Thanks for noticing! — Wayfarer

Sorry to be dense, but what have I noticed?

But in some other case of knowledge, rational justification is needed, helps or even based on. You seem to be over simplifying the issue, which results inevitably in the muddle. — Corvus

So you know that it is autumn because you can see the falling leaves. You don't know because you have said to yourself "I know that.. because...". However, you will be able to cite that if anybody asks you how you know, i.e. it is your justification. (I accept that "I can see the falling leaves" needs no further justification under normal circumstances. But so far as the question "How do you know" goes, I don't see the difference between your simple case and your "other cases".

I don't see any other explanation having an easier time. One neuron? Two? A thousand? A million? — Patterner

The moral of the sorites paradox is that some concepts do not have precise border-lines. Consciousness seems to me to be one of them. (So does "rational")

The reason I am arguing so strongly is we learn how to think and we should not expect everyone to think rationally without training. We should not take thinking for granted. — Athena

That's exactly right. Rationality is a complex of skills. Some of them we learn informally in the process of learning to navigate the world. Others (e.g. mathematics, critical thinking) we have to learn in more formal ways. There's no guarantee that everybody learns all the skills.

The problem is not answering the question. Is believing and defending a myth or false belief, rational thinking? — Athena

Well, it depends a bit, partly on which myth or false belief is involved, but also on how you choose to defend it. Granted that most myths contain only a element of truth it will often be irrational to defend them as true. And it is possible to be mistaken about a belief and so end up defending a false belief.

I am struggling to understand how given our modern, science-based understanding of life, can people still believe the Bible is a good explanation of reality. — Athena

The short answer is that they do not start with your presuppositions. The slightly longer answer is that a religious belief involves adopting a specific world-view, that is, a framework within which you assess truth or falsity or good explanation or bad explanation.

And one can also bear in mind experience is an end in itself, laden with nothing, — Mww

But isn't experience supposed to be the foundation of knowledge? How is that possible if it is an end in itself? Aren't experiences pleasant or unpleasant, meaningful or meaningless, &c. &c? How is that possible if they are laden with nothing?

oneself can never be an experience. — Mww

I think you mean that there can never be an experience that is an experience of oneself? Or one's self can never be an object of experience (since oneself is posited as the subject of expereience.)?

The dog is incapable of isolating its own thought/belief to the exclusion of all else. — creativesoul

I don't know what "isolating its own thought/belief" means.

A dog's inability to become aware of its own fallibility is due to not possessing the capacity/capability to isolate their own thoughts and beliefs. Realizing/recognizing that one's belief is false, in this case, happens when reality does not meet/match expectations and we're aware of that. — creativesoul

Perhaps you are thinking that in order to grasp the rationality of what a dog is doing, we have to somehow get inside it's head. That isn't necessary. We just need to interpret what it does. I'm sure that the dog understands that their human has not arrived on the train. I can't think of anything that they could do to make it clear that they recognize in addition, as a distinct belief, that their belief that their human would arrive on that train is false - other than saying it. Yet the latter belief is implicit in the former. i.e. is not distinct from, isolable from, the former.

Either truth and meaning exist in their entirety prior to language or true and false belief exists without meaning and/or truth. — creativesoul

You are forgetting about non-linguistic action.

But isn't experience supposed to be the foundation of knowledge? — Ludwig V

While the case may be made that empirical knowledge is impossible without the experience of what the knowledge is of, but it is also quite often the case there can be experiences for which no knowledge is given. If it is sometimes the case and sometimes not the case, there’s a need for a different case.

Insofar as the negation of which is a contradiction, it is always the case that…..
Knowledge is an end in itself, pursuant to the operation of a system, that end being a change in the condition of the intelligence under which the system operates;
Experience is an end in itself, pursuant to the operation of a system, that end being a change in the condition of the subject to which the system belongs, all else being what it may.

As well, since Plato earlier and Russell later, knowledge of is very different than knowledge that, such distinction being entirely absent from experience.
—————

…..oneself can never be an experience.
— Mww
I think you mean that there can never be an experience that is an experience of oneself? Or one's self can never be an object of experience (since oneself is posited as the subject of expereience.)? — Ludwig V

I suppose. That isn’t necessarily contradictory or invalid, given the object immediately appended, re: of oneself. That only matters because without such appended object, the proposition is contradictory, re: never be an experience that is an experience. Which you must immediately recognize, given your historical commentary precedents, as a (gaspsputterchoke) language game.

“One’s self can never be an object of experience” works just fine, though, right?

The moral of the sorites paradox is that some concepts do not have precise border-lines. Consciousness seems to me to be one of them. (So does "rational") — Ludwig V

Exactly. Although some things, like a pile of sand, are definitely made up of tiny units, we can't define how many are needed for it to qualify as a pile. My guess is that applies to consciousness.

As well, since Plato earlier and Russell later, knowledge of is very different than knowledge that, such distinction being entirely absent from experience. — Mww

Oh, yes, well, that makes a lot of difference. People mostly seem very reluctant to deal with that. I think the reason is that they think that knowledge of can be reduced to knowledge that. The probably haven't faced up to Mary's Room.

Knowledge is an end in itself, pursuant to the operation of a system, that end being a change in the condition of the intelligence under which the system operates; — Mww

My version:- "Knowledge is an end in itself, achieved by the operation of a system, that end being a change in the information available to the system itself".

Experience is an end in itself, pursuant to the operation of a system, that end being a change in the condition of the subject to which the system belongs, all else being what it may. — Mww

My version:- "Experience is the operation of a system, which often results in various changes to the condition of the subject to which the system belongs."

Which you must immediately recognize, given your historical commentary precedents, as a (gaspsputterchoke) language game. — Mww

Careful - I'm not sure that is not a dirty word around here.
But that concept enables one to give "knowing oneself" a meaning. But it couldn't be based on the standard concepts of how we come to know things - a different, specialized, language game.

“One’s self can never be an object of experience” works just fine, though, right? — Mww

I think it does. But it is misleading to say that there's no such thing. It's just that one's self is not an object.

Exactly. Although some things, like a pile of sand, are definitely made up of tiny units, we can't define how many are needed for it to qualify as a pile. My guess is that applies to consciousness. — Patterner

Yes, though that's not because consciousness is made up of quantities of atoms or particles. It's in a different category.
Rationality is not dissimilar, but, unlike consciousness, it is the result of a range of skills. One's range may be wider or narrower, greater or lesser.

"Greater" abilities??? I'm not sure what that means
— creativesoul
Some animals eat what they can find.
Some animals can use a tool, if they find a good one, to help them get food.
Some animals can make a tool to help them get food.
Some animals can use tools and plan a couple steps ahead to get food.

Seems like increasing abilities to me. — Patterner

Yup.

The difficulty is setting out the ways we're similar, and the ways we're unique. Our own thinking is bolstered by our own complex language use and all that that facilitates. Naming and descriptive practices are key. They pervade our thinking. They allow us to reflect upon our own experiences in a manner that is much more than just remembering.

Other animals cannot do that.
— creativesoul
Right. But millions of years ago, our brains took a leap that no other species has yet taken. We were one of many species that had some limited degree of language, or representation, abilities. Presumably, various other species have evolved greater abilities since then.
— Patterner

"Greater" abilities??? I'm not sure what that means, but evolution demands survival advantages. Different species have different perceptual machinery. Direct perception in the sense of completely void of abstraction. — creativesoul

I take issue with taking certain kinds of leaps. "Increase" works well. Very very slow increments.

...our brain gained an ability that subsequent mutations were able to build upon. We couldn't ever know the series of mutations, and what each one gave us. — Patterner

The detail of mutations remains unclear. What makes a mutation... a mutation?

Either using tools is something that can be done by a mindless creature(a creature completely absent of thought and belief), or not only humans are rational creatures. Your position forces you to explain the former…..
— creativesoul

To would seem impossible — Mww

A problem.

to be mindful does not make explicit thought and belief, or thinking about thought/belief. — Mww

Another problem.

The use of tools indicates mindfulness, but not what form or kind it may or may not be — Mww

Sounds like a problem for the notion of "mindfulness".

Mindless entities are so due to the absence of meaningful experience. Mindless things do not consist of thought and belief. Nothing is meaningful to a mindless entity. All meaningful experiences are meaningful to the creature capable of having that experience. If our notion of "mindless" does not agree there is a problem.

The criterion is not up to us.

Mindless entities predated minded ones. Minded entities predated us. Our own minds predated our own knowledge of them.

The dog is incapable of isolating its own thought/belief to the exclusion of all else.
— creativesoul
I don't know what "isolating its own thought/belief" means. — Ludwig V

Thinking about one's own thought and belief as a subject matter in and of itself requires an ability to pick one's own thought and belief about this world out of this world to the exclusion of all else.


That cannot happen without having something to think about. A means to do so. And a creature capable. The recognition of one's own false belief. We isolate. We point. We name. We learn to use naming and descriptive practices. We name and describe the things that catch our attention.

We isolate by picking something out of this world to the exclusion of all else.

Certain sorts of things captured our attention - as a species - long before documented histories began being recorded. Things become meaningful that way.

OK. "Myths and metaphysical speculations and religions" all belong in a very special category. I'll express this by saying that they are pre-rational and foundational. By which I mean that they give the people who accept them their framework for explaining and understanding the world. Its misleading, in my view, to say that people believe them because that places them alongside believing that an earthquake is happening or that the harvest is bad - everyday facts. — Ludwig V

I'm not sure about saying that myths and metaphysical speculations are pre-rational. I guess it depends on what you mean by "rational". I think of rationality as "measuring" things against other things and seeing possibilities. Hence its etymological commonality with ratio. In that kind of sense we can say (some) animals are rational from which it would follow that no aspect of human life is at least in that sense pre-rational.

I agree with you that culturally entrenched beliefs were probably at least by and large unquestioned and in view of that they could be thought of as being in the Wittgensteinian sense "hinge propositions" (although I never liked the word "proposition" in that context and I think 'belief' would probably be better).

So yes, people may not have " believed" such foundational ideas if by "beleived" is meant something like "personally arrived at by thinking about it".

Well, I disagree with the "mere" in "mere idea", because some ideas (including "I") are what set the framework within we can identify facts, experiences, etc. On the other hand, I agree that many people (try to) reify that idea. But that is a misunderstanding of language, which is not built in to, but results from imposing a limited model of language on our linguistic practices. — Ludwig V

Of course the idea of self is a kind of master or overarching idea. A reaching for unity. But is it anything more than an idea? I suppose you could say as I already have that there is a pre-conceptual "sense of self" in us and also probably in (some) other animals. A sense of self that via memory "unifies" experience.

Out of respect for our history, I won’t be so brash as to throw the ol’, much-dreaded “categorical error” at you, but rather, merely bringing it up might provoke you into looking for it. Or, in all fairness, showing there isn’t one. — Mww

But you have brought it up and I think now more explanation is required since I'm not sure what you are alluding to. Never fear giving offense. I'm here to learn not to find support for some pet theory.

What sorts of stuff can become meaningful to a creature incapable of isolating their own belief system, as subject matters in their own right, to be further discussed, in greater detail perhaps???

Directly perceptible stuff. Thoughts and beliefs about the world are not. Therefore...

Does the dog recognize the fact that its own belief is no longer warranted, based upon everyday fact? It is no longer true. The falseness is a lack of correspondence. Recognizing one's own false belief - in that situation - requires recognizing that the world does not match one's expectations. The dog clearly doesn't recognize its own false belief about future events. If it did, it would act as if it no longer expected the human and the 5 o'clock train to arrive simultaneously.

I'm astounded that one cannot discern between thinking about everyday lifelong routine/events/fact and recognizing that one's own thought and belief based upon that very routine are no longer true.

What else could "the recognition" of one's own false belief amount to when talking about one who continued and continued to follow the same daily routine - to a meaningful extent anyway - and hence continued to believe that the human would arrive alongside the train for years after the human's death?

It was clearly not recognizing its own false belief.





The dog goes because its entire meaningful life was lovingly shared with the one arriving on schedule. The routine was a part of the dog's experience. It is through past routine that the dog's expectation became deeply embedded. The same things happened over and over. The human arriving with the train was one of those regularly recurring timely scheduled events/occurrences/facts. The dog's expectation was based upon past regularly occurring events, and hence were based very firmly in regularity/everyday fact at the time they began influencing the dog. The dog's beliefs were once well grounded. There are no longer.

The dog's continued expectation is consistent. That's rational behavior, in my book, based upon rational thought and belief, because it contains no inherent inevitable self-contradiction/equivocation, and it's based upon belief that was true at the time the connections were drawn between the train and the human.

An emotive dog may wail.

I take issue with taking certain kinds of leaps. "Increase" works well. Very very slow increments.
_________________

The detail of mutations remains unclear. What makes a mutation... a mutation? — creativesoul

Imperfect DNA replication. Which rarely happens. That's why the very very slow increments. I think single mutations aren't noticable. One base pair changes? That's nothing. But, in a million years, they've added up, and something is noticable.

"Leaps" makes me wonder. We think about kinds of things animals do not.
-We understand that we will die. That knowledge is a huge factor in the shape of our lives.
-We understand that the future and past both extend beyond our own lifespan.
-We can imagine things that don't exist, including things that take huge numbers of steps to make.

Are those leaps? What would incremental steps between other species and us mean? Is there a species that can think of what its life will be next month? Another species that can think of next year? Another that can think of a week after its own death? Another that can think of a month after its own death?

Maybe it's not a leap from what animals can think to any of those kinds of things. Maybe each is the smallest step there is, just up to a new ability.

Thinking about one's own thought and belief as a subject matter in and of itself requires an ability to pick one's own thought and belief about this world out of this world to the exclusion of all else. — creativesoul

This world is not simply composed of entities arranged before us, waiting to be picked out. ('m assuming that you mean something like "focussed on" or "attended to" or "distinguished from other things".) But the problem of the sel f is preciselky that there is nothing to pick out in the world as it is presented or rvealed to us. The same applies to our thoughts and beliefs.

Certain sorts of things captured our attention - as a species - long before documented histories began being recorded. Things become meaningful that way. — creativesoul

The same is true of many animals. So what's the problem?

Does the dog recognize the fact that its own belief is no longer warranted, based upon everyday fact? It is no longer true. The falseness is a lack of correspondence. Recognizing one's own false belief - in that situation - requires recognizing that the world does not match one's expectations. — creativesoul

Yes and no. The dog expects their human to arrive. The dog recognizes that their human is not showing up. It is also true that it does not abandon its general expectation that their human comes back on the 5:00 train every day. But those are two separate beliefs, and it is not unreasonable to retain a generalization in the face of a counter-example. It may be unreasonable not to abandon a generalization in the face of many counter-examples. But the single case and the generalization are two separate beliefs.
We may be pursuing different projects. You seem to be pursuing a phenomenology for the dog. I don't think that the rational explanation of actions is limited to identifying phenomenological events. Third person attributions of thoughts and beliefs are affected by first person declarations. But sometimes, the first person version is not available and sometimes first and third person versions conflict and we reject the first person version. So the authority of first person claims is not absolute. (Lying, self-deception.)

I'm not sure about saying that myths and metaphysical speculations are pre-rational. I guess it depends on what you mean by "rational". I think of rationality as "measuring" things against other things and seeing possibilities. — Janus

I was a bit sloppy there. For us, myths have no special status and can be evaluated by standards we have learnt in other ways. For, say, the ancient Greeks their status is different. So the myths, in themselves are neither post- not pre- rational. It's a question of what they are to one group of people or another. (I'm setting aside the point that nowadays, the evaluation of myths is complicated. They are generally recognized as being at least partly true or based on truth.)
One inevitably moves on to wonder what serves the function of myths in our upbringing and education? The answer is, different stories - the Christian or Buddhist stories, the story of philosophy (Socrates) or science (Copernicus or Galileo), stories from our history - Battle of Hastings, Founding Fathers etc.

I agree with you that culturally entrenched beliefs were probably at least by and large unquestioned and in view of that they could be thought of as being in the Wittgensteinian sense "hinge propositions" (although I never liked the word "proposition" in that context and I think 'belief' would probably be better). — Janus

Good point. Myths are composed or propositions, but that's doesn't mean that they are propositions. Belief does seem to be better - so long as we bracket the context of evidence that applies to most run-of-the-mill beliefs.

A sense of self that via memory "unifies" experience. — Janus

It seems to me that there are two related but different ideas of the self. To a great extent, we define ourselves or create who we are by what we (choose to) do. But that sense of self-identity is not always identical with our sense of the identity of others. A further complication is that often our identity is given by the roles that we occupy and these differ in different contexts. (Parent/child, teacher/student, manager/colleague) One can appeal to continuities of one kind or another - stream of consciousness, physical continuity, and so forth - but then there is the question of how important or relevant they are - especially when they conflict. So unity of experience is one factor amongst others.

Are those leaps? What would incremental steps between other species and us mean? Is there a species that can think of what its life will be next month? Another species that can think of next year? Another that can think of a week after its own death? Another that can think of a month after its own death? — Patterner

I've no idea how the story would go. But it won't be easy. The best evidence would be evidence of how creatures behaved. We can likely make some deductions from the physical remains we have, but we will never achieve the ideal of observing them in action. So we may never come to a plausible, evidence-based story of how rationality evolved.

However, The eye is the classic case of something that seemed to escape the possible range of evolutionary development. A major issue is that soft tissue is not often fossilized. But there is at least an outline of what happened. See:- New Scientist - Evolution of the Eye

Thinking about one's own thought and belief as a subject matter in and of itself requires an ability to pick one's own thought and belief about this world out of this world to the exclusion of all else.
— creativesoul
This world is not simply composed of entities arranged before us — Ludwig V

Red herring.

Are you denying that thought and belief is prior to thinking about thought and belief?

Certain sorts of things captured our attention - as a species - long before documented histories began being recorded. Things become meaningful that way.
— creativesoul
The same is true of many animals. So what's the problem? — Ludwig V

Not a problem. A similarity to be properly accounted for.

We may be pursuing different projects. — Ludwig V

Indeed. The topic is clear. It presupposes the existence of at least two distinct kinds of thought. Rational thought and thought that is not.

What do all examples of thought have in common such that having that commonality is what makes them count as being a thought?

However, on the other hand, I thought we were also pursuing the exact same project. Avoiding anthropomorphism. Succeeding in that endeavor requires knowing what sorts of thoughts and belief are of the kind that only humans are capable of forming, having, holding, and/or articulating. It's not using the terms "thought" and "belief" merely to explain the actions of a language less animal or ourselves. There are much better ways to do that.

Thanks for that clarity. Good. It seems we're in agreement. As close or closer than any other participant in this thread. Strong methodological naturalist bent with significant importance placed upon acceptable explanations/criteria being amenable to an evolutionary timeline.

Your versions are fine, although I might insist every experience affects the condition of the subject.

“One’s self can never be an object of experience” works just fine, though, right?
— Mww

I think it does. But it is misleading to say that there's no such thing. It's just that one's self is not an object. — Ludwig V

Agreed. Hence the new terminology in new philosophies, to stand for a thing that is not an object. Or even an object that is not a thing. Or maybe just a new definition for old terminology. Either way, abolishing the concept itself isn’t likely in the near future, anyway, so…..the beat goes on.

Red herring. — creativesoul

If you say so.

Are you denying that thought and belief is prior to thinking about thought and belief? — creativesoul

If being awareness of my belief is thinking about belief, then surely the two are simultaneous, since the one follows logically from the other. But perhaps awareness of something is not thinking about it - even though awareness of something is being conscious of it.

Rational thought and thought that is not. — creativesoul

You are distinguishing between thought that the thinker is able to articulate in language and critically evaluate and thought that the thinker is not able to articulate in language or critically evaluate.
I suspect that most people will have thoughts of both kinds. So we cannot say that people either are or are not rational, just that they are rational in some ways, but likely not in others. That, at least, we could agree on.

What do all examples of thought have in common such that having that commonality is what makes them count as being a thought? — creativesoul

There's no easy way to answer that - especially if you are trying to find commonalities between thoughts that are articulated in language and thoughts that are not. The only place that they overlap is in their role as reasons in rational actions.

There are much better ways to do that. — creativesoul

What do you have in mind? What would be better than the ways we already have?

Avoiding anthropomorphism. — creativesoul

I think we have different ideas about what that means. For me, explaining actions as rational is a language-game - a conceptual structure - whose paradigmatic application is to homo sapiens. It has been extended to various other cases, many of which are contested. What's at issue is how far that game/structure can be applied to animals. You have a point which I think does have something to it, that self-reflection is likely something that animals that lack a language like human language are not equipped to do. The complication is that they clearly have self-awareness and self-control as well as, or even because, they are capable of acting rationally - in my sense, though not in yours.

Your versions are fine, although I might insist every experience affects the condition of the subject. — Mww

I wouldn't want to deny that, since every experience has an "owner" or subject. I just wouldn't put it that way.

Hence the new terminology in new philosophies, to stand for a thing that is not an object. — Mww

I do agree that the thought is almost impossible to formulate clearly without a lot of dancing around explaining. I think this is a case that suits well Wittgenstein's idea that some things cannot be said, only shown.

Imperfect DNA replication. Which rarely happens. That's why the very very slow increments. I think single mutations aren't noticable. One base pair changes? That's nothing. But, in a million years, they've added up, and something is noticable. — Patterner

There is strong evidence that the single mutation which resulted in the human genome containing ARHGAP11B played a particularly major role in humans having the intelligence we do.

ARHGAP11B is a human-specific gene that amplifies basal progenitors, controls neural progenitor proliferation, and contributes to neocortex folding. It is capable of causing neocortex folding in mice. This likely reflects a role for ARHGAP11B in development and evolutionary expansion of the human neocortex, a conclusion consistent with the finding that the gene duplication that created ARHGAP11B occurred on the human lineage after the divergence from the chimpanzee lineage but before the divergence from Neanderthals.[3]

Changes in ARHGAP11B are one of several key genetic factors of recent brain evolution and difference of modern humans to (other) apes and Neanderthals.[6] A 2016 study suggests, one mutation, a "single nucleotide substitution underlies the specific properties of ARHGAP11B that likely contributed to the evolutionary expansion of the human neocortex".[7]

A 2020 study found that when ARHGAP11B was introduced into the primate common marmoset, it increased radial glial cells, upper layer neurons, and brain wrinkles (gyral and sulcus structures), leading to the expansion of the neocortex.[8] This revealed that ARHGAP11B is the gene responsible for the development of the neocortex during human evolution.

[Emphasis added.]

Are you denying that thought and belief is prior to thinking about thought and belief?
— creativesoul
If being awareness of my belief is thinking about belief, then surely the two are simultaneous, since the one follows logically from the other. But perhaps awareness of something is not thinking about it - even though awareness of something is being conscious of it. — Ludwig V

Thinking about X presupposes something to think about, and a creature capable of thinking about X. All creatures capable of thinking about X possess some means/process of doing so. All thinking creatures share the exact same basic process of thinking, regardless of X's value, and regardless of the specific biological machinery possessed by the candidate themselves.

Awareness of something is itself existentially dependent upon thought and belief, for it emerges as a direct result of thinking about whatever that something is(whatever grabs our attention). Exactly what sorts of things we can become aware of, and how completely we can become aware of them is determined strictly by our means/process of thinking as well as the ontological constituency(the basic make-up of exactly what is being thought about). The same is true of all thinking creatures capable of having meaningful experience. I cannot stress how important these considerations are.

All thought, belief, and meaningful experience is meaningful to the creature having the experience.

Steering clear of meaning is to steer clear of exactly what needs to be understood in order to acquire knowledge of meaningful true belief and meaningful false belief that creatures other than humans can have. It is also to steer clear of what needs to be understood in order to understand how humans think, and thus how they thought prior to gaining the ability to think about their own thought and belief as a subject matter in its own right.

I've no issue with saying - roughly speaking - that awareness of X requires thinking about X, however, I do not depend upon any notion of awareness to set out the basic outline of all thought, belief, and meaningful experience(consciousness).

The notion of "awareness" adds unnecessary confusion often enough that I tend to avoid it. It has no explanatory power above and beyond thought, belief, and meaningful experience. Those notions exhaust "awareness" but not the other way around.

We could even say that being aware of something is being conscious of it. I do not depend upon a preconceived notion of what counts as consciousness either, except as a general guideline regarding the target of examination/consideration.

Thought, belief, meaning, coherence(consistency), correspondence(with/to fact), and falsity all emerged onto the world stage long before creatures ever became lucky enough to be able to become aware of them. We are such creatures. I would argue, and do, that we are the only such creatures.

...perhaps awareness of something is not thinking about it - even though awareness of something is being conscious of it. — Ludwig V

What counts as thinking about something?

That is precisely what has yet to have been determined here. It is only after that is established can we fill "something" in with "one's own belief" and make sense of metacognition.

In order to know what sorts of things some candidate or another is capable of thinking about(including ourselves), we must know how they think about the world, as well as how that process enables or excludes them from being able to think about the "it" under consideration.

All thinking creatures do so by the very same basic process. Regardless of the complexity of the biological machinery and/or abstraction level of the thinking, all thinking creatures do so solely by virtue of drawing correlations between different things. There are no examples to the contrary. I'll gladly reassess the certainty I maintain regarding the justificatory strength of my position should anyone, anywhere, anytime present a black swan.

All thinking about X requires isolating X by virtue of drawing distinctions between X and all else. It requires the creature directly perceive X 'as a thing', different from other things. If those distinctions require common language use(shared meaning), then only language users can think about such things. Truth and falsity exist prior to our awareness of them. Language less creatures can form, have, and/or hold true and false belief(expectations are based upon them). However, they cannot be aware that their own thought and belief are true or false, for they do not have what it takes. Our own awareness of that required metacognition. Metacognition requires language use replete with meaningful utterances to stand in proxy for our past beliefs, regardless of whether or not they are true/false.

This world is not simply composed of entities arranged before us, waiting to be picked out — Ludwig V

The irony. "Waiting to be picked out" is anthropomorphism. That's a very odd thing to say. I didn't, nor would I be willing to assent to that, as it's written.

I would say that the world was composed of all sorts of things that existed in their entirety prior to the emergence of humans. Meaningful experience of non human creatures was one such thing.

Do you disagree?



Those prehistorical things existed in their entirety prior to our ever having acquired knowledge of their existence, hence prior to our even being able to become aware of them. There are other things that existed in their entirety prior to our naming and descriptive practices, but not prior to humans.

Meaningful experience of humans with limited language capacity was one such thing.

Do you disagree?



Earlier you mentioned the complexity involved in talking about thinking. I would concur, without hesitation. Methodological approach is pivotal. Crucial.

Criteria matter.

What counts as thought, on your view?

Rational thought and thought that is not.
— creativesoul
You are distinguishing between thought that the thinker is able to articulate in language and critically evaluate and thought that the thinker is not able to articulate in language or critically evaluate. — Ludwig V

Well, I may draw and maintain such distinctions. However, I was not doing that when using the terms "rational thought and thought that is not". Perhaps you missed my earlier clarification regarding the sense of those terms when I use them?

Rational thought/belief is consistent with and/or follows from past thought/belief. Non rational is not and does not. I'm not using them as a means of value assessment/judgment. What counts as being "rational" is secondary.

What counts as thought is primary.

"Greater" abilities??? I'm not sure what that means
— creativesoul
Some animals eat what they can find.
Some animals can use a tool, if they find a good one, to help them get food.
Some animals can make a tool to help them get food.
Some animals can use tools and plan a couple steps ahead to get food.

Seems like increasing abilities to me. — Patterner

Oh yeah. I meant to comment on this method. Perfectly performed. Pick out simple true statements. Verifiable. Falsifiable. Build upon and with them.

Kudos.

Tool use, I think it's safe to say, facilitated greater abilities; new correlations; new coordination of preexisting biological machinery; increased the complexity of meaningful experience; etc. I would say that tool use also could have influenced/effected slowly occurring physical effects within the central nervous system of the users. Biological structural changes over time with enough mutation to result in newer more specialized structures, which in turn, facilitated more complex thinking processes and or the ability to vocalize wants and desires.

The dog expects their human to arrive. The dog recognizes that their human is not showing up. It is also true that it does not abandon its general expectation that their human comes back on the 5:00 train every day. But those are two separate beliefs... — Ludwig V

Okay, this is where things could get interesting very quickly.

The claim is that the dog has two separate beliefs. What exactly constitutes being two separate beliefs of that particular dog? Keep in mind that the dog's beliefs must be meaningful to the dog.