That is knowledge of some things is hard-wired. It comes with the animal. This is not the thinking you described. It is more like the caterpillar reacting as though it were being attacked. — Athena

Correct, this is instinct or innate capabilities.

I think it is important to understand not all thinking is rational and thank you for your example of the caterpillar. It is also a baby's reaction to the change in the number of things. This is the stimulus, this is the reaction. Not rational thinking. — Athena

Absolutely I agree that not all thinking is rational. But back to the crow. If the crow had experimented with different things to get the food, and stumbled upon the branch, then remembered the branch, would that be rational thinking?

When it comes to our power of thought, it's still hidden. We don't know at this point how the brain thinks BECAUSE we do not have access to enough of the brain's processing to figure it out. — BC

Yes, it's fascinating to watch people wrestling with it. BTW, I don't think the brain thinks. I'm the one who does the thinking. In other words, thinking is a holistic phenomenon, like a rainbow.
A big problem is that "thinking" along with "understanding" are probably the two most protean concepts we have. I'm pretty sure that we'll have to modify those concepts to fit with the science we come up with, rather than the other way round.
People think that there's a way of sorting the problem out according to the model of information processing that we already have in our thinking machines. So it's worth noting that not everyone thinks that they are thinking machines. Then there is the fact that the brain is not just an information processing machine. It also controls action and reaction, and it may not need anything we could recognize as language to do that.

Will it be solved? I don't know. Depends on the stability of civilization over the next century or two. — BC

It will be solved. But I'm pretty sure it will take conceptual change, perhaps as big as the change that solved the solar system.
What's a century or two? There was nearly two thousand years between Ptolemy and Copernicus. There's no rush.

I don't say humans are not the smartest and most linguistic; only that they are not unique in the ability to solve problems, and that setting problems to solve is the only way that I know of to test this ability. — Vera Mont

I dunno. There's evidence around that being smart and linguistic may turn out not to be entirely beneficial. In this context "better together" means together with the entire planet.
Setting problems is probably the only way. But I worry that all we are testing is whether they are as smart as we are by our standards. Which are not necessarily the best standards. Lab work has to be a bit suspect.

What I object to is starting from a conclusion that should have been put to rest decades ago. — Vera Mont

I don't disagree. But there has been a lot of progress in the last few hundred years. We are no longer the centre of the entire universe, a special species chosen by God. We've recognized equality in a way that never even crossed Aristotle's mind. It's no wonder that some people are anxious and defensive.

It's pretty deeply engrained into my way of thinking, to see causality as a lot more complex than that. — wonderer1

I know there's a lot going on around causality, because there are so many anomalous phenomena that seem to escape it. Just as the pre-scientific (Aristotelian) concept of causation had to go to enable the new science to develop. What I'm trying to suggest is that some phenomena that appear to be "secret" are just the result of asking the wrong (because unanswerable) question.

I don't think the brain thinks. I'm the one who does the thinking. — Ludwig V

And who are you? Where did you come from? Who do you think you are?

So, some neurological researchers and thinkers propose that the 'self' -- you, I -- is a convenient fiction. The self is a creation of the brain, and we don't know how this is accomplished. As a fiction, the self is an extremely compelling story. But, you know, as I type this, it is somewhat clear to me that "I" am not composing these sentences. I'm reading them as they appear. The composer is a mental facility composed of various brain circuits. This facility outputs the text to the motor facility which causes my fingers to move in just the right way to produce this text.

"I" have edited the text; I decided to change some words here and there. But again, Neurological research shows that the decision to act is made BEFORE we are aware that we want to act. The "I" editor operates a couple of beats behind the brain circuits that actually made the decision.

That's OK, because most of the time the various parts of my brain are in accord on the importance of keeping "me", body and brain, together in one piece. Risk-reduction circuits in the brain try to keep "me" from getting beat up in The Philosophy Forum, and possibly killed (figuratively here, for real out on the street).

There is a lot "I" don't like about these loosey-goosey theories of self, consciousness, and all that, even if I grant them plausibility.

And then eventually, socrates put forwards the notion that we should have conscious rational deliberation prior to the act as the golden standard.... rational thinking instead of instinct. — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, and one can see why. There's reason to think that planning ahead pays off. But the model always suffered from not recognizing that planning isn't doing and being unable to understand the difference. Hence, for example, the puzzle of weakness of will. It turns out that non-reflective action is always crucial. One just cannot plan every action.

No, but what I'm saying is that "reasons" are not necessarily the result of conscious rational deliberation either. Instincts are obviously prior to all of that, and instincts are to some extend already reasonable. — ChatteringMonkey

I have some reservations about instinct. It's supposed to be used for unlearned behaviour. But instincts get modified, because, paradoxically, we have an instinct to learn. So actual behaviour is, paradoxically, learned. Birds seem to have an instinct to build nests in specific ways. Yet this cannot be a simple response, since they have to adapt to the circumstances they are actually in. What I'm getting at here is the we need a concept of non-reflective behaviour to explain, for example, how people manage to fight without the articulate deliberation in advance and why they do not need to deliberate about deliberating, though they can. The idea that they do something like articulate deliberation but at lightening speed is pure hand-waving.

Two tricky points: (1) the extent to which and the ways in which the two related; and, perhaps as a particular case of (1) but perhaps not, (2) whether internalizing the patterns of reason as justification and argumentation (i.e., sense 2) genuinely contributes to belief formation at all, and perhaps to adaptive belief formation, or simply makes us more facile at producing justifications for beliefs arrived at we know not how. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, they are indeed tricky. Sadly, I have nothing useful to contribute. I do have faith one day someone will come up with something.

And who are you? Where did you come from? Who do you think you are? — BC

I realize that you are asking those questions to get me puzzled, not because you think they don't have answers. But perhaps we should start from the fact that those questions have perfectly good answers and frame what neurologists are doing in more sensible ways.

So, some neurological researchers and thinkers propose that the 'self' -- you, I -- is a convenient fiction. — BC

That has some plausibility if you mean "fiction" in the sense that mathematics is (maybe) a fiction, and physical objects and everything else. But the suggestion that I and you don't exist is absurd. It would be much better to say that the self is a holistic phenomenon. The brain process that you say cause my action are an analysis of the action, not a cause of it. Compare the analysis of a rainbow in terms of physics. People used to complain that physics abolishes the rainbow, but of course it doesn't; physics analyzes the rainbow, and it is normal for a holistic phenomenon to apparently disappear under analysis.

The composer is a mental facility composed of various brain circuits. This facility outputs the text to the motor facility which causes my fingers to move in just the right way to produce this text. — BC

Why do you separate composing from typing? The idea that saying something is somehow unspooling what the brain has already done just pushes the issue back a stage into an infinite regress. That representation of what is going on is an analysis. (The clue is in the term "analysis".)

But again, Neurological research shows that the decision to act is made BEFORE we are aware that we want to act. The "I" editor operates a couple of beats behind the brain circuits that actually made the decision. — BC

No, my fingers operate a couple of beats behind the brain circuits. What you call the decision is simply the initiation and control of my typing. To put it in a misleading way, "I" is the entire process. We are misled into thinking that decision is separate from action is just a result of the fact that we can interrupt the process of action part way through - aborting a process, not completing one process and starting the next. If you think of decision as an action distinct from execution, you end up with an infinite regress.

Do animals have rational thinking? Do animals have communication skills? Is intuitive thinking rational or maybe something better? — Athena

I see “rational thinking” and “communication skills” as parts of one thing - rational thinking is communicable thinking, communicable to other thinking (reasoning) things. Reason and language or math cohabitate the same moment.

Animals don’t need any of it. We personify animals when we call their behavior rational like our behavior is rational.

Our hand falls in the fire and our arm pulls it out. No rational thinking or communication necessary. Just a functioning body. That could be how animals do everything they do - they don’t reason and choose. They act. They function. Stimulus and response based on the shape of the stimulus and the shape of the responder.

Humans insert “reason” and deliberate some responses. We draw these deliberations out by communicating our reasons with other humans.

Our reasoning and communicating abilities sprouted from being an animal, so there is some value in comparing what humans do in reasonable deliberation with what animals do when they appear to have choices and when they appear to deliberate their behaviors, but once we see “rational thinking” and “communication” in any animal, we see a person. So if animals used rational thinking and communication, they would be people.

We only KNOW there is any other rational being in the universe when another rational being declares its reasons in a communication; otherwise how would we know? As soon as an animal is able to use reason, that animal is able to communicate with other reasoning minds. So as soon as an ape finds actual reason working in their conscious experience, we might be able to communicate with it and actually confirm it is using reason as it communicates reasonably.

Animals only appear to use reason and to communicate their minds because WE reasoning communicating creatures see ourselves in them, NOT because we see them.

They are better than that. Innocent of all moral deliberation and choice. Conscious thought would be more like a plague or disease to an animal. They already have no illusions (because they have no sense of illusion), so what is there for them to reason about? What communication is needed when they are all by nature already on the same exact page?

We have a narcissistic sense of animals when we pull reason and communication out of their behavior. We also have an imprecise sense of reason and communication when we find it in between two animals (unless those two animals are people.

Bee senses pollen.
Bee’s that sense pollen release pheromones.
Other bee senses pheromones.
Bee’s that sense these pheromones find the pollen.

No need to insert a human/person-like reason behind the pheromones that were released, or call the receipt of pheromones the receipt of a communication, or call the move to find the pollen a decision.

We humans take time to name all of these things and reconnect them with logical reasoning, and communicate these logical reasonings and names to other reasoning creatures.

Animals skip all the reflection; in fact, they don’t skip it, it never arises (and may not have anything in which it could arise in the first place).

No, we are the only ones plagued with reason and communication.

"I" is the entire process. We are misled into thinking that decision is separate from action is just a result of the fact that we can interrupt the process of action part way through - aborting a process, not completing one process and starting the next. If you think of decision as an action distinct from execution, you end up with an infinite regress. — Ludwig V

Good stuff.

Reflection (mind that is minding, or “I” that is “I-ing”), is the interruption. Reflection has its own motion, but it is an interruption of the motion of that which it is reflecting on. So the movement of reflection creates a stillness in the thing someone is reflecting on.

This creates confusion about what is moving and what is staying the same.

My sense is that animals don’t waste any of this time - they don’t interrupt the motion by creating a still reflection (of a moving thing) that they can reflect upon.

There's evidence around that being smart and linguistic may turn out not to be entirely beneficial. — Ludwig V

Probably the reverse. I didn't say better, just more. (Yes, I realize that many humans consider more/bigger/faster the ultimate in good.) But that doesn't come under a comparison with the rational thought of other species.

Setting problems is probably the only way. But I worry that all we are testing is whether they are as smart as we are by our standards. Which are not necessarily the best standards. Lab work has to be a bit suspect. — Ludwig V

Many of the intelligence tests are really about "How much like us are they?" That business with the yellow dot, for example. Dogs don't identify individuals by sight but by smell and don't seem at all interested in their own appearance. I'm not surprised if they show no interest in their reflection in a mirror, which smells of nothing but glass, metal and the handler who put it there.

OTOH, tests of spatial orientation (mazes) do mimic the actual life experience of mice and challenging rats to obtain food in a human-made environment is certainly realistic. The experiments with plastic boxes, sticks and stones don't seem to give crows any trouble, though the props might be too foreign for most birds. It's hard for humans to devise tests that objectively measure the performance of species with very different interests and attitudes and perception from ourselves.

The least obtrusive and most reliable way to discover how other animals think is to observe them in their natural habitat, solving the problems nature throws at them. We have an increasing ability to do that now. Without special equipment, though, we can observe domestic animals as they go about the business of living, overcoming obstacles and devising means to obtain what they desire. It's not The Scientific Method; it's common sense.

But the suggestion that I and you don't exist is absurd. — Ludwig V

It isn't that 'I' or 'you' don't exist; rather, the identity that I have doesn't occupy a specific region of the brain called "the self" -- at least they haven't been able to find it, and they've been looking, What seems to be the case is that various facilities in the brain maintain our identity as a seemingly solid self.

If it's a fiction (which wouldn't be my choice of words) then it's a fairly solid fiction in a healthy, intact brain.

Why do you separate composing from typing? — Ludwig V

Several different areas of the brain are involved in composing this sentence. Obviously Broca's area, (language production) is involved; thought creation areas are involved; memory, etc. None of these areas control motor functions (like typing). So, once the sentence is ready, the motor centers are in charge of the typing.

Granted, the brain has some degree of plasticity, and an unused area can be recruited for some other purpose, but in adults, especially, this isn't a quick process. For example, were I to be blinded, the visual cortex would have a lot less to do. It might be recruited to process sensory input from the fingers in order to understand braille.

The idea that saying something is somehow unspooling what the brain has already done just pushes the issue back a stage into an infinite regress. — Ludwig V

There isn't "something else unspooling what the brain has done". The brain itself is managing the process of issuing a statement from inspiration to expression. Broca's area alone can't produce speech without coordinated effort by the motor system controlling tongue, lips, jaw, and breathing. Brain injuries and brain manipulation (during surgery) reveal that different areas of the brain control different aspects of our whole behavior.

I don't think the brain thinks. I'm the one who does the thinking. — Ludwig V

That's why I asked, "who are you?"

No matter what you say, what you think, what you do, it issues from the brain labeled "Ludwig V". What the neurological researcher is saying is that the "representation called the self of Ludwig V" is not doing the thinking, Almost everything the brain does is silent; we don't hear it thinking. We can't watch it retrieve a memory if a grade school teacher; we can't observe it coming up with a new idea. It feels like "we" are doing the thinking, but that's part of the fiction of the self.

Ludwig: Your brain is doing your thinking, it's just that "your thinking" happens in your brain below your radar.

Hey, show a little gratitude. The brain controls everything about you from your happy smile to your asshole and everything in between. You don't want to know everything your brain is doing. Yes it does your thinking, which you want to claim. Why don't you claim the task of keeping yourself upright when walking; blinking regularly to keep your eyeballs moist; keeping track of your temperature, blood pressure, heart beat, and breathing; waking up every morning (rather than not waking up); registering a patch of itchy skin; and hundreds of other services going on all the time?

You don't claim all these functions because you probably feel thinking is more noble and important than managing your bladder and rectal sphincters. Well, Ludwig, just wait until those bladder and rectal sphincters stop working, and you'll no longer consider their control beneath your dignity.

Thinking is just one of many things that we are not 'personally' responsible for.

The least obtrusive and most reliable way to discover how other animals think is to observe them in their natural habitat, solving the problems nature throws at them. — Vera Mont

Which is how Lars Chittka figured out so much about The Mind of A Bee, his 2023 book about bee perception, cognition, and success. One of his observations is "Bees live a very fast life; they have about 3 weeks from leaving their wax cell as an adult to their likely death. They have to actually learn a lot--it isn't all pre-programmed in their genes. In order to do this, their neurons seem to be far more efficient than ours. And they have very capable sensory capacities -- a sense of smell, touch, taste, hearing, the ability to see different parts of the spectrum than we do, a directional capacity, and so on.

When they land on a flower--which they did because the flower met certain specs--they can immediately tell whether another bee has recently foraged there. If so, they fly off. They 'know' it takes a flower a few hours to refill its nectar dispensers.

It takes a lot of unobtrusive observation to discover these things, something bee scientists have been doing for decades.

It takes a lot of unobtrusive observation to discover these things, something bee scientists have been doing for decades. — BC

And more, better technology becomes available every year. People are making astonishing nature documentaries. Any interested layman can learn a great deal about animal behaviour without having to slog through scientific papers.

Reflection (mind that is minding, or “I” that is “I-ing”), is the interruption. Reflection has its own motion, but it is an interruption of the motion of that which it is reflecting on. So the movement of reflection creates a stillness in the thing someone is reflecting on. — Fire Ologist

I don't understand that.

My sense is that animals don’t waste any of this time - they don’t interrupt the motion by creating a still reflection (of a moving thing) that they can reflect upon. — Fire Ologist

Sometimes cats and dogs sit and stare into space, quite still. One wonders what they are thinking about and whether they are thinking at all but, perhaps, meditating, or maybe just sitting without anything going on in their heads at all (but perhaps that is meditation - I don't know about that). If not for that, I would agree with you.

— Vera Mont

Probably the reverse. I didn't say better, just more. (Yes, I realize that many humans consider more/bigger/faster the ultimate in good.) But that doesn't come under a comparison with the rational thought of other species. — Vera Mont

I think I agree with you.

Many of the intelligence tests are really about "How much like us are they?" That business with the yellow dot, for example. Dogs don't identify individuals by sight but by smell and don't seem at all interested in their own appearance. I'm not surprised if they show no interest in their reflection in a mirror, which smells of nothing but glass, metal and the handler who put it there. — Vera Mont

Yes. I would value them more if they weren't called "intelligence tests". The very idea of intelligence makes not sense to me. It seems to comprise a wide variety of skills, some of which are highly transferable. We all possess many of them, some more and to a higher degree than others. It's about as sensible as trying to develop a single test for the nutritional value of food.

OTOH, tests of spatial orientation (mazes) do mimic the actual life experience of mice and challenging rats to obtain food in a human-made environment is certainly realistic. The experiments with plastic boxes, sticks and stones don't seem to give crows any trouble, though the props might be too foreign for most birds. It's hard for humans to devise tests that objectively measure the performance of species with very different interests and attitudes and perception from ourselves. — Vera Mont

Yes, but complaint is that behaviour in a mimicry is not necessarily the same as behaviour in their real life. Being caged in the lab at all is what disrupts everything - even if they are enjoying the holiday from real life.

The least obtrusive and most reliable way to discover how other animals think is to observe them in their natural habitat, solving the problems nature throws at them. We have an increasing ability to do that now. Without special equipment, though, we can observe domestic animals as they go about the business of living, overcoming obstacles and devising means to obtain what they desire. It's not The Scientific Method; it's common sense. — Vera Mont

Quite so. But "true" scientists are obsessed with controlling all the variables. Experiments are thought to be better science than observations, (and, in inanimate matter, they are). Interpreting observations in their natural habitat is very tricky and there's always the issue that the observer might affect the behaviour - even the presence of a camera/microphone can do that. It's not "just" common sense. Better to think of it as organized and disciplined common sense.

@Fire Ologist
You have very well explained what I wanted to say.

I see “rational thinking” and “communication skills” as parts of one thing - rational thinking is communicable thinking, communicable to other thinking (reasoning) things. Reason and language or math cohabitate the same moment.

Animals don’t need any of it. We personify animals when we call their behavior rational like our behavior is rational. — Fire Ologist

Animals do not need to have rational thinking because they do well with what they've got. Their instinct is very acute and senses are magnified multiple times than ours. They don't also need to plan for the "future" by just staying on top of things at the moment.

A lot of people do not understand that if animals are truly rational animals, they would have the same level of communication as we do. They could consult us in matters of daily survival, and vice versa.

Mimicry and imitation are not rational thinking -- regardless of how intelligent or useful or mind-blowing they are. Animals and plants can mimic each other to avoid the predators and increase their chances of bringing their offspring to maturity.

The very idea of intelligence makes not sense to me. It seems to comprise a wide variety of skills, some of which are highly transferable. — Ludwig V

I think it's because we've become accustomed, through the 20th century, to evaluate human mental capability according to a standard, easily quantifiable set of responses. The earliest IQ test, if I recall correctly, was intended to identify learning difficulties in school children, but the army soon adapted one to make recruitment more efficient, eliminating those applicants who were deemed unfit for service and identifying candidates for officer training. Nothing sinister about those limited applications... but, like all handy tools, people came to depend too heavily on the concept of IQ and on tests (more recently, personality tests) to measure intelligence, it's been widely misapplied and abused.

Yes, but complaint is that behaviour in a mimicry is not necessarily the same as behaviour in their real life. Being caged in the lab at all is what disrupts everything - even if they are enjoying the holiday from real life. — Ludwig V

We need to go back one more step and question the validity of testing rodent cognition on laboratory specimens - mice and rats that have been bred in captivity - often for a specific purpose - for many generations. Rodents used for cancer research, for example are often strains highly susceptible to malignancies, much more so than sewer rats or barn mice. So the very subject of the experiment is skewed at conception, and not a true reflection of its species.

These highly controlled laboratory environments, as well as close observation of domestic species in what has become their adopted habitat, yields indicators of what to look for; they don't provide definitive answers. We have a beginning, not yet a conclusion.

A lot of people do not understand that if animals are truly rational animals, they would have the same level of communication as we do. They could consult us in matters of daily survival, and vice versa. — L'éléphant

:lol:
A lot of people do not understand that if humans were truly rational animals, they would have the same level of communication as we do. They could consult one another, and ants, in matters of long-term survival.

It isn't that 'I' or 'you' don't exist; rather, the identity that I have doesn't occupy a specific region of the brain called "the self" -- at least they haven't been able to find it, and they've been looking, — BC

I think that you and they badly need a deeper understanding of the concepts of identity and the self. Then they wouldn't waste their time on obviously futile searches.
The classic place for this is the paradox of Theseus' ship. Have you encountered it? It demonstrates quite clearly that the identity of anything is not a constituent element of any part of that thing. There are difficult cases, but that much is clear.

What seems to be the case is that various facilities in the brain maintain our identity as a seemingly solid self. — BC

I don't know what that means.

So, once the sentence is ready, the motor centers are in charge of the typing. — BC

Yes. This is a version of Chomsky's theory. But it doesn't fit with what happens. Sometimes, typing out text is like unspooling a sentence. But not always. Sometimes one pauses in the middle of a sentence to work out how to end it. Sometimes one types out a sentence as a trial or draft, not because it is finished. Or consider what is going on when I work out a calculation with pencil and paper.

Obviously Broca's area, (language production) is involved; thought creation areas are involved; memory, etc. None of these areas control motor functions (like typing). — BC

Yes, yes, you know all those areas are "involved". But you don't know what they are doing beyond the roughest outline. But they must control motor functions - through the relevant department. If they did not they could not send their completed sentences to be typed.

Brain injuries and brain manipulation (during surgery) reveal that different areas of the brain control different aspects of our whole behavior. — BC

Yes. That is well known.

No matter what you say, what you think, what you do, it issues from the brain labeled "Ludwig V". — BC

But you do admit that I do say things and think things and do things. "Issues" is pretty vague, so I don't have to take issue with that. No, the brain does not make me do anything, unless you can describe it as making me do what I have decided to do - which is a very peculiar notion.

What the neurological researcher is saying is that the "representation called the self of Ludwig V" is not doing the thinking, — BC

There is no self apart from me, Ludwig V. A representation of me would be a picture or model of me. Why would it do any thinking? It doesn't even have a brain.

It feels like "we" are doing the thinking, but that's part of the fiction of the self. — BC

But you just said that we do think. I think it would be better to talk of constructions rather than fictions. I can recognize that in some sense, I am a construction - there are lots of bits and pieces working (mostly) together.

it's just that "your thinking" happens in your brain below your radar. — BC

I do realize that there's a lot going on in my brain when I think &c. We do know a bit about what is going on. But you could only describe it as thinking if you are prepared to say that a computer thinks. The brain is, after all, a machine.

Why don't you claim the task of keeping yourself upright when walking; blinking regularly to keep your eyeballs moist; keeping track of your temperature, blood pressure, heart beat, and breathing; waking up every morning (rather than not waking up); registering a patch of itchy skin; and hundreds of other services going on all the time? — BC

How do you know what I claim and what I don't claim? If you had asked me, I would have told you. But I think you are going off the rails in this and the next paragraph.

Thinking is just one of many things that we are not 'personally' responsible for. — BC

It is true that consciousness is the tip of an iceberg, and there is indeed a lot going on in our bodies that we are not aware of. We know a bit about the brain, but not very much. It is always tempting to get ahead of oneself and posit things because they "must" be so. That has led us into many blind alleys and idiocies, so it is best to be cautious.
Thinking does seem to go on automatically. But I find that I do have some control over it. I guess it is a bit like breathing.
You are aware that anyone who is convicted for many crimes is found guilty because they intended to do what they did?

We know a bit about the brain, but not very much. — Ludwig V

If it is the case that neither of us knows more than just "a bit about the brain' than your claims about your self, and my claims about my self, and what our respective brains are or are not doing, are both based on insufficient evidence. We have reached an impasse.

But you could only describe it as thinking if you are prepared to say that a computer thinks. The brain is, after all, a machine. — Ludwig V

I have not, would not, call the brain "a machine". After some brains invented computers, people started comparing their computers to brains and their brains to computers. My brain loves my Apple computer, but a computer is to the brain what a screw driver is to the brain: an sometimes useful external object,

a computer is to the brain what a screw driver is to the brain

That is the third version of the analogy. The Invisible Copy Editor, which is located on the underside of the Frontal Cortex next to the Olfactory Center, received a BAD SMELL alarm, indicating that the first version stank. My self was alerted, and I tried out a couple of different versions. Now it's back to Auto Mode.

A lot of people do not understand that if animals are truly rational animals, they would have the same level of communication as we do. They could consult us in matters of daily survival, and vice versa. — L'éléphant

Do we really need us to tell them what they think about daily survival?
Your definition of rationality is no more than a stipulation. Anyone who is rational enough to read their behaviour (which we can do, in the same way that we can read the non-vernal behaviour of human beings) knows that they experience pain and pleasure and respond rationally to both.

I think it's because we've become accustomed, through the 20th century, to evaluate human mental capability according to a standard, easily quantifiable set of responses. — Vera Mont

It's more accurate to say that we thought we needed a standard, quantifiable set of responses and decided to develop whatever we had to hand. "We need something, this is something." One can see this, because the development of personality tests (somewhat less conceptually incoherent, but, in my view nearly as vicious) when it was realized that intelligence tests didn't tell the story we needed (i.e. correlate with what we were looking for in our officers.) Essentially, the driver is our increasingly massified society, which is, at best, a double-edged sword.

The earliest IQ test, if I recall correctly, was intended to identify learning difficulties in school children, but the army soon adapted one to make recruitment more efficient, eliminating those applicants who were deemed unfit for service and identifying candidates for officer training. — Vera Mont

Correct. The first is a humane impulse, the second not wrong, but not particularly humane.

Nothing sinister about those limited applications... — Vera Mont

Well, they thought intelligence was culture-free - It isn't - and not affected by training and education - actually, it is, but to a limited extent. If that had been true, the test could have helped remove racism and classism from those decisions. They are still trying to deal with that, but using them when it hasn't been sorted out is morally very dubious, to put it politely.

but, like all handy tools, people came to depend too heavily on the concept of IQ and on tests (more recently, personality tests) to measure intelligence, it's been widely misapplied and abused. — Vera Mont

Too right. Mind you, there have been moments when people have resisted the impulse.

mice and rats that have been bred in captivity - often for a specific purpose - for many generations. — Vera Mont

Yes. People think that makes what they do to them OK. But I find it really ghoulish. I'm really ambivalent about the morality of this.

These highly controlled laboratory environments, as well as close observation of domestic species in what has become their adopted habitat, yields indicators of what to look for; they don't provide definitive answers. We have a beginning, not yet a conclusion. — Vera Mont

Quite so.

We have reached an impasse. — BC

Yes. That's sadly common, isn't it? But we do have a choice, if we can set aside the question who is right and who is wrong. There is some risk, if one tries simply to explain oneself, one may realize that one understands one's own position less thoroughly than one thought, but that would be a bonus, wouldn't it?
So instead of arguing with you, I shall simply ask you a question.
In return, I will try to explain my own position on a particular point to you
Perhaps you may want to ask me a question?
OK?

OK — Ludwig V

I don't think either one of us is right, or wrong. I don't know enough about how the brain works to be right or wrong. I'm just guessing and passing on ideas I've picked up here and there.

I dislike some of the ideas I've come across such as the statement "The self does not exist." Maybe there is no lobe in the brain that houses "self", and maybe 'self' is generated by different parts of the brain, BUT, however it is produced, 'SELF' EXISTS as a durable, cohesive entity. My guess is that the 'self' is generated by the brain and social interaction from birth onward. An example of early self building might be the two-year old who, having learned the word, deploys "NO" as an expression of this new self that has a little power and choice. The "terrible twos" are a time when young children have come into possession of their self. And then we spend the rest of our lives cultivating 'selfhood'.

Some animals seem to have a self and some do not. An alleged test of 'self' is whether the animal recognizes itself in a mirror. 'Elephants do, dogs don't. On the other hand, the dogs I have lived with all seem to have diligently pursued their self-interests and preferences. I don't know any elephants.

So, question: How do you think the self is composed? Does DNA play a role? When does the self form--does it arise gradually or suddenly? Can we 'lose our self"? (not talking about literally losing our heads, or terminal brain disease which destroys the brain)

A question which has come up in discussions of the afterlife (about which none of us know anything): Does our self survive death? (To quote Flannery O'Conner, one of my favorite short story writers: "I belong to the church without Christ, where the lame don't walk, the blind don't see, and the dead stay dead.") Even if I don't believe in it, I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife of zeroed out souls who are without the selves they possessed in life.

It's more accurate to say that we thought we needed a standard, quantifiable set of responses and decided to develop whatever we had to hand. "We need something, this is something." — Ludwig V

I'll go along with that, but want to be generous and widen the scope of "need" to include benevolent aims and simple curiosity, as well as practical applications, and maybe, tentatively, forgive the social ignorance and complacency of the academics who made the early tests. (No, not the voting rights literacy tests of 1879 Kentucky!)

I'll go along with that, but want to be generous and widen the scope of "need" to include benevolent aims and simple curiosity, as well as practical applications, and maybe, tentatively, forgive the social ignorance and complacency of the academics who made the early tests. (No, not the voting rights literacy tests of 1879 Kentucky!) — Vera Mont

Well, maybe you are better balanced than me. I'm thinking, though, that good motives do not excuse everything. You probably know about the Tuskegee Syphilis Research Study, 1932 - 1972. It was only terminated because of a press leak - i.e. by public opinion - so you can't excuse by historical context. Anyway, the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1964 and 1968 had been passed by then.

You probably know about the Tuskegee Syphilis Research Study, 1932 - 1972. — Ludwig V

I do now! And I know many examples of very bad scientific experimentation. I had no intention of including any of them in partly excusing ineptly designed intelligence tests.

I think my reply to you before was a bit hasty.

Mimicry and imitation are not rational thinking -- regardless of how intelligent or useful or mind-blowing they are. Animals and plants can mimic each other to avoid the predators and increase their chances of bringing their offspring to maturity. — L'éléphant

Whether mimicry and imitation are rational or not depends on why it is being done, surely? If it is being done to avoid predators, for example, why is it not rational?
When a parrot mimics speech, there is no doubt that it is the parrot that is doing the mimicking. Quite why I don't know, but it seems most reasonable to suppose that the parrot has some purpose in doing that, because it clearly finds the behaviour rewarding in some way. There a kind of mimicry in which a harmless species has evolved to imitate the warning signals of a harmful species to scare off predators, for example. This is clearly a result of evolution (and I have no problem with the purposive explanation attributed to evolution). It is not the plant's purpose, (except in an extended sense)
BTW Personally, I am quite unsure whether insects have purposes in the way that animals do or their mimicries are the result of evolution's purposes. I think that birds, on the other hand, do have purposes of their own.

The only way that we can distinguishes between coincidental similarities and mimicry is by reference to purposes, whether of the individual entity or of evolution. That means that we are attributing rationality as well, though not the discursive rationality that human beings practice.

A lot of people do not understand that if animals are truly rational animals, they would have the same level of communication as we do. They could consult us in matters of daily survival, and vice versa. — L'éléphant

Everybody agrees that human language is uniquely distinctive and more extensive than animal communication systems (I call them languages) of animals. I'm quite unclear why you want to call how animals communicate anything other than a language and bracket them as not "truly" rational. It seems to me to be simply a question of definition, rather than anything substantial or interesting.

But there is a lot more to be said.

The distinction between knowing how (to do something, in the sense of being able to do it) and knowing that something (is true). The former does not require language, but the latter clearly does. Philosophy has never seriously focused on the latter of each pair, leaving the former aside as trivial or irrelevant.
However, philosophers have long been amazed that people are able to speak coherently without being able to give a definition of the words they use. They have mostly ignored the phenomenon. But it is the most direct and dramatic demonstration that it is possible to do something and follow rules without being able to articulate what one is doing or why one is doing it.
To say that animals are rational is to attribute to them knowing how to do things, without being able to articulate what they are doing. It should not be a conceptually problematic thesis. The difficult, of course, is which interpretations of the behaviour are accurate. Sorting that out takes extended and close observation, but is not impossible.


Sadly, there is nothing to prevent a scientist being a bad scientist and even a racist scientist.

Quite why I don't know, but it seems most reasonable to suppose that the parrot has some purpose in doing that, because it clearly finds the behaviour rewarding in some way. — Ludwig V

Usually, quite literally and directly rewarding. The handler gives him a treat. (And performing some act that is not of one's innate nature for a reward is definitely rational.) Some birds and many dogs also do it to please a human they hold dear, which is at least socially intelligent behaviour. And some birds just mimic for the same reason they dance to music: it's fun.

Sadly, there is nothing to prevent a scientist being a bad scientist and even a racist scientist. — Ludwig V

In US academia these days there are internal review boards which proposed research on human subjects must be approved by. My first wife was the the administrator for such a human subjects IRB, so I got to learn a lot about how they work.

The IRB that my wife was administrator for had members from outside academia, including a couple of local clergy. I don't know as much about nonacademic human research subjects review, but I doubt there is as little oversight as you suggest in most scientific research.

I don't know as much about nonacademic human research subjects review, but I doubt there is as little oversight as you suggest in most scientific research. — wonderer1

These days, probably not. Up until the late 1970's, research wasn't at all well supervised or regulated in most countries. It was probably - just speculating now - government agencies' unconscionable behaviour that prompted legal and professional constraints on the use of human subjects. Other species have not fared as well - ever.