitions. — AndrewK

Philosophy is full of terms which aren't amenable to definition and which resist precise explanation. Sorry if I can't be more clear.

But what of the Being of other lifeforms on the Earth? — Willow

I just pointed out the fact of language that humans are generally referred to as 'beings'. Elephants, horses and dogs may be, I suppose. But as far as I can see, the term 'being' in the noun form is used for humans. I think that's interesting.

Secondly, even if it were true, what would be its relevance to the claim that humans are especially special. I could as easily say
'Who could hear that statement if it were transmitted at a frequency of 40,000 Hz? Only a bat' — andrewk

Surely humans are special because that is something we can easily think, say, or indeed transmit over any chosen frequency given a radio.

But bats? Not so much.

Hearing noises and comprehending messages are unarguable differences in kind.

That's only human's particular interest and thought. How can you say for certain that other animals don't have a similar language you don't speak?

Even if they don't, how is this justification for denying their Being? Just because a life form doesn't go around thinking and speaking Being doesn't mean they don't expess it. Are animals nothing more than observed matter and energy just because they don't happen to talk about their Being?

What you are arguing is a doctrine of human exceptionalism, which only views humanity as meaningful or significant because they happen to talk about their Being sometimes.

But bats? Not so much.

Hearing noises and comprehending messages are unarguable differences in kind. — apokrisis

Are you then the first person to ever know what it is like to be a bat?

As for unarguable differences - nobody disputes that there are differences between humans and bats, just as there are differences between weasels and stoats. What I am still left wondering is what does it mean to say that the differences of humans are 'different in kind'. So far there has not been even an attempt to define what that might mean.

So far there has not been even an attempt to define what that might mean. — andrewk

I attempted it.

Are you then the first person to ever know what it is like to be a bat? — andrewk

Don't be ridiculous. If you believe bats have language, present the evidence. The research into animal language capabilities is voluminous. And it says even with all possible help from humans, they can't handle fluent grammatical construction.

What I am still left wondering is what does it mean to say that the differences of humans are 'different in kind'. So far there has not been even an attempt to define what that might mean. — andrewk

Well I did define it - the difference between hearing noises and understanding messages.

How can you say for certain that other animals don't have a similar language you don't speak? — Willow

I don't see any evidence they do, although I think they certainly communicate. (Read the touching story of Nim Chimpsky). But I certainly don't believe animals are 'only matter-energy'; they are organisms, and I believe that mammals and birds are subjects of experience.

What I am still left wondering is what does it mean to say that the differences of humans are 'different in kind'. So far there has not been even an attempt to define what that might mean. — "AndrewK

I did attempt! Language, mythology, story-telling, not to mention, science, civilization, technology, space travel, computers, the periodic table -this could be quite a long list.

Yes, beavers build dams, bees create hives, birds nest, but those are 'different in kind' to what human beings are demonstrably capable of through science, measurement, language and abstract thought.

Is that getting warmer?

If you believe bats have language, present the evidence. — apokrisis

I gave no indication of whether I believe that bats have language or not. What I do believe is that you don't know the answer to that question.

Language, mythology, story-telling, not to mention, science, civilization, technology, space travel, computers, the periodic table -this could be quite a long list — Wayfarer

Would it be correct to infer that your definition is that there is a 'difference in kind' between two species if one of them does at least one of the things on your list and the other does none of them?

If so, the list needs to be completed before one can reasonably consider it.

I gave no indication of whether I believe that bats have language or not. What I do believe is that you don't know the answer to that question. — andrewk

I simply come at this question as a scientist, so never claim absolute knowledge of anything. I only say that considerable research supports my position as the inference to the best explanation. My working belief is that bats don't speak - and so I will be considerably surprised if you can now provide credible evidence that they do.

I don't think it is about intelligence and the brain. I'm asking if animals are capable of abstract thought (can they think about things they've never seen, for instance), and I'm asking if they are capable of thinking and analyzing their own thoughts? Can they consciously consider different courses of action, for instance?

It's been said that man's brain/thinking has a dual ability. He can sense the world around him... and he has his intellect that enables him to engage in abstract thought. He can think about his own thinking.

Do animals have an intellect (are they capable of abstract thought, and can they think about their own thinking), or are animals only capable of experiencing the world through their senses

Animals similar to humans seem to be driven by the pleasure principle. We-animals like pleasure and try to escape pain.

I think all the physical properties of man & beast are similar, not much difference , elephants and whales have much bigger brains than man.

I think in a lot of ways our perceptions are the same, even inferior to many animals. Perception itself carries structure/information.

I am not certain what you mean by 'abstract' thought, which I'll take here to mean a reduction of experience to some form of thought, and I can think of two forms of thought, analogical and logical. Where analogical reasoning compares similarities between two systems to support the conclusion that some further similarity exists. And, you already know what logical thought is all about

I think man and animals share analogical thought processes, but only man so far, is capable of complex logical thought.

Perception itself is image driven (regardless of sense), it imprints, where we differ is in how we (in contradistinction to animals) are able to assign these imprints to statements which we share with others.

The claim is yours, not mine (although I am a little perplexed as to exactly what you are claiming bats don't do. It started off as 'think', then changed to 'have language' and seems to now be 'speak'). Onus of proof, etc....
OTOH if it's just a working belief then there's no need to debate it. We all have plenty of working beliefs, but don't elevate them the status of philosophical theories.