What counts — creativesoul

Depends on one's philosophical stance, doesn't it? The words have no fixed meaning, apparently - only relative value as to what counts and what doesn't.

I'm talking about a philosophical position or even assumption, that the only true rational process is articulate reasoning which can only be laid out in language. I could have been clearer. — Ludwig V

The philosophical positions are clear enough. Humans philosophize; nature does not.
It's probably foolish of me (and obviously futile) to hold out for the integrity of that very language some people deem essential to reasoning. The usage of words determines the content of a discussion and the direction of reasoning on a topic. If you change the meaning of words, you change the essence of the subject.
I've lost this one.

For some definitions, possession of a suitable language is critical and whether animal communication systems count as a language, never mind one suitable for rationality, is a moot point. — Ludwig V

Sure. If you define a word to mean what you want it to mean it will mean what you want it to mean.
I have not seen that particular definition: "rational thought is that to which possession of a suitable language is critical" in a dictionary. Nor have I seen ethics mentioned as a necessary adjunct to reason in any work on neuroscience.

duly noted
and very poetic

That almost sounds like you are suggesting there are areas of thought that are only seen in humans. — Patterner

I don't need to suggest; you've listed most of 'em. I never contested the uniqueness of humans or the feats of cogitation they required. All i said was that these are the product of rational thought, which, before the herculean humans endeavours, were expressed in the purposeful, conscious use of tools and other innovations by rational entities of lesser endowment, but nevertheless, with similar brains.

You have not attempted to make any points in opposition to mine. — Patterner

I wasn't opposed to yours. I considered them incomplete. I had made a case, with citations, before you made any points - consisting of a list of uniquely human accomplishments which were never disputed. I didn't repeat all of the evidence I know of other species thinking rationally; I merely referred to the definition of the critical words.

You just say I'm wrong. — Patterner

I think you have a narrow vision.
"This" was simple exasperation, capitulation. If it troubled you, I'm sorry.

What does rational thinking mean? I mean, what is its value? — Patterner

In the first instance, survival. Rational thought is simply the most effective approach to solving problems. All species are confronted with problems every day. The ones that don't panic, observe the situation and find ways to overcome the difficulty go on to have more and better offspring, whom they can teach how to solve problems.

Yet there is no spark of understanding. They somehow simply happened to stumble upon using X to accomplish Y, and they kept doing it. — Patterner

You haven't seen any of the intelligence tests set for various other species by scientists? They do not, once in a century, 'stumble upon' solutions; they work them out logically and in a timely manner.

Och, never mind. Yes, yes, you are incredibly special! You have totally cornered the market on thinking.

We are alone in these areas, not merely above. — Patterner

You are truly and indubitably alone in all these strictly human areas. My contention is that reason and rational thought are not confined within nor limited to these human areas. Reason in other species predates and precurses these uniquely human flights of cerebral virtuosity.

No other species thinks about the differences between the ways different species think. No other species thinks about thinking. What are the intermediary steps on a scale of magnitude between how any other species thinks about these things and how we think about them that reveals it all to be the same scale of magnitude, rather than different kinds of thinking? — Patterner

Can't you be special, bigger, smarter, wider, more powerful, more dangerous, more imaginative, more poetic, the only one that looks into space, builds skyscrapers and nuclear missiles and poisons it own own water supply; can't you be more, more, more, more... without denying an entire aspect of mental function to all other species? Does more have to mean: It's all mine, nobody else can have any?

We are unexceptional in that we are the product of evolution, like every other species is, bacteria to sequoias. We designed ourselves no more than any other species did. We are on the continuum along with every other animal.

Where we ARE exceptional is that we are much further out on the continuum (than other species) in our ability to reason, invent, think, etc., and enact the rational and irrational motives driven by our far superior lust for aggrandizement. — BC

Sure. My objection was to the definition of the word, precisely because evolution accounts for the many traits common to species with a common ancestry. Nothing suddenly happened to strike man with reason; reason was developed in many species over millions of years. That man took it into further realms of imagination and language is interesting, but it makes him unique only in magnitude, not in kind.

The distinction between h.sapiens and other creatures is something we have to take responsibility for, rather than denying the obvious. — Wayfarer

It's okay to distinguish the various attributes of species. It's less okay to tamper with the meaning of words.
Oxford: reason - the action of thinking about something in a logical, sensible way;
rationality: the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason or logic.

There is nothing in there about more or different applications or Aristotle or language. If solving complex problems not found in the subject's natural habitat is not the result of logical, rational reasoning, what is it?

Could I draw your attention to a source I've been studying of late, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, John Vervaeke, a professor of cognitive science at the University of Toronto. It's a long series, of which the first three or four address the pre-historic origins of distinctively human consciousness. YouTube playlist can be found here. — Wayfarer

Thanks. I'm sure the philosophical segments are interesting. But I steadfastly disagree with human exceptionalism.
eta And reject this definition

Reason is a faculty that differentiates h.sapiens from other animals, enabling the invention of science, among many other things. — Wayfarer

The opening about God and the Void. — Ludwig V

It's not The Void; not a concept. It's just a word for empty that was translated to void. The world is already here, just kind of messy.

G 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Why would God want us not to know about morality — Ludwig V

His pet humans were not required to have a morality. They were supposed to do as they're told and not question or form their own judgment. Most religion still demands the same.

Is it probable that they habitually acted on what they didn't think? — Vera Mont

I don't quite understand what you're getting at here. — Ludwig V

You say we know how their habits, but not how they thought. Don't people usually have an attitude or idea before they decide on a course of action, which eventually becomes habitual? Don't their actions give us an indication of what they think?
A king of Assyria decreed massive lion-hunts, sometimes with caged lions in an arena and commissioned a huge bass-relief monument to the sport. Does this give you an inkling of his thought-process? He recorded his thoughts, and they match his actions perfectly.

Sure, it's not rocket science. But that doesn't mean it is not rational. — Ludwig V

It's perfectly rational - and intelligent. They were not interested in rockets, but they sure devised a lot of ways to get what Mako wanted.

We know about their habits. What we don't know is how they thought about them. — Ludwig V

Is it probable that they habitually acted on what they didn't think?

And Genesis is an example and that's much later than 3000 BCE, isn't it? — Ludwig V

No, it probably originates in Sumer. The gods created mankind to work the land and worship them - i.e. obedient servants. The biblical version is more nostalgic: it harks back to a pre-agricultural past and views farming as punishment. The discrepancies were not entirely edited out. The flood figures largely in Sumerian lore (They did have a pictographic alphabet before cuneiform, a good deal of wall art.) The pastoral people that became the Jews and eventually wrote down their oral chronicles, including stories picked up in their herding nomadic years.

Oh, well, if you are talking specifically about climate change, — Ludwig V

That, the rapid eradication of biodiversity, continuing expansion of devastating resource exploitation, the rise of fascism, and the likely collapse of the global economy.

Levin’s study published last week shows a slime mold, a brainless blob called Physarum, sensing cues in its environment and making a decision about where to grow. The findings suggest it’s “able to build a picture of the world around itself using a kind of sonar. It's a kind of biomechanics,” — Andréa Morris (Forbes)

Even if you call 'a kind of biomechanics' intelligence and growth in favourable conditions decision-making (which definitions are not widely shared), that clever pre-universe mold would have needed a substrate on which to live and grow and make decisions about.

There's so little to go on. — Ludwig V

About the interim steps? Pastoral peoples were migratory or nomadic and didn't leave many records. Still, we know that they herded livestock - which is a huge step from respect for to control over and ownership of other species. It also reduced all other predators from a threat to be feared to rivals to be hated and exterminated. Settled agriculture did the same to land and vegetation, water and forest.
The Genesis story (which originates in an oral tradition before Judaism) already shows the drive to "subdue and fill the earth" as well as nostalgia for pre-agricultural life.

Every civilization has left records. Their beliefs and lifestyle are generally depicted in representations on walls and in tombs. The architecture itself speaks volumes about how people lived. There is also considerable literature from about 3000BCE onward.
Then, with rapid population growth which required ever more intensive use of land and hostility toward all competing species, also came increasing urbanization and alienation. And the unspeakable practices of the Enlightenment period, and the depredations of European colonial expansion... right up until the late 18th century and the industrial revolution. About the only counter attitude came with the Romantic movement, as a reaction to that assault on the countryside. But that's just art - it has tears but no teeth.

Surely there is some room for thinking that when more and more individuals start to change, sometimes the movement gathers weight and pace and ends up changing things at the macro scale? — Ludwig V

That would apply if a) there were not a much more powerful trend to destroy more of the environment faster and b) we had unlimited time in which to make the change before our environment becomes uninhbitable. Yes, I know that's a pessimistic, depressing view of our reality, but I see no other.

In my opinion intelligence must have been pre-existing and manifested (or re-manifested) itself in life and nature and through us human beings. — kindred

If God made the universe, yes. (Where he lived before he made the universe is anybody's guess.)
Otherwise, no: intelligence had to wait until a brain evolved someplace. Maybe not only here; maybe many intelligent entities have been and are scattered across the galaxies. Odds are, we'll never meet one to compare IQ's.

Even brainless plants have the means to warn other plants of threats, and are able to mount targeted defenses (within a fairly narrow repertoire). — BC

That extensive mycelial network! Pretty amazing, actually.

Human civilization, as it has evolved to the present, has become incompatible with the most optimal balance of resources of the natural world. What should we do about it? Were we able (which we are not) we ought to be far-sighted about the long-term consequences of our industrially powered production--everything from our own numbers, to the automobile and airplane or laundry detergents and cheap meat. — BC

At some point - about 7000 years ago, but there were interim steps that took much longer - humankind turned against nature and began to treat it as Other/the enemy. We lost a good deal of our own nature and have been paying for it ever since in mental illness, discontent, strife and a sense of loss. It's a big hole that we keep trying to fill with religion, technology, spectacles, self-aggrandizement, overconsumption and lots and lots of wars.
There are people - a growing number of people - who take their own path to simplicity and balance. Global economy, global culture are too big to be changed, but individuals are capable of change.

.

New Zealand Kea

If we do not agree on the definitions of words, we are doing no better the competing groups of chimps screeching at each other. — Athena

Their vocalizations may sound harsh to you, but are meaningful to another chimp. We might as well be communicating, you in ASL and I in Japanese. Or just yelling at each other, as people often do.

We need to agree on what "rational" means and what "language" means. What is the definition of these words? — Athena

Rational thinking is a process. It refers to the ability to think with reason. It encompasses the ability to draw sensible conclusions from facts, logic and data.
In simple words, if your thoughts are based on facts and not emotions, it is called rational thinking.
Rational thinking focuses on resolving problems and achieving goals.

[Language is] “a communication system composed of arbitrary elements which possess an agreed-upon significance within a community. These elements are connected in rule-governed ways” (Edwards, 2009: 53) https://www.languageeducatorsassemble.com/5-definitions-of-language/

One of 12 quotes. If they can't agree, how could we?

If it is not language it is not rational. — Athena

And if it is not human, it's not language.
Therefore, only humans are capable of reason.
There: all wrapped up with a triumphal bow on top.

Wow, what a depressing view of reality. — Athena

Sorry; didn't mean to depress you. I thought you already knew.

When a dog gets hungry and sometimes just when the smells get tempting, it is will known that they will position themselves where they will be noticed and sit very quietly, but very attentive. — Ludwig V

And when it's time to eat and she can't smell anything edible, she goes out to the kitchen, picks up her food dish and brings it back to place in my lap, then sits directly opposite me and stares into my face. (Granted, this was an exceptionally bright German Shepherd.)

It seems perfectly clear that the dog thinks that if s/he does that, food will happen. — Ludwig V

Especially if the guilt-inducing soulful gaze alternates with running to the pantry where the dog-food is kept and nudging the bag.

A not-so-clever Pyrennese who liked to roam would ask her border collie confederate to help her escape. The collie would stand on her hind legs and push on the far frame (not where it opens) with both paws of the big sliding patio door. She didn't have the weight to push it all the way open, but she'd slide it over just enough for the big dog to wedge her nose in and force it open. Then they would pad softly across the patio, around the corner of the house, duck behind the car and make their way down the drive. (I stopped them there, having watched the whole procedure. I was on guard, because they'd already gone AWOL twice.)

When a dog really wants something, whether it's your pizza or your flip-flops, he makes a plan and carries it out step by step. That's nothing like salivating on cue. And they're very good (wolf lrgacy) at co-ordinating team work. Watch some You Tube videos.
When a crow wants a piece of cheese, he goes looking for a tool to get the tool that will poke the cheese out of the cage. Or figures out which flaps to lift in what order to tilt the plastic chute and make the cheese roll out.

Human observers can obviously perceive the causal relationship between stimulus and response, but I don't think that implies conscious rational calculation ('If I do this, then that will happen') on the part of the animal (or plant). — Wayfarer

Have you followed any of the tests that scientists have devised to differentiate between stimulus-response and rational problem-solving? Here is an example. We've come quite a long way since Aristotle.
(Plant?? you know they don't have brains, right?)

So, for you, the only valid criterion for reason is the use of human language? Pretty narrow definition.

If you want to back track over the past couple of exchanges and remedy it I will continue. — I like sushi

I don't think that will be necessary. I have nothing to add or subtract.

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

My informal observation: up to six times without showing exasperation, after which they don't give it back. All babies seem to do it; I think they consider this a game.

One shouldn't waste scarce helium on experiments that have already been done — BC

...or on celebrations or political hoopla... especially knowing how much harm they o the environment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Octopuses, now. — Ludwig V

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What has that got to do with: — I like sushi

That should be obvious from the definition of profit.

And how is this not a fatalistic attitude? — I like sushi

I can only report what I see. I do not a see a 'slippery slope', which would suggest a soft landing.

I work fairly hard at my job and study hard too. This idea of 'surplus' sounds like a Marxist ideology rearing its head? — I like sushi

Where does Goldman Sachs' annual profit come from?

Surely you can see the problem with these kinds of views and a slippery slope — I like sushi

No, I can't; I see a bloody great pit to fall into, and a long slow painful climb out again.

I think it can be quite surprising how minor changes can have a huge impact. — I like sushi

For the few years or decades they stay in effect, before the next reactionary administration or regime overturns them. See US Supreme Court decisions on voting rights and reproductive rights.

The biggest problem with revolutionary schemes is that they are large in scope. — I like sushi

I have no revolutionary schemes.

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

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

What about if there are people who do not want to work or do anything. — I like sushi

We would have to wonder what's wrong with them. I've met some people who had given up on "the job market" or become fed up with being exploited and disrespected; I've met many, many people who did not like the jobs they had to take to support themselves and dependents, or that they had wanted once and found disappointing over time (as well as many who chose, prepared for and love what they're working at), but nobody who didn't have any aspirations or proclivities at all. Some may want to make music or tinker with inventions rather than build houses or harvest wheat, and they would have the same resources and opportunities as those who like teaching or healing, because society benefits from creative individuals, as it does from productive and nurturing ones.
I've never met a child who didn't want to "be" some occupation they admired. It's society that either encourages and promotes an individual's capabilities or frustrates and hobbles them; society that sets examples for the young and rewards or punishes unfairly. Besides interests and talents and ambitions, humans also have a strong desire for respect and social worth.

Do you really think there would be no resentment by those working hard everyday and getting basically the same as those not working hard or is it that you think those in change of businesses will simply pay people more in order to gain employees? — I like sushi

Part 1. The only reason people need to work as hard as they do is produce surplus. Surplus for profit, for waste, for war, for the care and feeding and protection of top level users. Scrape off the excess consumption of the top 1%; get rid of all the money-handling, -hiding, -laundering, -lending, -litigating and -shuffling occupations; reduce coercive capability to policing (considerably less of that, if they're not having to deal with monetary crime) and peace-keeping (voluntary civilian militia is quite adequate) and you're down to less than half the work, or a 4-hour workday with time off for special family occasions.
Part 2. What businesses? Business is a bad idea that doesn't belong in a utopian society.

Will this all just magically balance out in your mind without any hiccups? — I like sushi

There are effective cures for hiccups.

Other than to say some people are greedy and so they should be forced to give up their wealth I am not really seeing much follow through with how you expect this would go smoothly or otherwise if governments implemented this scheme. — I like sushi

Yet once more again: No government that exists or can exist today, or has existed at any time since the rise of city-states, can possibly implement this scheme. The best they can do - and that by a hard slog against determined opposition, even from the people it would most benefit - is introduce minor local improvements. Under the current global system with its entrenched rules, procedures and assumptions, no major change can be made to the structural or economic organization of any society.
You still can't get there from here, except by climbing over a mountain of rubble.