It's genetics, not simply epigenetics. And don’t overlook the fact that not only are their brains not equipped for language, but neither are their vocal tracts, for which the h.sapiens anatomy is uniquely suited. — Wayfarer

There is no final decision about how information is transmitted from one generation to the next.

Memories passed down in our genes? Not exactly. But biologists have observed examples of learned behaviors and acquired responses being transmitted through several generations, contrary to the traditional rules of genetic inheritance. https://www.quantamagazine.org/inherited-learning-it-happens-but-how-is-uncertain-20191016/#:~:text=Memories%20passed%20down%20in%20our,traditional%20rules%20of%20genetic%20inheritance.

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We do know that dogs that became used to humans became domesticated and that a gene controls if a dog can or can not be domesticated. The dogs that interacted with humans developed and spread this gene. This is not just about DNA but also RNA.

RNA, is another macromolecule essential for all known forms of life. Like DNA, RNA is made up of nucleotides. Once thought to play ancillary roles, RNAs are now understood to be among a cell’s key regulatory players where they catalyze biological reactions, control and modulate gene expression, sensing and communicating responses to cellular signals, etc. https://cm.jefferson.edu/learn/dna-and-rna/#:~:text=There%20are%20two%20differences%20that,uracil%20while%20DNA%20contains%20thymine.

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Skills and Talents Influenced by Your Genes
Aptitude and talent in various fields, such as intelligence, creativity, and athleticism, are attributed to genetic factors. For example, drawing, playing an instrument, or dancing may come more naturally to some people than to others. Similarly, genetic factors can influence traits like analytical and critical thinking, communication, and research skills. Skills and Talents Influenced by Your Genes
https://seniorslifestylemag.com/featured/5-skills-and-talents-that-are-influenced-by-your-genes/#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20drawing%2C%20playing%20an,%2C%20communication%2C%20and%20research%20skills.

I think this is about the process of evolution and how close humans and apes are.

Rational thinking requires critical thinking and we would have an extremely short lifespan if all our awake time was also our critical thinking time. — Athena

Yet another criterion. The more requirements you add, the fewer entities may exercise a faculty that was once available to everything in possession of a cerebellum.
All thinking animals can act rationally, emotionally, instinctively or chaotically (when they're ill). I very much doubt that thought processes take different amounts of energy to perform.

What have clocks to do with rational thought? For 100,000 years of intelligent human development no clocks of any kind existed. Up until four hundred years ago, the entire population of North America was clock-free, and very possibly the healthier for it. — Vera Mont

Oh dear me! It was perhaps quixotic, but I was thinking about the argument about whether the dog knew it was 5 pm when the train arrived. I thought of Pavlov's dogs who knew it was feeding time when the bell rang, and of an ancient TV programme for very small children that tried to teach children to tell the time. They displayed a clock face and then announced to time displayed. It's not important, but I get irritated by people who say "but the dog has no concept of" and work to concede the lowest possible level of rationality to console themselves for admitting that an animal could have any concept at all. Not important.

I think we could make a good argument that human beings are not rational. The chatter that goes on their heads may be totally incorrect but without critical thinking, they may be willing to kill for what they believe is so. — Athena

Yes. At best partly and with training.

They (sc. ants) are not self-aware and reasoning how to build their homes or go about their chores or who the queen should be queen. — Athena

Yes. I thought about them and decided that they weren't. They just had a large collection of instincts, triggered, if I remember right, by what they are fed as larvae. An illustration of how irrational components can produce rational results. Not what the thread is about.

Rational decisions are those grounded on solid statistics and objective facts, resulting in the same choices as would be computed by a logical robot.

If you ask what makes us human, the answer will not be "rationality", but emotion. Ironical, don't you think?

Several Star Trek shows are about human judgment that is not based on rational thinking — Athena

Usually decisions that turn out to be wrong. "An alien machine you don't know what it does? Beam it aboard!"

and I don't think Star Trek fans are in favor of AI ruling over us.

Don't be so sure. Anyhow, it wouldn't rule - that's an ape thing. It would simply administer our resources and enforce our laws - both of which tasks humans have botched repeatedly and abominably.

It was perhaps quixotic, but I was thinking about the argument about whether the dog knew it was 5 pm when the train arrived. I thought of Pavlov's dogs who knew it was feeding time when the bell rang, — Ludwig V

All dogs know their feeding time, without any bells. Every living thing has time sense and arranges its feeding, resting and moving routines according to the time of day, and to time elapsed and to correspondence with some other event - like this is the time their preferred prey is most vulnerable; this is the time salmon come to spawn; this is the time to bury nuts for winter; this is the time lions don't come to the water.

Humans have it too, a biorhythm or something similar. When not freed from the economic day/week/year constraints, we each follow our own internal clock: wake up at roughly the same time every day; get hungry at regular intervals, have a period of three or four hours when we are most alert and capable, followed by a period when we drag a bit. There is some variation among individuals, but all humans are diurnal and seasonal. (Some humans may claim to be nocturnal, but it just means they stay awake longer past sunset and sleep later into the morning. Some humans are active at night for economic reasons - and it's not good for their health. It's difficult to sleep in the day and arrange leisure activities around a night shift. A few humans are active at night because it' the only time they have free of other people's demands.) That's the framework on which they constructed the artificial daily, weekly, monthly and annual schedules of regimented societies, because that's what works for the majority of human activities.

Good question. Isn't the issue that they do seem incompatible. We can express this in more than one way. They are different language games, different categories, different perspectives. At any rate, they seem incommensurable. Yet we know that a physical process can result in a logical conclusion. If it were not so, computers would not work. Indeed, if it were not so, calculation by pen and paper would not work, either. — Ludwig V

If they are incommensurable explanations, then it would seem to follow that they cannot exclude one another.

What makes the physical events within the machine into a calculation cannot be recognized as mathematical calculations unless we have arranged that representation. It is not the result of any physical properties or events within the machine independently of the context in which we interpret them. — Ludwig V

I agree with your analysis, but I don’t see how that affects the argument. In fact what you're saying here could easily be interpreted as a defence of Aristotelian form-matter dualism.

You seem confused — wonderer1

Not in the least.

Plantinga is not making an argument against physicalism. — wonderer1

Of course he is, insofar as naturalism is materialist or physicalist in orientation. What I've spelled out is why Plantinga argues that naturalism is an insufficient basis for belief. From his 1994 Naturalism Defeated .pdf:

"With me," Darwin said, "the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"

The same thought is put more explicitly by Patricia Churchland. She insists that the most important thing about the human brain is that it has evolved; this means, she says, that its principal function is to enable the organism to move appropriately: Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. . . . . Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism's way of life and enhances the organism's chances of survival — Plantinga, Naturalism Defeated

He's talking about beliefs and convictions - not about the ability to act in such a way as to enhance survival. Against what criteria do we judge beliefs or convictions to be true, as distinct from pragmatically useful? You will notice that evolutionary materialists, such as Dawkins/Dennett, will say outright that all of what us 'lumbering robots' think and do is in service of the 'selfish gene'. That is the kind of mentality he has in his sights. (I believe Dennett responded extensively to Plantinga, but I'm not going to pursue it further. )

That there exists in the human mind and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity

I certainly have some form of that, though not exclusively Christian in orientation.

I will add, I don't pursue this line of argument as a 'proof of God' as I don't believe that it possible, my interest in it only extends to showing the inherent self-contradictions of reductive materialism, as by it's own reckoning, its activites are the consequences of 'a nervous system that enables the organism to succeed in the four F's', social organisms though we might be.

All true. So the question is, why would anyone say they don't have a concept of time? What's more, why don't we insist that human beings have the same concept of time? The hours and days are additional articulations of the sense of time we have from our biological clocks.
What has it do with rationality? Everything. If they have a concept of time in the same way that we do, that's at least a basis for rationality.

I agree with your analysis, but I don’t see how that affects the argument. In fact what you're saying here could easily be interpreted as a defence of Aristotelian form-matter dualism. — Wayfarer

Yes, I suppose it could be. I've always thought there is a good deal to be said for it - better than substance dualism and materialism, anyway.
On the issue about naturalism, I got turned off when I realized that natural was being interpreted as scientific. Thumbnail sketch - That idea entirely ignores the history and practice of science. Science looks to me to be something almost entirely artificial.

If they are incommensurable explanations, then it would seem to follow that they cannot exclude one another. — Janus

That's true. But neither can you seriously articulate the idea that mental states are determined by physical processes. The conceptual equipment used to describe physical process does not include any way to describe beliefs; equally the conceptual equipment (evidence, logic) does not include any way to describe purely physical processes. Incommensurability means no bridges, no translations. And yet, one feels that there must be some relationship.

On the issue about naturalism, I got turned off when I realized that natural was being interpreted as scientific. Thumbnail sketch - That idea entirely ignores the history and practice of science. Science looks to me to be something almost entirely artificial. — Ludwig V

I agree with you again! My objections are to that vein of popular philosophy which esteems science as the arbiter of reality. Of course many educated folk see through that but it is still a pervasive current of thought.

What has it do with rationality? Everything. If they have a concept of time in the same way that we do, that's at least a basis for rationality. — Ludwig V

I'm not so sure. If snails and spiders have it, it's more likely biological; no thought required. Where thinking comes in : level 1. association of a time of day or year with some event or activity (like: crocodiles are sluggish before sunrise, winter's coming soon) 2. taking certain specific time-dependent action (drink at the river while it's safe; start migration exercises) and 3. anticipation of time-related events (getting to the river before the elephants churn it up; making sure one's own fledglings are flight-capable) 4. arranging other necessary tasks not to conflict with time-related ones. (this is a little more complicated, depending on each species, but it still doesn't need a lot of intelligence.
In fact, timekeeping is one of the least remarkable things intelligent entities do.

And yet, one feels that there must be some relationship. — Ludwig V

I think it's just a case of looking at thinking from two perspectives. I certainly don't buy the argument that says that if thought is determined by neural activity, then thoughts could not rightly be said to have logical, as well as causal, connections with one another. It's merely an argument from incredulity.