Yes, I agree. For me, the main point is that it is a matter of values and not a matter of fact. In that case, it becomes a question of whether humans should be considered animals rather than whether they are or aren't. — T Clark

Yes, for the purposes of biology, h. sapiens is just another species. But it would be absurd to apply economic theory to a hive of bees or termintes. But it is not a question is once-for-all; it is pragmatic. For example, people need food and shelter, just the same as their animals; they suffer and die from diseases, just the same as their animals. But it would be absurd to grant animals the right to vote; that belongs to people. Again, in the context of athletics, working out how best to throw a discus requires regarding the body as a machine; for many medical purposes the heart is just a pump. And so on.

Why are you going on out on a plausibility limb to defend a hypocrisy that can't be sanctioned or punished at this late date? It served his purpose, so that was the rational path. — Vera Mont

Well, if you said that Galileo was a hypocrite, I would agree on the basis that it was, technically, but justified on the basis that being tortured or burnt at the stake was an unreasonable price to pay for following a purely academic line of research and so lying was a rational way to get out of his situation, even though, if you are a Kantian, lying is always wrong. Why? Because he explicitly contradicted himself. Descartes' case is much less clear. I'm just calling it as I see it.

I was skeptical, too. But it's what he claimed as the object of the exercise: get to the truth by doubting everything he'd ever been taught or believed. (Except that.) — Vera Mont

There's a genuine argument against radical scepticism, that no-one can seriously doubt that he is now sitting beside a stove, which will burn one if one isn't careful. Descartes isn't quite in that bracket because he frames his doubt as "merely" theoretical.

Was he unable to see the dog's responses as being like his own, or he did he choose to ignore the similarity because it wasn't convenient? — Vera Mont

There's not way of knowing, and consequently no evidence that it was just a matter of convenience.

It was a moral issue in Descartes' time. — Vera Mont

Cudworth thought (as did More) that Descartes’ view of animals as mindless machines was implausible.

I had heard of Cudworth. But I didn't know he crossed swords with Descartes. However, his critique is milder than yours, in my book.
I would expect, however that Cudworth did not think that animals had souls and did think that because they did not, they were of less or no moral value and consequently eating them was perfectly OK.

I was referring to a more modest capacity—the ability to articulate that we can use words and construct sentences. I wasn't claiming that we can articulate in any comprehensive sense how it is that we are able to do that. — Janus

Well, yes. Animals cannot articulate anything in that way. But that takes us back to the question what the significance is of the various species-unique abilities we can learn - given that every species is unique in some way.

I agree but he is taking his time drawing out this side here first. And my recollection of TLP is shoddy but I was trying to draw the parallel of his, as you say Atomism there, and the “queer”-ness of the mechanism here. — Antony Nickles

I don't quite understand the parallel. But perhaps it's better if I just wait and see how things develop. As you say, it's at a very early stage.

In any case, listing differences between us and other animals does not necessarily bear on whether we are animals. Animals differ widely between each other too. Corals are animals and so are apes. The argument could be made that there are more and more striking differences between apes and corals than between us and apes and yet both are indisputably animals. — Baden

That's exactly right. So the question becomes why it matters, one way or the other. One obvious candidate is the belief in some version of the immortal soul. Another is some version of the idea that the animal world, like the mineral one, is just there for us to exploit or, more politely, to adapt to our values and needs.

It's not a metaphysical claim, it's a linguistic one. We can define an animal as anything we want. It's a question of values - some people want to separate humans from animals for social, religious, or spiritual reasons. There is no scientific reason to do so. — T Clark

Well, there couldn't be a scientific reason for a definition that was made only for social, religious or spiritual reasons. But there might be good social, religious or spiritual reasons for some definitions. It all depends on what one considers a good reason to be - and, as you say, that comes down to a question of values.
What puzzles me most is why there is no recognition here that a given organism always falls under several classifications. In biology, there are species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, and domain. The method of classification of animals and plants (called cladistics) is according to the proportion of measurable or like characteristics that they have in common. The agenda behind this (or part of it) is that it is assumed that the higher the proportion of characteristics that two organisms share, the more recently they both came from a common ancestor.

I suppose if some one said that human beings are machines, they might be taken to say that human beings are just machines. But that's a misunderstanding. We can think of ourselves as machines for certain purposes in certain contexts, and as animals for other purposes in other contexts, and as people, not to mention as male/female, adult/child and so on. So the substantive question becomes when it is useful or appropriate to think of human beings as animals and when is it not useful or inappropriate to think of them as something else.

I would tend to agree with Philip Cary that a defining feature of the ancient/medieval and modern splits is:
- Modern man worries about becoming a machine.
-Ancient/medieval man worries about degenerating into a brute. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, that seems right. But nothing is that simple. There is also the comfortable reflection that, thank God, we are not either.

But what actually settles the issue in this case are the criteria you asked for, not the flower itself. — Manuel

But I asked you to bring me the flower itself. The criteria are only a means to an end.

If the flower I give you does not satisfy the conditions you have, then it does not match what you have in mind. The problem is not in the object, but our interpretation of it. — Manuel

"Have in mind" is a problematic phrase in this context. Let's say "it is not what you asked me to bring you." The blue flower that I bring you is not a problem in itself. But there is a problem with it in the context of your request to me. It's true that my interpretation of your request is a misinterpretation. Is that what you mean?

Yes, but the position he is sketching out is like the counter-voice of the interlocutor in the PI. It is also his own experience from the Tractatus (claiming all “state of affairs” are objects Tract 4.2211). — Antony Nickles

Yes, that's why I'm suggesting that scepticism/certainty is not the only issue in play in this text. BTW, I'm a bit puzzled by "all states of affairs" are objects. I thought one of the main planks of the TLP was that the world is all that is the case - facts, states of affairs - and not objects. It follows from the idea that the atoms are propositions, since a word only has meaning in the context of a sentence.

Yes, Descartes thought his way through to radical skepticism, but what we are dealing with here is the first part, which is wanting certainty (thinking of the whole world as objects we should be able to “see”, or know, as we do trees, etc.), which is the desire that starts the spinning. — Antony Nickles

OK. One can see it that way. But I don't see a lot in the text that suggests that this was explicitly on W's agenda here. Whereas we know that at this time he had found his way out of the TLP and was developing his next steps.

a lot gets added onto it when we want that to be an object, of certainty, of knowledge, that a “queer mechanism” “associates”—in terms of necessarily equates—it to the world; that there is a mechanism in us that accomplishes that. — Antony Nickles

But he doesn't want to deny that "red" is associated with red things in the world. What he's after is that the meaning is the use. "But if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we should have to say that it was its use." (p. 4)

The point is that it is not entirely clear to me what the term "mental image" encapsulates. I don't know if it includes solely pictorial stuff, or if it includes semantic terms as well. I suspect it does play a role. — Manuel

For me "mental image" is just pictorial stuff. The semantic stuff is not inherent in the image, but is the use we make of it. I don't think he denies that there are such things or that we might make use of them. But he does insist that this is only one way that we might find the red flower.

It's hard to parse out, there is a lot of stuff going on when we speak about a "red flower", which includes not only the words, but the word order, any mental associations we may specifically have, assuming that what is asked for is a "real red flower" as opposed to a "plastic red flower", if you don't know the language and someone asks you for a red flower, you could end up buying a brand that is spelled "red flower", and on and on. — Manuel

I'm sorry, I don't see your point. Of course there are a lot of assumptions and background conditions. Of course, things go wrong sometimes. The point is that whatever is in my mind can't prevent those. More than that, there seems to be no guarantee that I have the right mental image or that I do not misinterpret the mental image that I do have. Whatever is going on in my mind, the test is whether I get it right and come up with the red flower I was asked for - and that is not settled in my mind.

In short, there is a lot going on, and it is not evident to me that mental images don't play an important role. Also, what "mental images" specifically covers can be subtle. — Manuel

Does that mean that it is evident to you that mental images do play an important role? What might that be?

I say this because it's just as queer to think that we need mental content as to say that we don't need it, — Manuel

That's true. It's a common problem with philosophical ideas, because, at least in logical positivism they are (supposed to be) logically analytic, which means to assert or deny them is either trivial or nonsense. But I don't think that's what Wittgenstein is after here. It's not whether we have or don't have something going on in our minds when we pick a flower or obey an order. He's pointing out that whatever is in our minds, it can't do what philosophers have supposed it does. There's a moment of arm-waving and hocus-pocus when we are told that a mental image tells us which flowers are red or an internal map that we follow when we are going to the shops. Whether the image is mental or physical, it has to be read - interpreted. That's his target.

I take it that the desire for wanting necessity causes us to reach for an explanation that has certainty, like: in the case of ‘seeing an object’. What I think we miss is that: in order to have an answer that is necessary, certain, we have to create a particular kind of answer. — Antony Nickles

I don't disagree with you. But isn't there more to all this than radical certainty? For example, the insistence that it is the system that gives meaning to the word implies moving away from atomism (as in the Tractatus) towards a kind of holism or contextualism. Again, his claim that meaning is use directs us away from the pursuit of an abstract system in an abstract heaven back toward our everyday rule-governed behaviour.

I do hate what he and his cohort did to our relationship with nature and other species, the two hundred years of suffering they inflicted on helpless animals — Vera Mont

That's fair enough. I actually agree about the suffering. It's just that I doubt that he and his colleagues made much practical difference. It's not as if animal welfare has ever been a moral issue before our time.

I was referring to his very sensible use of God to avoid confrontation with the Inquisition. — Vera Mont

That's a question of his motivation. There's a passage in the Discourse on Method where he says that while he is subjecting his beliefs to methodical doubt, he sticks to conventional views. That can certainly be read as pragmatic rather than sincere.

He just pretended to rediscover it after ridding himself of all learned beliefs — Vera Mont

It would prefer "after supposedly ridding himself of all learned beliefs". It is hard to believe he hadn't read Aquinas' Five Ways and it wouldn't be surprising if he did a bit of cherry-picking through the rubbish.

So we might agree that other animals don't have a symbolic language in the sense that the language has the kind of syntactic and semantic properties that human verbal language has. — jkop

I see our language capability as a hyper-development of abilities that (all? most?) animals have to a greater or less extent. Other species have hyper-developed other abilities, such as the hyper-development of echo-location in bats and dolphins or vision in hawks and other predator birds.

Descartes God was a creative invention, just like his clockwork world. It's easy to play back-and-dorth with fiction; take no principles at all. — Vera Mont

H'm. You seem to really have it in for Descartes. He is iconic and takes a lot of stick. But he wasn't the one who invented God, or even the argument he used to argue for the reality of that God. True, he contributed massively to the clockwork world, there were many others involved as well. But still, you're not wrong.

I think it is plausible to think that we and the other animals may have an instinct to copy behavior. So some behaviors may be a combination of instinctive and learned. Learned not in the sense of deliberately taught but in the sense of acquired by mimicry. — Janus

That's perfectly true and I think that mimicry is more important to our learning that is generally recognized. People seem to prefer to emphasis association. I don't know why. Aristotle knew better, of course, and I think he may be alone amongst the canonical philosophers in that.

I think part of what I would count as the possession of symbolic language consists in the ability to explicitly understand that such and such a sound, gesture or mark conventionally stands for whatever it symbolizes. — Janus

There's a bit of a problem with that. Articulating our understanding of how to use words and construct sentences is much more difficult than it seems. For the most part, mostly our use of language is underpinned by skills that we do not, and often cannot, articulate.

After Galileo had his little confrontation with the good fathers - and quite rationally stood down from his heretical belief in the Earth moving around the sun - every thinker in Europe had some difficult moments rethinking their strategy. So Descartes has his big truth-seeking exercise: purges his mind of all beliefs, everything he's ever been taught, delves way down in there for one incontrovertible fact and comes up with "I exist" OK... "But wait, here's another incontrovertible truth: God. Didn't learn about God; it wasn't a belief: I just happened to find Him in here at the bottom of my completely empty mind. And now, I shall proceed to unfold my theory of a mechanistic universe, only God's winding all the clockwork animals. Oh, and people are a mechanistic body with a completely independent, immaterial soul.
Are you convinced of his sincerity? — Vera Mont

Oddly enough, I am convinced of Descartes' sincerity. It is Galileo who gets himself into a morally complicated situation. (I mean that he could be accused of hypocrisy, but I think he was (rationally and morally) justified in what he did.)

Galileo, as you say, recanted. The inquisitors forbade him from teaching or even discussing his heretical theory. However, the story goes that, as he left the Vatican, he paused on the steps and said (to himself) "Even so, it moves". If he had said that in the hearing of the inquisitors, he would thereby have recanted his recantation. But he kept that remark to himself, thus leading the inquisitors to believe that he had rejected the theory that he actually believed - the essence of hypocrisy. But I agree with you about the need to survive as best we can, so I have no criticism of him.

Descartes' position is also complicated, but much less black-and-white than Galileo's. Of course, I don't question the repressive regime that all these guys lived under, and his position is not entirely clear; I don't deny that he may have been influenced by it. But the key point is that his scepticism is a thought-experiment. He presents his story in the Meditations as if he is really believing the sceptical conclusions. But his introduction makes it clear that he doesn't, and the reader knows perfectly well that he is going to go on and rescue the situation. The genius of the Meditations is that it is a story with a plot exactly like every adventure (thriller) story - disaster looms and seems inevitable, but our hero risks everything in order to dash in and rescue the situation. There are arguments, to be sure, but the suspense of the plot does the real work of persuasion. True, the world will seem different, but we are safe and that's the important thing. T.S. Eliot says it well - after all our wanderings we will come back home "and know the place for the first time"; there may even be toast and honey for tea. It is very odd that Descartes and Hume are both classified as sceptical philosophers, when actually, they are nothing of the kind.

The difference between the two is that Galileo pretended to accept that his theory was an erroneous hypothesis when he believed that it was a true account and while Descartes never pretended that his scepticism was more than a possibility; he was exploring it n order to refute it.

You can't be moral when you're dead - so you compromise to stay alive. That's rational. The same person who made that compromise might still be honest with his friends, faithful to his wife, accurate in his court testimony, prompt in the payment of his debts and play a clean game of billiards.
Why insist that anyone be pure in both thinking and probity? That's just not human. The insides of our heads are never swept clean like Descartes imagined that one time. — Vera Mont

Yes, I agree with you. There's a kind of morality that makes black-and-white judgements and refuses to acknowledge complexity and ambiguity. Everyone has to duck and cover in order to get along. But without that society could not function. Keeping the peace and the show on the road are practically and morally important goals both for individuals and for the collective.

You seem to keep going around circle of deviation — Corvus

I agree. I don't even understand what you mean by a circle of deviation. I was indeed deviating in the sense that I was trying to break out of your circle of repetition. Best wishes to you as well.

It is a very peculiar way of putting down your own definition on someone else's writing, making out as if it was written by someone else. — Corvus

Like a Amazon delivery van delivers what you have ordered from Amazon? I am not sure if that was what you meant. Hope not. You find out truth or falsity on something using reason. — Corvus

No, not like that at all. Your way of putting it is better.

Rationality is a method to finding truth, but rationality itself is not truth. — Corvus

Checking out you knew or not, that is the work of reason. Reason itself is not truth. — Corvus

But then, I just don't understand what you mean by these comments. Reason and truth are not the same thing. But they are connected. You seem to recognize that, but then deny it. I must be missing something.

I don't believe there such a thing as a great big all-encompassing Truth to which you can apply rational thought. You can think quite a lot about how to talk about Truth, but you can't comprehend it with reason; the Truth is too abstract to capture with anything but faith. (Not saying definitively that It isn't 'out there'; only that I can't believe in it.) — Vera Mont

Oh, I agree with you entirely about Truth. But I do think there are truths. (After that, it all gets complicated.)

You can only judge according to your own values. — Vera Mont

That's true. But I would only make judgement taking into account the situation or context of the action - especially when it is very different from my own. BTW, I've heard people commenting on Descartes' personal moral stance before, but I've never quite understood what the problem is.

A functioning democracy depends on education for that purpose. — Athena

Yes. Somehow, that important truth has got lost in public discussion in these days .

Welfare subsidizes Industry by providing the assistance low wagers need. Only we have very little understanding of this so we are not managing our reality well. — Athena

It is very curious that industry can be relied on to adopt the narrowest point of view. It's not as if industry doesn't end up footing the bill for their starvation wages. It doesn't seem to occur to them that they might have to pay smaller taxes if only they paid a decent wage and make bigger profits because they would have a larger market for their goods.

I'm not! Quite the reverse: I'm saying that those who didn't stick their necks out for what we consider "the truth" today were acting rationally. So are those who go along to get along now. — Vera Mont

I'm sorry I misunderstood you.

a career priest [Augustine] might propound Christian/Platonic values as a rational way to support the status quo. — Vera Mont

I understood that as saying that Augustine might propound Christian/Platonic values in order to support the status quo - which is true. But then he would be guilty of hypocrisy. I wanted to point out that it is also possible that he might propound those values because he believed in Christianity and Platonism, whether or not they supported the status quo.

There are many cases when it is very hard to assess people. Heidegger (support for Nazism) and Hegel (support for the Prussian monarchy) are particularly difficult cases. Descartes has also been suspected, maybe because of his explicit policy of accepting orthodox morality while he is applying his methodology of doubt. I'm just saying that I don't think we should rush to judgement. But I see now that you were not rushing to judgement and I was. So I apologize.

Rational thought is less often used in the service of Truth than in achieving goals. — Vera Mont

I'm not quite sure what you are saying here. Practical reason is inherently morally ambiguous; a bad actor can be entirely rational. It is only theoretical reason that is in the service of truth.

But there have always been rebels who spoke out against the wrongs in their society — Vera Mont

Quite so. But there it can be very hard to tell which of them has really put their finger on an actual wrong, as opposed to a perceived wrong.

The captives felt it was wrong to be captured, but when they had the chance, they would do the same to an enemy. — Vera Mont

That's certainly an acid test.

Sadly, they were. There are still many people like that. Slavery and genocide are still with us. — Patterner

You are right about slavery and genocide. The (rather few) days when we could all be confident in the eventual triumph of western liberal values are long gone. It's all been a big let down.
But one cannot aspire to moral standards unless they can be articulated in the world that one lives in and I don't think it is appropriate to apply the standards of other societies to lives lived in that way. For example, the first traces in history of human rights did not appear until the fifth century BCE - in Persia. It took a long time before the idea was articulated in the late Roman Empire and even longer before Thomas Paine was able to articulate them with some clarity in the 18th century CE.
All that can be expected or required of us is to get along as well as we can in the world that we know, with all its many imperfections. That's the only standard that it is reasonable to apply. The virtues of saints and heroes are supererogatory - beyond what is required or expected. Certainly, they are to be admired, but it is not necessary to imitate them in order to live a good life.

Yes, it is an inherent mental capability — Vera Mont

Yes, that's the idea that the psychologists are pursuing. But the evidence for the existence of such a mental capacity is thin, to say the least.
IQ tests were supposed to be such that one could not benefit from practising. But it turns out that you can, although it is also true that there is a limit to how much one can improve. It also turns out that IQ questions are culturally biased and it is very difficult to construct questions that are not biased in that way.

Everything that we learn to do is the result of our genes and our environment working together; one simply cannot disentangle one from the other.

Rational thought is less often used in the service of Truth than in achieving goals. — Vera Mont

Yes, that's true. But I don't think we should be too hard on people who go along with the conventional views in society. It's perfectly possible to accept orthodoxy, not because it is easier, but because it seems to you to be true or even because you can't conceive of an alternative. It took thousands of years for us to develop the idea that there is something wrong with slavery and racism, and it seems absurd to think that all those people were morally deficient in some way.

I'm motivated by the reflection that much of what we believe and take for granted is likely to turn out to be false, or at least to be replaced by some other orthodoxy by our children or children's children. So I think I'm living in a glass house and don't want to start throwing stones.

Your knowledge on something can be rational, but still be wrong. — Corvus

It is true that one can believe something on rational grounds, and be wrong. But if you are wrong, you didn't know it. Knowledge cannot be wrong. If someone believes that it will rain on Tuesday, and it doesn't, they didn't know that it will rain on Tuesday.

You have modified the content of my post with your own writing. That is not what I wrote in my post on what intelligence means. It would help clarifying the points if you could go over what intelligence means, and what reasoning means in general terms, and think about the difference between the two. — Corvus

You seem to be misunderstanding me. I didn't modify your post at all. I simply presented to you my own definition of intelligence, which is different from yours.

Truth emerges when your belief or knowledge is examined and verified by reason. Reason itself cannot deliver truth as you claim. — Corvus

If reason cannot deliver truth, then it cannot verity my belief or knowledge.

We were not talking about truth, and truth as a property of belief or knowledge has nothing to do with rational thinking. Your knowledge on something can be rational, but still be wrong. — Corvus

Clearly, we have different concepts of rationality. If rationality has nothing to do with truth, what is the point of it? How does it differ from reading tea leaves of consulting an astrologer?

There is certainly a problem about rational justification if one allows that someone can be justified in believing something and be wrong; it becomes even more confusing if you allow that someone can know something and be wrong. But the answer is to find a solution.

For that, you need to verify your knowledge or beliefs if they are not from deductive reasoning. — Corvus

Doesn't "verify" mean something like to demonstrate the truth or accuracy of something, as by the presentation of evidence? In that case, we must be talking about truth. Though you are right that it is possible to believe something on rational grounds and be wrong.

Intelligence means knowing something, or being able to do something in coherent way. It is not same as The ability to acquire, understand, and use knowledgesomething, which are what rational thinking does. — Corvus

I thought it was something like the ability to acquire, understand, and use knowledge. That would make it something different from knowledge but more about how to acquire knowledge.

Any reasonable person would want his / her beliefs, knowledge, actions or perceptions to be rational than irrational. No one wants to have beliefs, knowledge, actions or perceptions which are irrational by human nature. That is why it does matter for your beliefs, actions, knowledge or perceptions to be rational. — Corvus

Yes, that's a good way to answer the question. "Any reasonable person..." By definition, nobody could be reasonable unless they preferred being rational to being irrational. Which means that, as a definition, what you say is circular. But that's perfectly OK in this case.
The usual answer is that rationality is our way to truth (or justification in the case of actions). That's circular as well, since truth is what rationality delivers.
Rationality is what delivers the truth, so there can be no question whether rationality delivers truth. It would be like trying to measure the standard metre in Paris in order to find out whether it is a metre long.
What you end up with is that rationality provides the justification for everything else and therefore has no rational justification.

Religious beliefs always have been from the blind faith rather than anything to do with being rational or irrational. — Corvus

H'm that's a bit quick. What about people like Aquinas or Descartes who believed that they had rational arguments for belief in God? That's quite different from belief from blind faith. True, most people (but not all) believe their arguments were not valid. But they certainly weren't blind faith.
There are theologians who take as their starting-point the "presupposition" that the Bible is the word of God. It has something of the status of an axiom. Something posited as true, but not capable of being proved or disproved. Their theology follows by rational process. Sometimes rational thinking has irrational elements.

Your problem seem to be confusion between intelligence and knowledge with reasoning and being rational. — Corvus

My problem is that I've never been able to grasp a clear meaning for the term "intelligence". So I mostly ignore it, especially in philosophy.

You could respond instinctively to the gooses hissing which I would say would be a non-symbolically mediated understanding of it. Discursive knowledge would seem to be always in symbolic form I guess. — Janus

Well, given the definition that we have of what a symbol is, any knowledge that is discursive would be in human-style language, so it follows that it would be in symbolic form.
But I like the idea of a non-symbolically mediated understanding it, though I'm taking that as what is called "tacit" knowledge. But then, we have to acknowledge that human beings are also capable of that same form of understanding.

"Instinctively" is a bit of a trap. Strictly speaking, instinctive behaviour is a set behaviour pattern that is not learned, but inherited. It is not, therefore, based on any process of learning or reasoning. It is capable of rational justification at the level of evolution as contributing to the ability of the creature to sruvive and reproduce. Most, if not all, behaviour, of sentient creatures is a combination of instinct, learning and response to the relevant context. Spiders do not learn to weave webs, but they weave them in a context and adapt the pattern to suit. Newly-born foals struggle to their feet and look for milk responding to and managin in the actual context they are in.

Thinking about this, there's no doubt that there are instinctive elements in our reading of body language - very small babies respond to smiling faces. But they can recognize mother at a very early stage, which must be learnt. Again, the behaviour of lobsters in cages when they are frightened is not difficult to recognize. But we do have to learn much body language in order to read it and it does not follow from the fact that we can read human body language that we can read the body language of other creatures without learning. But small children do have to be taught to recognize the body language of dogs.

Would that be an appropriate response? You might instinctively take it as a friendly greeting, or as just something geese do with no meaning.
In fact, it's a simple enough communication, usually accompanied by threatening stance and body language. — Vera Mont

Yes. It is possible, of course, that the unlearned response of the goose to a threat is recognizable by analogy with the threatening behaviour of other creatures and is recognized on that basis. No doubt those unlearned responses have evolved to work across species. A threat that was only recognized by other geese would be much less useful that one that can be recognized by other species.

All true. So why the symbol question? I've seen it bandied about and argued over, but I can't figure out the significance of it. — Vera Mont

The idea is that use of symbols is a distinctively human capacity - and the basis of our kind of language. If you look into what philosophers have said about it, there's a great deal of confusion about it. Peirce, for example, treats both what we call signs as distinct from symbols in the same class and calls that class "symbols". Cassirer doesn't seem to discuss what we are calling signs at all, though he does distinguish between symbolic meaning and "expressive meaning". This is not territory that I'm familiar with. I'm just illustrating how messy the philosophy of this topic is.
(Signs are here used to mean "Smoke means (is a sign of) fire" or "Clouds mean (are a sign of) rain" - causal connections. Not everyone draws the same distinction.)

It's just the distinction between symbolic and non-symbolic signs. The former denote whatever they do by convention. As far as we know only humans possess symbolic language. Again though I want to stress that I don't see that fact as a justification for human exceptionalism. — Janus

I agree. Discursive knowledge needs to be seen as a species-specific capacity alongside the species-specific capacity of bats and dolphins to find their way by echo-location, not as a radical distinction between humans and other species.

If a person is going to work for low wages because the economy requires people who work for no pay or low wages, what is that person's reward for putting the health of the national economy first? Should we close these people out of society's benefits because they can not pay for those benefits, or do we need planning, cooperation, utilities and a big "thank you" as opposed to a snide "oh, that is welfare"? — Athena

Well, I would say that an economy that requires people to work for wages that cannot sustain a decent life is broken. But that requirement is so common that I suspect I'm just being idealistic. Still, it seems inhumane and immoral not to see those jobs as problematic.

If only we could get away from the idea that welfare is charity! In a broken economy, it may be true. But it just reinforces exploitation. Welfare is not charity. It is insurance - pooling risks that would be catastrophic for individuals so that they can be dealt with or at least ameliorated. Life insurance is not charity, but common sense. Of course, some people prefer to stick to the short-term and drive their cars. That's why car insurance is a legal requirement. But, rationally speaking, insurance makes sense and is not charity. More than that, rationally speaking again, there are some risks that are so large that only the state can take them on.

But the reason for the introduction of the very first state welfare system (in Prussia in the late 19th century) was neither charitable nor an insurance policy. It was a question of riot control by a rigidly conservative and aristocratic chancellor - Bismarck. There are articles about it in, for example, Wikipedia.

Welfare is enlightened and rational self-interest, not charity.

Firstly, using a lot (random selection) has a problem: if a small number of people who received the offer accepted to participate in this group, these people are not a representative sample, and their opinions do not represent the opinions of the whole population. — Linkey

My impression is that the selection is random, but weighted so that the assembly overall is representative of the population. Men/women. Old/young. Class. and so on, as long as you wish.

The aim is not to represent the existing opinions of the whole population, but to enable the members to work out their own views and negotiate with others who disagree. (Negotiation with other points of view is difficult to impossible in the public forum). The result is expected to be a view that is likely to be at least acceptable to as much of the population as possible.

To solve this problem, sufficient sums of money must be offered to these people for participating in these groups. — Linkey

Participation is time-consuming. I don't know whether paying people for work-time lost is practiced, but it obviously could be.

My point was only that something quite like your suggestion is practiced already, and is proving useful - at least to policy-makers.

You want to take away from citizens even that illusion of control? — Vera Mont

I agree with you. I don't think anyone is suggesting that citizens' assemblies like these should acquire any legislative powers. Their effect is only on the people developing policy. But the reform of abortion in Ireland is a good example of how influential they can be.

The constitutional and legislative provisions were discussed at a Citizens' Assembly in 2016–17, and at an Oireachtas committee in 2017, both of which recommended substantial reform and framed the debate of the referendum in May 2018.[5] — Wikipedia - Abortion in the Republic of Ireland

Is there any way for ordinary people to dispossess the rich of their wealth? Sure -- some sort of revolution. This has happened a few times. Societies operated for the convenience of wealthy people, however, discourage revolutionary thinking. It generally gets nipped in the bud, so to speak. — BC

I'm afraid there's always a ruling class, if only because not everybody is willing to deal with the (often very boring) business of government. Revolutions just install a new ruling class. The best you can hope for is a ruling class that is sufficiently intelligent to realize that keeping the people reasonably happy is in their self-interest. The best way to deal with them is to have a way of getting rid of them when they become intolerable or incompetent (as Popper so wisely pointed out). That's the single greatest advantage of democracy.

Some of your questions are trivial. Concerning the necessity to gather information before voting, I have an idea of using a lot: a group of 200 random people would be chosen, the state will give them the money for studiing the subject, and possbly they will vote instead of the whole population. This is one implementation of the "lottocracy", for me there are better ones, but they are more difficult for explaining. — Linkey

This sounds very like what I know as citizens' assemblies. They seem to be very helpful in formulating policy. But I don't think that anyone sees them as a possible legislative bodies. For more detail, see, for example, On Citizens' assemblies

Right, I think conventionality is the key difference between signs which count as symbols and those which do not. — Janus

So when the goose hisses at me that is a sign (expression) of anger or hostility, which means that I do well to behave cautiously, yet I can only articulate what the sign means by using symbols. Obviously, then, the way I understand what the goose's hiss means, is by means of symbols, which the goose cannot use. Yet the difference in meaning between the two is hard to discern.
Does that make sense? I'm not sure.

Asking for grounds or justification for your belief, knowledge, actions and perception is not Formal Logic. It is just a rational thinking process for finding out if your beliefs, knowledge, actions or perceptions were rational or irrational. — Corvus

Why does it matter whether our beliefs, knowledge, actions or perceptions were rational or irrational? Is it because that is how we know that they are true - or, in the case of actions, justified?
So it seems that even if I believe my perceptions without any grounds, I can justify them - that is, provide reasons (grounds) for believing them - after I come to believe them.

There's a lot packed in to your comments of the last few days. Thanks. I've had to be selective in what I reply to. I hope I've identified the best places to focus.

My issue with the phrase "what's going on in the heads" is that it presupposes a false equivalence. — creativesoul

Do you mean false equivalence between human thinking and animal thinking? I was using the phrase to refer to what is often described as the phenomenology of thinking. Perhaps most helpful would be to talk about what people will report as their thinking.

Meaningful thought emerged long before naming and describing practices. — creativesoul

Quite so. But I don't think there's any reason to suppose that meaningful thought without name or describing has been banished from human life. The complication is that we often want to talk about, or at least express such thoughts or experiences, and then we often find ourselves struck dumb or confused.

There are some things at work here, beneath all our discourse/ conversation about what counts as rational thought/minds. — creativesoul

Yes, indeed. If we could identify what they are, we might make a leap forward in our understanding of what's going onin philosophical discussion of that topic. The question about animals is particularly useful because it is a specific application of those concepts in a particular context where we find it difficult to be sure how to apply them. Our paradigm of rational thinking is articulate thinking independent of action. But that depends on our language, and animals do not have that kind of language. So we disagree about how to apply them.

One of my difficulties here is that there is an almost irresistible temptation to think that what is at stake is a process that is independent of the action - a process that is referred to by "thinking" or "reasoning". I happen to have recently read Lee Braver's "Groundless Grounds". In that book, he articulates an idea of rational reconstruction as a way of coming to understand what is happening when we attribute the application of reason where there does not appear to be any such process involved. He doesn't mention animals, but I think that it is also a good way to understand what is going on when we attribute reason to animals.

One way of explaining this is by means of an analogy. Aristotle developed the concept of the practical syllogism. He doesn't claim that When I eat my breakfast, I must have said to myself "This is food. Food is good for me. I should eat this." (Partly because he recognizes that that process doesn't necessarily result in action.) What he is doing here is exactly parallel to what he does when he formulates the idea of the theoretical syllogism - "All humans are mortal. Socrates is a human. Socrates is mortal." It is a formulation that helps us analyze and understand the actual ways that humans think. Theoretical and practical syllogisms are rational reconstructions of thinking, not empirical descriptions.

Sorry. Premature posting. Fat thumbs.

that an abstract object is abstract on account of the fact that it refers to no particular thing but ranges over a whole class of particulars thus qualifying it as a generalization. — Janus

You are quite right that that classes are abstract objects and that they range over particulars. But it doesn't follow that all abstract objects are classes.

I see the distinction between abstract objects as particulars and generalizations as a valid one. — Janus

Well, we can agree on that, though we may find complications if we looked more closely at the detail.

But it has not been converted by a linguistic culture into a symbol that stands by convention as signifying anger hostility or danger. — Janus

You are quite right, particularly about the hissing being an expression. The difference between that and a symbol would take some teasing out but set that aside. The lack of a convention does suggest that it is not. When we say that the goose is expressing anger and hostility, we are recognizing (and telling others) that one should expect a defensive reaction if you behave in certain ways. Recognizing that pattern of behaviour is recognising the meaning of the hiss. Our interpretation of, and talk about, the hiss is our application of our description.

Suggesting formal logic as your standard of rationality sounded very odd even as a conditional comment. — Corvus

You surprise me. I thought that was what you were suggesting. It's good to know that I was wrong.

That would mean children born deaf can think well enough to function, communicate and learn sign language. In fact, they begin to invent their own signals between 8 and 12 month, and can be taught the rudiments of ASL at that time, just as hearing babies begin to learn spoken language. They all do need sensory and intellectual stimulation. For non-verbal feral children the requirements of survival would provide plenty of stimulation, as it also does for fox kits and fledgling geese. — Vera Mont

Quite so.

I think this is a much more interesting issue to explore.

I understand animal warning cries to be signaling, not symbolizing, danger. I have acknowledged that I believe animals sense danger. I'm not sure what you think we are disagreeing about. — Janus

A symbol is a kind of sign but not all signs are symbols. Smoke is a sign of fire, but smoke does not symbolize fire. An animal cry may be a sign of whatever but it does not symbolize whatever it might be a sign of. — Janus

This is a much more pertinent, and illuminating, issue.
I think you are thinking of a distinction that was drawn quite a long time ago now to resolve a particular problem. "Clouds mean rain" and "'Cloud" means a mass of particles or droplets, as of dust, smoke, or steam, suspended in the atmosphere or existing in outer space". In other words, it was an attempt to distinguish what meaning means in the context of linguistic meaning and what it means in the context of drawing inferences from evidence. (I'm sorry I can't remember, and google doesn't find, any helpful reference)
I guess that if I must choose between the two, I would have to choose "sign", because the alternative "symbol" means attributing human-style language to the dog. But the catch with this is that if we say that a goose hissing is a sign of anger hostility or danger in your sense of sign, we are positing a purely causal relationship, which would be incompatible with attributing rationality, or even sentience, to the goose.
This means that we need to draw some more distinctions. Sign vs symbol is more complicated than ti seems. I don't have a neat account of the difference, just a few remarks towards a map. The same applies to the concept of action.

My first thought was that a stop sign is, just as it says, a sign. It doesn't symbolize a stopped car. — Patterner

This is a bit complicated. The question to ask what the difference is between a sign and a symbol in this context. For example, when the police or road workers cordon off a section of road - even close it - with a tape across the road, is that equivalent to the stop sign? I would say that it symbolizes a blockage - like a heap of rubble. Is a red light a sign or a symbol?

I was thinking a symbol would depict, even if the depiction was stylized, the thing. — Patterner

Mini-pictures have become a very popular way of conveying information, partly because they are supposed to be language-independent. They may be helpful, but in my view, they constitute another language; they are not always intuitive, but need to be learnt. I think the technical term for these is "icon", but it is obviously different from the sense that some rock bands are said to be "iconic". (I'm not suggesting that icons are not useful). (There are echoes here of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. I don't know whether that book influenced their popularity now. It seems possible, but unlikely).

But then I looked up 'symbol', and the first example is: for example, a red octagon is a common symbol for "STOP" — Patterner

"Sign" and "Symbol" don't seem to have a well-defined, technical, definition. The terms are applied differently in different contexts. One peculiarity of this specific example is that a stop sign is not merely reporting a situation, like the or a sign-post. It is giving an instruction.
So at a police road-block, when the officer holds up a hand, palm open and facing towards you (I think this is more or less universal), the officer is ordering you to stop in a non-verbal fashion. Is that gesture a sign or a symbol? Is it linguistic?

In the realm of actions, we have been mainly talking about actions that have a purpose, because that is where the question of rationality or not is clearest. But there are different kinds of action. Reflexes, habits, expressions (Ouch! I'm in pain!), are just the beginnings of a list.

Abstract objects may be treated as generalizations or particulars and I have not said nor implied anything that contradicts that. — Janus

H'm. That's a large and tempting rabbit-hole, but I'm thinking that diving down it would be a distraction.

If you are treating abstract objects as particulars then yes. My point was that numbers are themselves generalizations. There are countless instantiations of 'two' just as there are of 'tree' or 'animal'. — Janus

I'm not at all sure that's a helpful way to think of them, but we would have to dive down the rabbit-hole to clarify that.

It seems to me that you have missing the point of what I've been saying and not the other way around since I have said that whatever we know about animal minds is derived from observing their behaviour and body language and I have not been concerned at all with explaining their behaviour by purportedly somehow knowing what is going on in their minds. The same goes for humans except that they can also explain themselves linguistically. Of course the verity of those explanations relies on the one doing the explaining being both correct and honest. — Janus

That's all fine by me.

Why would formal logic make the whole humanity irrational?. Formal logic is another area of academic subjects which enables human reasoning more rational. — Corvus

That's not quite what I said. I'm sorry if I was not clear. I left out the conditional "if formal logic is your standard of rationality" and qualified "the whole of humanity" to "almost the whole of humanity". As you say, formal logic is something that helps us to be more rational, which means that almost all of us have some level of rationality. Since very few of us know any formal logic, it follows that the rationality of most of us does not lie in our ability to do formal logic. That seems about right.

It is not about right or wrong on the inductive reasoning, but isn't it about lack of logical or rational ground in the reasoning Hume was pointing out? — Corvus

Hume's criticism was aimed at the scholastic concept of some power, hidden from our experience, was what enable to first billiard ball to make the second billiard ball move. Many people have believed that the conclusion is simply that induction is invalid. However, Hume was not saying that we should or could just give up on it, in the way that one would simply give up on an invalid form of argument. There's room for debate about exactly what he was saying, but it was not that.
Induction is not deduction. It is better thought of as a trial and error process, which can never get us to deductive truth, but can get us nearer to it. Popper's version of this was conjecture and refutation, now often described as hypothesis and falsification. Neither of those formulations is really satisfactory. recognizes that hypotheses/conjectures that have been tested but not falsified are what we rely on pragmatically. Asking what rational ground we have for that is asking for a rational ground for relying on rational grounds.
Compare what happens when you ask for a rational ground for relying on sound deductive arguments. I refer you to C.L. Dodgson's article about the dialogue between Achilles and the Tortoise after their race.

I have never heard of anyone trying to justify what they saw. One can confirm what one saw. But usually one doesn't justify what one saw. One justifies what one believes, said, done and think, but not one saw, smelt, felt, drank, ate or heard. — Corvus

You said this earlier. It is another example of a situation in which asking for a rational ground (for believing that I saw what I saw, is not a question that has a rational answer. Yet believing that I saw what I saw is not irrational. For it can serve as a premiss in a sound deductive argument.

Humans have taken creative thinking and created their own reality. This is beyond what animals do. — Athena

"Creative" is a troublesome idea. There seems to be no clear boundary between creative and non-creative thinking. For example, I would say that the crow that we saw earlier in this thread was thinking creatively, when It realizes that a stick can serve as a way of getting the goodies.


I agree with everything you say.
People often regard improvements in technology and in their own prosperity as advances, when they are usually double-edged swords.

Thanks for setting this up. I'm looking forward to it.

Hume was not concerned on the fact that inductive reasoning can be wrong. What he was saying was that, "there can be no demonstrative arguments to prove, that those instances, of which we have had no experience, resemble those, of which we have had experience." (A Treatise, Hume). — Corvus

Oh, so now we are classifying as rational only what is proof against philosophical scepticism.

As to Hume, I suggest that the implication of there being no demonstrative argument is that one might be wrong - that's why everybody prefers demonstrative arguments. (Though it is possible to be wrong about even those.You are right, however, to interpret "demonstrative" as meaning conclusive and hence logical, in the strict sense. This is usually taken to mean sound by the standards of formal logic. Which makes almost the whole of humanity irrational.

But the devil is in the detail:-

Those philosophers, who have divided human reason into knowledge and probability, and have defin'd the first to be thaf evidence, which arises from the comparison of ideas, are oblig'd to comprehend all our arguments from causes or effects under the general term of probability. But tho' every one be free to use his terms in what sense he pleases; and accordingly in the precedent part of this discourse, I have follow'd this method of expression; 'tis however certain, that in common discourse we readily affirm, that many arguments from causation exceed probability, and may be receiv'd as a superior kind of evidence. One wou'd appear ridiculous, who wou'd say, that 'tis only probable the sun will rise to-morrow, or that all men must dye; tho' 'tis plain we have no further assurance of these facts, than what experience affords us. For this reason, 'twould perhaps be more convenient, in order at once to preserve the common signification of words, and mark the several degrees of evidence, to distinguish human reason into three kinds, viz. that from knowledge, from proofs, and from probabilities. By knowledge, I mean the assurance arising from the comparison of ideas. By proofs, those arguments, which are deriv'd from the relation of cause and effect, and which are entirely free from doubt and uncertainty. By probability, that evidence, which is still attended with uncertainty — Hume, Treatise, Pt II, Section XI, pg 124

Later on, in his "Enquiry" he says:-

Mr. Locke divides all arguments into demonstrative and probable. In this view, we must say, that it is only probable all men must die, or that the sun will rise to-morrow. But to conform our language more to common use, we ought to divide arguments into demonstrations, proofs, and probabilities. By proofs meaning such arguments from experience as leave no room for doubt or opposition. — Hume, Enquiry, Section VI, footnote 1

You have been seeing the train arriving at the train station at 7:00 every morning for last x number of years. That does not logically warrants you to expect the train will arrive at 7:00 next morning. There is "no demonstrative arguments to prove." — Corvus

I don't think I ever suggested that I had logically conclusive evidence.

I'll look forward to your reply.

I don't think it makes any difference to the concept whether there is a call, a word or a pictogram signifying 'danger', so long as the message is transmitted and received - i.e. the concept is shared within a species or a tribe: everybody ducks for cover to escape the danger, or flies up in dive-bombing formation to combat it. — Vera Mont

I would go further than that. Let's distinguish the word "danger" and the concept of danger. Creatures that don't speak human-style languages don't have access to the word. But the concept is wider than speech. It involves the possibility of harm to oneself (and others) and appropriate reactions (fight or flight) to that possibility. None of that requires any understanding of human-style languages. What's more, the behavioural reactions are more important in the concept that the ability to articulate what we would understand as a sentence.

Hume said that inductive reasoning can be irrational. Therefore your reasoning on the train arrival time could be irrational. — Corvus

Well, he didn't say exactly that. But the point that is usually made is that inductive reasoning can be wrong - which doesn't necessarily mean that it is irrational. Hume made two points in the light of his argument. The first was that we are going to go on using it even though it may be wrong and the second was that it was as much of a proof as you will ever get of how the world works, and even ends up (in the section on miracles) calling it a "proof, whole and entire".

We have more than one way of knowing what goes on in animal's heads. Observing behaviour can be one of those ways if and when we're testing hypothesis. Attributing meaning to body language, another. Comparing observations with notions/hypothesis, yet one more. — creativesoul

Quite so.

How is that done if we have no way of knowing what goes in animal's heads? — creativesoul

More than that, we also rely on observation of behaviour to know what's going on in each other's heads, as you suggest.
I'm afraid that there's a certain ambiguity going on here, and it's my fault. There's an ambiguity between the sense of "what's going on in X's head" in which observation of behaviour is a normal and reliable way of discovery and the "experiential" or phenomenological sense of what's going on in X's head." In that sense, we have no access at all to what's going on in anyone's head, because the only person who has access to it is X. (As in Mary's room or bats.) I don't think discovering the rationality of animals or humans is particularly closely connected to latter. Nagel thinks (unless I'm mistaken) that it is not possible.

Thinking about one's own belief is a metacognitive endeavor. Metacognition is existentially dependent upon common language/shared meaning. — creativesoul

Well, if it is dependent on shared meaning (as opposed to common language), then animals could know themselves.

Inductive reasoning is a scientific method of applying our reasoning in forming the principles and theories from the observations, not daily ordinary habitual perceptions of general public. — Corvus

The story of Newton's apple is a bit more complicated than the popular summary. But apart from that, it seems pretty clear to me that Newton would not have made any inductive inference from one case. If he did, it would not be rational.
So John Doe and his friends and relations are not rational - ever? You set a high bar.
There is another problem. When Newton wanders in from his apple tree for afternoon tea and a gossip, does he cease being rational because he's behaving in an everyday way?
Perhaps we are all sometimes rational and sometimes not.

What if it gets no interaction? Does the brain wire badly? Does a time come when it is too late for things to work out well, no matter what happens? And what about irrational people who got the interaction that works best in the vast majority of cases? — Patterner

Your first three questions are empirical, not philosophical. My understanding is that there is empirical evidence that there are "windows" when the brain learns certain things particularly fast. If that window is missed for any reason, it will be difficult to impossible to learn it later. Examples are ducklings learning who is mum. They will fasten on the first large moving object they see and follow it faithfully until they are grown. Konrad Lorenz famously got one brood to imprint on him. That can't be changed, I believe. Another example is language learning in humans. If a baby doesn't get sufficient human interaction between specific ages, it till be very difficult to learn language later in life.

As to irrational people, We are all a mixture. More than that, rationality can't get going without some pre-rational starting-point. In any case, it seems to me that it is not really appropriate to call a new-born baby rational or irrational. Rationality develops quite slowly and I wouldn't say there was a threshold point between the two. Sadly, it also declines ln old age, but also slowly.

Not disagreeing; amplifying. People can be seen to act rationally even when they don't explain their motivations and sources of information. When you see someone doing the very same thing you would do in their circumstances, it's reasonable to assume they're thinking the same way. — Vera Mont

OK. You are indeed perfectly right. Dortmunder :lol:

Its a generalization and I doubt animals have a generalized conceptual notion we could refer as 'danger'.
— Janus
Then what do the sentries outside meerkat burrows, groundhog colonies, wild goose nesting grounds and rookeries shout when a hawk or kestrel or coyote or fox or cheetah or snapping turtle is spotted? — Vera Mont

"Our" concept of danger includes appropriate reaction to it. When animals exhibit similar behaviour in similar circumstances there's no good reason to withhold applying the concept to it. Apart from anything else, it enables us to understand what's going on - and that is the point of the exercise. But it is fair enough to say that any application need to be considered in the context of the overall patterns of behaviour that they exhibit. One case doesn't give us much insight, but each case contributes to our insight.

Plus there is nothing scientific about the accuracy of the train time shown on the website, why it has to be the info, and not otherwise. — Corvus

I see. The only knowledge is scientific knowledge, which excludes second-hand knowledge. But science is only possible because research starts on the basis of the results of previous research, and no-one is expected to repeat all that work for themselves. Newton standing on the shoulders of giants. Moreover, in order to do experiments, read texts, discuss ideas and results, they have to rely on common sense and common knowledge.
I have caught the 7:00 train every working day for the last 5 years. Standing on the platform at 6:55, I notice the signal changing. I have noticed that same event every time I have caught the train in the past. I expect the train to arrive shortly. I think that's inductive reasoning.
Shorlty after the signal changes, I hear a loudspeaker announcement that the train will arrive shortly. The same thing has happened every time in the past. I therefore believe the announcement. I think that's also inductive reasoning.
Yes, I do have blind faith in inductive reasoning, as Hume noticed. One has to start somewhere. One also has to risk being wrong in order to be right.

Watching many different things fall through space leads one to believe that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones. — creativesoul

Careful! Things only fall through space at the same speed in a vacuum. Most people have never watched anything fall through space in a vacuum. Galileo certainly never did. His "proof" was a thought-experiment - or at least I understand that is the case.

Tacit and articulate reasoning overlap one another. — creativesoul

Yes. They interact as well. Our knowledge of language is mostly tacit, but we can articulate rules in various ways.

I'm not sure how the notions of "tacit" and "articulate" are adequate tools for acquiring knowledge of that which existed in its entirety prior to our knowledge of it. — creativesoul

Quite so. There are only two (maybe three) ways that I'm aware of. One is the idea that tacit knowledge is exactly the same as articulate reasoning, but very fast. That's the traditional philosophical approach and has mostly fallen into disfavour. (Who says philosophy never makes progress?) Then there's the idea of "unconscious" reasoning and belief. There are very ancient roots of this idea, but the modern concept was developed in the 19th century. It was very like conscious reasoning and belief but was, by definition, not available to "introspection". The last one is the modern model of the information processing machine. This seems to ignore the question of tacit vs articulate reasoning and belief.
I don't think that the fact that the phenomenon existed long before we knew of it is necessarily a bar to our acquiring knowledge of it. After all, the same applies to most physics and chemistry. The real problem is that we have no way, at least at present, of getting empirical access to it.

since there seems to be a commonality of body language across at least some species we can speculate about other animals experience. — Janus

I do agree that there is a commonality of body language, and you are right to say "across at least some species". But describing our experience is no different from a gesture, a grimace or a smile or a wagging tail in terms of knowing what is going on in someone's head. If we can know what human beings are experience or thinking from their non-linguistic behaviour, why is it speculation to interpret that (ex hypothesi) animal behaviour in the same way. I can see no rational difference.

If you are treating abstract objects as particulars then yes. My point was that numbers are themselves generalizations. — Janus

For me, a generalization is a statement or proposition of the logical form I described. So you are missing the point. I am indeed "treating" abstract objects as particulars. So are you when you describe them as abstract objects.

We have no access to the inner workings of their minds. It's even questionable how much access we have to our own. — Janus

That's why I think it is a mistake to think that explaining animal actions has much to do with divining the inner workings of their minds. Mind you, I don't think that it is a determining factor in explaining human actions, either. It's more like interpreting a picture. Yes, sometimes we set out to divine the intentions of the artist, but not always. Sometimes it is just a question of seeing what is in the picture. (Puzzle pictures).

I understand animal warning cries to be signaling, not symbolizing, danger. — Janus

Sorry, I don't understand what that difference is.

Doesn’t ground mean some sort of cognitive capacity? Learning to use this capacity, and having this capacity in the first place are two different things. There seems to be a debate as to how modular our cognitive systems are. Is the brain a general processor or does it have domains? If it has domains does “rational thinking” count as a domain- a specialized brain/cognitive capacity? A dog solving a puzzle and a human inferencing- is that the same capacity/region or two similar but different capacities? — schopenhauer1

I don't know the answers to most of those questions. Yes, I do think that being able to justify one's beliefs (and act on them) is an important cognitive capacity.

I'm thinking maybe the capacity to think rationally is hardwired in. But we must learn how it works. — Patterner

In the end, it will not be for philosophers to decide what is "hard-wired in". But I'm inclined to think that what we call rationality is mostly learned by shaping the basic reflexes. For example, (as I understand it), babies are born with a reflex to seek mild and drink, to smile back at a smiling face. Both these activities seem to give them pleasure and the lack of them - or at least the lack of the former - gives them "pain". So a few reflexes, pleasure and pain, plus the ability to notice and remember what is associated with what (behaviourists were not complete idiots) are probably all that is needed. The basis of rationality is the discovery of what brings success and what brings failure. Then there's all the learning from those around us, including what counts as success/failure.

How would I know I did those things if I wasn't picturing the sequence of events in my head?? — Patterner

Well, you may have written that list by describing your visualations. But if you can remember what was on the list (in words), then you can also write it without. But perhaps it's just how one's memory works.

I don't know. it never occurred to me to try. I just automatically start visualizing the events. I don't know how I would do it. Lol. — Patterner

Most of our memories just come when we want them. "Trying to remember" is possible, though I don't find that I know exactly what I do when I'm trying or even succeeding. It just happens - or not.
What is really weird is that I've noticed that sometimes I know that I've remembered before I've remembered the details.

How do you approach this without visualizing? I will picture in my mind my exact movements, to whatever degree I'm able to remember, like trying to watch a movie of the events. — Patterner

Surely it is possible to remember a sequence of events without visualizing them? Actually, for me, it's not a choice. The sequence of events since I last had it occurs to me without pictures.

Would this not also be true of observed human behaviours? — Vera Mont

Sorry I wasn't clear. I think that's implicit in what I said - indeed it is the justification for what I said. I should have said so upfront.

Ground for rational thinking is, when you are faced with question to justify why your beliefs or thoughts were rational. — Corvus

Do you mean something like?
How did you know the train was coming at 12:00?
Because the company's web-site said so.
Why do you believe what the company's web-site says?
Because it is almost always accurate.
Why do you believe it is almost always accurate?
Because I and many others have used it in the past.
Why do you believe that its accuracy in the past means that it is accurate now?.
Because I am rational.
Why are you rational?
Because it is the best way to get to the truth.
Why is it the best way to get to the truth?
?
All justifications end in "groundless grounds".

You should be able to give explanation on your thoughts or beliefs in logical and objective way. — Corvus

But I'm guessing that your actual agenda was that animals can't be rational. It would have saved a lot of bother if you had just said so.

I have an impression that you are in confusion between skills, capabilities in problem solving with rational thinking. — Corvus

Why do you not believe that solving a problem can be an exercise in rational thinking?

Ground for rational thinking is, when you are faced with question to justify why your beliefs or thoughts were rational. — Corvus

Doesn't giving a justification count as solving a problem?

Sorry I don't see a logical link between the ground for your rational thinking or beliefs and the training and education in your youth. Could you elaborate further? — Corvus

I was taught to drive a car. Hence, I can drive a car.
I was taught to think rationally. Hence, I can think rationally.
I would be grateful if you would explain to me what you mean by "ground".

I am looking forward to see what you might have to say in reply to @Patterner's question.

We maybe talking about different things. This sentence makes it sound as though you are physically checking the pockets. I'm talking about sometime later, possibly several days. (So, it might not be a wallet, since I would probably notice that was missing much sooner.) I can't physically check every possible place where something might have been left between the last time I know I had it and now. So I think back to that last time I had it, and start visualizing everything that I can from that point forward. — Patterner

That is indeed different from the situation I was thinking of; yours is a much longer-term problem. In that case, you are adopting the same approach as me, excepting that I don't visualize.

I think what's going on is different approaches to the problem. Neither of us can remember where we put our wallet. You try to prompt your memory. I don't. When I'm at a cash desk, the range of possibilities is limited, so I just start checking them all. That's not so clever when I'm at home, so I will recover my last memory of having it and then retrace my steps (which I also have to remember) until I find it.

My understanding of formal logic is probably more limited than yours. When you say that a generalization is a quantification over a domain I'm not sure exactly what that means. Would it be the same as saying that a generalization is a name of a category? — Janus

Well, generalizations are a class of statements with a specific logical form. The line between categories and classes is pretty blurred. I could work with either.
The logical form of generalizations is "For all natural numbers n, 2xn = n+n". This contrasts with "For some (i.e. at least one) natural number(s) n, n×n = 25". This is called existential quantification because it presupposes that numbers exist. (If there are no numbers, universal quantification is true - paradoxical, but the point is that if no numbers existed, then there is no counter-example.)
So generalizations and statements about abstract objects have different logical forms and hence different meanings.

If so would generalizations not exist as names (or quantifications)? And do they not assert the existence of similarities that constrain the ways we categorize? — Janus

Generalizations are universal quantifications but not existential quantifications. They do not refer to specific individual things, so they do not name anything. It is the difference between "Human beings are moral" and "Socrates is mortal". Think of it as the difference between talking about a class/category and talking about a member of a class/category. Similarities and differences are involved in both, but they are similarities and differences at different levels.
Does that help?

I think we can observe animals avoiding danger—things they presumably feel to be threatening. I am not suggesting that animals think precisely in terms of 'avoidance' or 'threat' or 'danger' as those are linguistically generated concepts. — Janus

As I said animals can feel threatened. My point was simply that they don't think in terms of the word 'danger'. Of course I don't deny that there is a pre-linguistic sense or affect that such words as 'danger' or 'threat' refer to. How would we know what the words mean if we had no experience of such affects? — Janus

"Danger" and "threat" are words. Animals that don't speak human languages don't use words. Danger and threat are concepts, and as such involve more than uttering words. They also involve actions in the world. There are are certain behaviour patterns that are built in to these concepts. When we see animals displaying those behaviour patterns, there should be no problem whatever in applying those concepts to them.
When we come to the question which exact concepts apply in specific cases, it is not an at all unusual to find that there is a range of possibilities. In the case of the llamas, their behaviour is compatible with danger, threat, bad, evil. It may well be that with more information, more examples, we might be able to find behaviour patterns that enable us to distinguish between them. We also might not. But the mere fact that there are a range of possibilities in a single case which we cannot conclusively distinguish between is not particularly surprising or important.
I don't see that what is going on in the llamas' heads is particularly important. It is this behaviour pattern in the context of their overall lives that we are trying to explain.