Yes animals have rational thinking, due to the simple fact that survival instinct is a rational response in any living creature.

Therefore: I am hungry, I will forage/hunt for food" is a rational stepwise train of thought for any animal that supports their survival.

On more complex levels: "I am threatened by an adversary on my hunt for food. They are bigger and more aggressive than me. I will hunt elsewhere." Is a rational stepwise consideration to protect themselves. One which requires calculating risks based on both perception of their aggressor as well as self awareness of their own size, fighting ability etc.

Fight, flight, freeze or fawn is a dynamic of choices faced by many animals especially those that operate in hierarchal social groups. They can fight for dominance, run away and spare themselves, freeze to avoid detection or minimise their perceived threat to the aggressor or fawn - offer services such as flea picking, defence, some food or sex as a way to ingratiate themselves with the more dominant individual and thus gain secondary benefits.

These are all rational thoughts when survival and wellbeing is the soul agenda.

Humans of course have surpassed basic rational thought (survival rationale) to an elevated state where we can apply even more rationale to things that aren't directly life-threatening. However, gains and risks ( be them authority/status/political, financial, etc) still apply. We can't at the end if the day ignore our very real instinct to survive and prosper regardless of what the level of complexity of our reasoning. Which may lead to tactics like manipulation, pandering, overt conflict and further reasoning as mechanisms to gain the upper hand in anything from academia to business/marketing and social relationships.

We are still animals.

Usually, quite literally and directly rewarding. ...... And some birds just mimic for the same reason they dance to music: it's fun. — Vera Mont

I knew that rewards came into it. I just wondered whether they also did it for fun. Doing it for fun is intrinsically rewarding, but then the handler reinforces the reinforcement?
Doing it for fun. They're almost human, aren't they?

In US academia these days there are internal review boards which proposed research on human subjects must be approved by. ...... 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

Yes, I know that. I think it's quite general in the scientific world these days. So things have got better - partly because of the fuss about that project. But I wouldn't dream of denying it. However, the failings of human beings are, let's say, persistent, so we should not get complacent. I'm sure you also agree with that.

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. — Vera Mont

No, they haven't. They can't fight back. I like to think the glass is half full, but i can never forget that the glass is also half-empty. I'm always getting accused of being too optimistic and too pessimistic.

I am hungry, I will forage/hunt for food" is a rational stepwise train of thought for any animal that supports their survival. — Benj96

Of course it is. WIttgenstein's work, especially on rule and rule-following indicates that, at some point, we act without benefit of articulation and I think that can be extended to understand how animals act rationally when they don't have the benefit of language.

We are still animals. — Benj96

Yes. And they and we are also machines.

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. — BC

That makes two of us. Exchanging views sounds a bit pointless to some people, but it is a very good way of learning and passing things on.

'SELF' EXISTS as a durable, cohesive entity. — BC

Yes. With complicatons. See your question below.

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'. — BC

Yes. There are milestones in the story. The identity of people is peculiar because they have a say themselves about who and what they are. It gets very complicated because other people also have a say and the views may differ. Take the example of someone elected to be pope. They take a new name, and this is intended to reflect the beginning of a new identity. (There are other examples, but I'm not sure how widespread the practice is.) You make or may not but that. He is the guy who was called X by everybody, but became pope and now is called Y (by some people) But what's the guy's real name?

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. — BC

It's not unimportant, but it's less than having a self or not. It's not even about whether they are self-conscious or not. Perhaps it's about whether they know how others see them. That's not a small thing.

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"? — BC

I hope you don't hate this.

I think it's most likely that it develops over time and never stops developing until we stop living. What is it composed of? Well, partly we decide what it is composed of. But only partly. We can change many things, but not our physical body - though that also changes continuously. But, as I said earlier, other people also have a say in what and who I am. That's my first observation.

My second observation is this. "Identity" is a noun connected to a verb and roughly means the means of identifying whatever. Unlike "table", "chair", "tree" etc. which pick out or refer to objects, "identity" does not pick out or refer to an object. "Ludwig" picks out or refers to me. It does not pick out a part of me or even all the parts of me. It picks out the whole of me, just as "table" picks out or refers to the whole table, not a part or even all the parts. Then think that instead of saying "picks out" or "refers to", I could have said "identifies". Then think that when you identify a table you pick out the whole table. (Pronouns are flexible names. "I", "You", "He, She, It", etc are pronouns. Who or what they refer to is determined by the context. What they identify is not fixed, but varies according to context.)

My third and final observation is that "self" is a kind of pronoun that allows one to talk about self-reference in various ways. So my selt is just me. The idea of self-consciousness cropped up earlier. But it also allows me to explain that a car is a machine that moves itself, or that the computer switches itself off. So it's not just about people.
It is also sometimes used for emphasis. If I send you a birthday present, it is from me whether I bought and dispatched it myself or not; but it will usually go down better if you bought and sent it yourself. Or, there's a big difference between my ordering a boat and paying someone to build it and building it myself. This is really quite elusive and complicated. A good dictionary will give you various examples, which will help more than anything I could say.

I hope that's helpful. I want to stop there for now. If you are interested we can go back to brains and I'll try to explain why I was saying the weird things I was saying.

Does our self survive death? ..... 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. — BC

I don't believe it partly because I can't imagine what an after-life without a physical body would be like. No senses! How does that work? Is it like being blind, deaf, dumb? Ugh!

Doing it for fun. They're almost human, aren't they? — Ludwig V

Why do you think we make pets of them? All intelligent species have a great deal in common, which is why they are able to communicate with and feel affection for one another.
The human specialness doctrine has not served us as well as it was it was intended to. Yes, it allows us to abuse, exploit and exterminate other species with impunity, but we also lose an entire dimension of our own emotional and intellectual life.

Yes. I've had dogs and cats and a pony - oh, and some fish long ago. They were fun in a different way.

Fish are wonderfully relaxing to watch - in the dentist's waiting room; we've never had any at home. Lousy frisbee players, I understand.

They don't talk much either and petting them is a bit of a problem.
But I knew a goldfish once that blew a bubble at you when you gave it a crumb of fish food. They called him/her "Professor". There's been work done on the intelligence of goldfish.
Octopuses, now. They'll spit water at you if they don't like you. They can escape from a screw-top jar. OK, they're not fish. But you have to admire them. Perhaps not as pets.
Everywhere you look, when you look closely, there's more to non-humans than humans think.

Octopuses, now. — Ludwig V

....not to mention predict football games... Has anyone asked an octopus for 13 keys to winning an American election? I wouldn't want one for a pet. Really, I wouldn't want any pet that has to be confined. There are few things I dislike as much as cages, but an aquarium is unavoidable for marine species. I'd set Nemo free every time.

Everywhere you look, when you look closely, there's more to non-humans than humans think. — Ludwig V

And daily fewer non-human species as there are daily more humans.
This afternoon, a sunny September say, I set a freshly-painted board out on the porch to dry, confident that no insects would stick to it and no bird would crap on it. I haven't had to wash the windshield all summer.

This afternoon, a sunny September say, I set a freshly-painted board out on the porch to dry, confident that no insects would stick to it and no bird would crap on it. I haven't had to wash the windshield all summer. — Vera Mont

It's the shortage of birds I'm noticing. Insects are around in fair numbers. I expect they do better in non-agricultural areas.

Mosquitoes we've had aplenty this wet summer, but I haven't seen more than half a dozen butterflies and had to hand-pollinate my tomatoes and peppers for lack of bees. Ants are taking up the slack on cucumbers for some reason, but even the cluster flies we used to have to vacuum up by the hundreds have dwindled down the odd annoyance. So, what are the swallows and robins supposed to eat? This is the time of staging for migration and I see no flocks of anything, except our little neighbourhood clan of Canada geese. They're training the young ones to fly in formation (yes, geese are social and smart) - they haven't got the hang of a proper V yet.
We humans are so awfully clever and rational that we'll soon end up with nobody but one another to kill.

I haven't had to wash the windshield all summer. — Vera Mont

It seems to me that insects (using it as a general term) are scarcer than they used to be. Mayflies (order Ephemeroptera) used to be extremely plentiful near rivers and backwaters. One rarely sees them now. I haven't seen many butterflies of any kind in the past few years. For that matter, I don't see many house flies, either. Mosquitos seem to be holding their own.

People who live in crop growing rural areas certainly see more insects than urban dwellers. Hordes of a Japanese beetle imported to prey on aphids that feed on soybean plants collect on houses in the fall. They aren't harmful, but it 'bugs' some people. They look like lady bugs but when rubbed reveal a very bitter odor. Flies would be a lot more common around barnyards, hog pens, cattle, and so on.

In various places where researchers have counted insects, the numbers are down from the past. I am not sure what impact declining insect numbers have on birds, because global warming affects birds negatively in a number of ways. It can't be good.

So, what are the swallows and robins supposed to eat — Vera Mont

The worms that early birds get are something of an ecological problem. The native earthworms of North America were scraped off by the last glacial period and are still recovering. When the first people arrived in North America, there weren't many worms crawling around in Northern areas. The Europeans brought big fat earth worms with them -- not deliberately, but in plant containers and root bundles. The big fat earth worms prospered and have spread over much of the "wormless zone"--in between southern Canada and north of Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, etc.

How could big fat juicy earthworms be a problem?

They are a problem because they eat all the leaf litter on the ground. The native worms weren't big and robust enough to do that, The Euro-worms, however, are. When it rains, the bare soil (no longer covered up with a thick layer of leaf litter) erodes more, washing away the top soil, including the fertile worm castings.s

What to do, what to do?

Native earthworms can, of course, be planted in northern forests, but that isn't going to get rid of the Euro-worms. Pay birds a bounty on each big earthworm they eat? Imagine the difficult bookkeeping problem that would entail.

Is it rational to believe illnesses are caused by the gods? Is it rational to believe a god created man from mud?

Being correct or knowing the truth is not required for rationalization. Back in ancient times, a person who conclude that the sun goes around the earth by using their observations, is being rational.

The worms that early birds get are something of an ecological problem. — BC

Robins seem to be okay with big fat earthworms, and the garden soil isn't complaining. But birds that are adapted to feeding in the air - swallow, martins, swifts, nightjars - are seriously up shit creek. I live in an agricultural area and I haven't even seen many of the imported ladybugs. There was a swarm about ten years ago (they sting, too) but they've pretty much died off over the winters, and maybe some were eaten by birds. I've seen two bumblebees all summer, one lone preying mantis, no fireflies or wasps. That's never happened before. No bluejays have been instructing their noisy young in the cedar trees. No mourning doves coo in the afternoon. It was a very quiet spring. Next year may be altogether silent.

Indeed, we rational humans seem not to have communicated very well about daily survival.

This interesting thread put me in mind of a fun paper I read many years ago, called 'Do Dogs Know Calculus?'

A mathematician shows that his dog, when fetching a ball thrown into water, appears to be calculating the optimal path from A to B as if using calculus. But, of course, calculus is computationally tricky even for most non-expert human beings. A dog cannot know calculus. Can he?!

People who live in crop growing rural areas certainly see more insects than urban dwellers. — BC

I guess I was wrong about in thinking there might be more insects in the suburban area I live in. I see so much about how the countryside is losing all its insects mainly ot pesticides that I made an assumption. There are pesticides here too, but likely less than in crop-growing areas.

Next year may be altogether silent. — Vera Mont

Are you referencing Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" that started the ecoological movement? The title was a prophecy at the time, but it looks as if it is coming true, and we are at last recognizing it - virtually too late.

How could big fat juicy earthworms be a problem? — BC

How indeed? There are invasive species in the UK too; some of them come from the US, others from the Far East - a legacy of Empire and globalization. The grey squirrel is a good example from the US; there's a European species that is, in my book, even cuter, but it's become marginalized now. There are sanctuaries and a lot of greys are being killed to preserve them. The mink escaped from fur farms and caused a lot of damage. They seem to be on the retreat now. I'm afraid the cause is at least partly endless eradication campaigns.

A mathematician shows that his dog, when fetching a ball thrown into water, appears to be calculating the optimal path from A to B as if using calculus. But, of course, calculus is computationally tricky even for most non-expert human beings. A dog cannot know calculus. Can he?! — cherryorchard

That's fascinating. I don't do any calculus when I'm catching a ball - I "just know" where to put my hands. Some people talk about "judgement". One supposes that my brain is doing the calculations sub- or un-consciously. I guess my brain is doing some work, but doubt that it is doing calculus calculations. But who knows? However I think it is more plausible to suppose that it is using some quick and dirty heuristic, which, no doubt, would give mathematicians a fit; but evolution only cares what works well enough. The same, I would think, for the dog.

A dog cannot know calculus. Can he?! — cherryorchard

He doesn't need to. Evolving as a species that hunts running prey, he has an instinctive grasp of vectors.
All that's happened between when our own ancestors ran after prey and learned to predict where to intercept a weaving deer and calculus is that we translated practical observation into abstract formulas - from particular practical application to universal concept.

There is another fun book: How to Teach Physics to Your Dog which is supposed to be fun.

A dog cannot know calculus. Can he?! — cherryorchard

More realistic sounding to me is that dogs (and people) use a gaze heuristic..

I don't do any calculus when I'm catching a ball - I "just know" where to put my hands. Some people talk about "judgement". One supposes that my brain is doing the calculations sub- or un-consciously. I guess my brain is doing some work, but doubt that it is doing calculus calculations — Ludwig V

I agree! And yet the output is the same as if it had been doing calculus. That suggests something interesting (though I can't say exactly what...!)

Reminds me of Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations': 'Calculating prodigies who arrive at the correct result but can’t say how. Are we to say that they do not calculate?'

However I think it is more plausible to suppose that it is using some quick and dirty heuristic, which, no doubt, would give mathematicians a fit; but evolution only cares what works well enough. The same, I would think, for the dog. — Ludwig V

What's interesting here is that sometimes our 'subconscious' mental calculations are not quick and dirty – they are enormously precise and accurate. A good example might be professional snooker or pool players. They are capable of modelling physics interactions to extraordinary degrees of specificity. Their models are probably superior to purely mathematical models in terms of predictive accuracy. But they do not consciously perform calculations at all.

More realistic sounding to me is that dogs (and people) use a gaze heuristic.. — wonderer1

I'm not sure if you read the paper I attached, but the dog's actions cannot be explained by applying the gaze heuristic, because that heuristic deals with tracking moving objects. The dog is not tracking a moving object, but rather charting an optimal path to a fixed point over two varied surfaces (land and water). In order to work out that optimal path using mathematics, we need calculus. The dog finds the same path without resorting to calculus (we assume). But the gaze heuristic would not be of any assistance.

I'm not sure if you read the paper I attached — cherryorchard

My device is wonky about downloading pdfs, so I tried, but gave up. I tried again, and I've had a chance to read it now. Interesting!

I think the calculus question is simply a case of habitual cart-reversal. We know about the mathematical or scientific conventions that have been worked out by humans over a couple of thousand years, shaped and polished into something akin to icons. We forget that people were aware of quantity, dispersal, proportion, direction, force, mass, etc since they were human. They were applying that awareness to their practical needs.
That awareness long preceded the formal systems by which those phenomena are described today. We see a dog applying the same awareness to a problem and wonder: "How does he know?" instead of realizing: "That's what my ancestors were doing. That's where my knowledge originates."

Thanks for the Wittgenstein quotations. I had forgotten it. There's a philosophical angle to this, of course.
Perhaps more relevant is that if we are forced to admit that dogs' brains enable them to achieve mathematical results even though they don't speak mathematics, we may be less resistant to the idea that they and other animals are rational even though they don't speak languages like ours.

What's interesting here is that sometimes our 'subconscious' mental calculations are not quick and dirty – they are enormously precise and accurate. A good example might be professional snooker or pool players. They are capable of modelling physics interactions to extraordinary degrees of specificity. Their models are probably superior to purely mathematical models in terms of predictive accuracy. But they do not consciously perform calculations at all. — cherryorchard

I meant "dirty" on in the sense that it won't be like the mathematical version. Which, to be fair, comes in very handy in some of the situations we put ourselves into. Long ocean voyages, navigating in the air and beyond. Calculating the orbits of planets, etc.
Compare how we judge distances by what it takes to focus our two eyes on an objects. It doesn't work at longer distances, so instead we judge by apparent size. The latter is quick and dirty, in the sense I intended.

Quite some time ago I read that infants have a limited built in knowledge about the world. This was demonstrated by showing the baby a helium-filled balloon, and then letting go of it. The balloon, of course, rose to the ceiling. The baby exhibited an expression of SHOCK! Objects are supposed to fall when released. I'm assuming this was done more than once, and on at least several babies. (Sorry, too far back -- don't know where I read it, but it was not in a tabloid newspaper.)

the dog's actions cannot be explained by applying the gaze heuristic, because that heuristic deals with tracking moving objects. The dog is not tracking a moving object — cherryorchard

An impressive example is a dog tearing after a Frisbee, then leaping to catch it in its jaws. But other animals do this too. An eagle dives to catch a rabbit, but the rabbit, no genius in the animal kingdom, swerves sharply at the last half second, and the eagle ends up with dirt in its grip. Eagles are fed and rabbits are not over-running the countryside, so the eagles are successful often enough.

The baby exhibited an expression of SHOCK! Objects are supposed to fall when released. — BC

I don't suppose the test can be administered to newborns. The subject must have the skill to distinguish objects and generalize how 'things' are expected to behave.
By about six months, they usually start experimenting with gravity: dropping something from their highchair or buggy (Very often to see how many times their adult caregiver will retrieve it for them). They acquire the knowledge "things are supposed to fall" from practical experience. So when a new thing does the opposite, the first reaction is surprise, quickly followed by delight.

The grey squirrel is a good example from the US — Ludwig V

The upper midwest of the US doesn't harbor many red squirrels, so I'm not familiar with their behavior. Grey squirrels are everywhere around here. They usually are grey with a white belly, but they sometimes are black or white (not a seasonal change).

I've read about the terrorism directed at your red squirrels by the Yankee grey squirrels. Social scientists and psychoanalysts have not been able to determine what, exactly, is the source of this inter-squirrel hostility.

The urban grey squirrel readily exploits human behavior. The smart squirrels on the University of Minnesota campus follow people carrying paper bags. If you stop, because you happen to like squirrels, they'll go so far as to climb up your pant leg to access the presumed food in your bag. This is somewhat disconcerting.

It's not hard to let them eat out of your hand; even to sit on your knee and eat the offered peanuts. I've established such a relationship several times since I was a kid. I'm more fastidious as an old guy, and would just as soon NOT have even cute rodents sitting on me.

Very often to see how many times their adult caregiver will retrieve it for them — Vera Mont

Has anyone determined what the average number of retrievals a caregiver is willing to perform before the object is thrown out the window?

Has anyone determined what the average number of retrievals a caregiver is willing to perform before the object is thrown out the window? — BC

Or if the caregiver had the free will to NOT retrieve it the first twenty times? :rofl:

So when a new thing does the opposite, the first reaction is surprise, quickly followed by delight — Vera Mont

Long ago I saw an episode on Ira Flatow's Newton's Apple where he asked how a helium balloon in a bus would behave when the vehicle began to move. One would suppose that the balloon would move to the back of the bus, as the forward momentum occurred. Shockingly, it's just the opposite (do try this at home). The balloon moves to the front of the bus. (Enough of the heavier air moves to the back of the bus, forcing the lighter balloon to move forward.)

One shouldn't waste scarce helium on experiments that have already been done, so take your helium balloon to an MRI lab where it can be recycled for more important uses, like scanning brains. Or inhale it to achieve a Donald Duck kind of voice for a few seconds.

Social scientists and psychoanalysts have not been able to determine what, exactly, is the source of this inter-squirrel hostility. — BC

I hope that's tongue-in-cheek.
I once had a grey squirrel as a pet - not on purpose; the children down the street rescued her their cat. So I raised her and eventually set her free. That li'l rodent was smart as a whip. Sassy, too. And quite clean: one of her favourite things was bath time. Afterward, I'd hang a towel on the bar and pull it taut, so that Georgie could slide down it, then clamber up on my shoulder, leap over and do it again. And again, until she was dry. She also hid nuts in my shoes and under the cat's tail. A very entertaining companion.