I'm betting on the ants. — Vera Mont

Really, you think the ants will outdo the roaches? Ants don't even make the list of nuclear blast survivors. I had to look up the possible survivors and there are some. Just for fun....

https://jeevoka.com/8-animals-that-would-happily-survive-a-nuclear-war/s

I have two dogs. I love them.
— Fire Ologist
And you love your thermostat in the same way for the same reasons? — Vera Mont

:lol: That may not be a fair statement but it sure is funny.

Now I don't know about loving a thermostat, but loving a car may be reasonable. The car we drive is an extension of who we are. And they have personalities. Many machines we interact with have personalities and we like to name them and enjoy our relationship with them.

We are all animals. They are chimpanzees and bonobos and we are humans. The big black line is drawn only on side of that distinction. — Vera Mont

I think we agree humans, chimps and bonobos evolve from the same ape-like creature. I am not sure we agree that humans are the only ones who argue about such things. Does it matter? Some day evolution may favor the survival of roaches. Some believe our opinion of our intelligence is overrated.

Is anyone in this thread "violently" rejecting human exceptionalism, or are people simply expressing various nuanced views? — wonderer1

I have been turning to research. And because of the book "The Math Instinct" by Keith Devlin, I see mathematical feats in animals as equal to

's explanation of an air conditioner. However, a bat's sonar abilities are far better than anything we have.

I am also struggling to get a clear definition of rational thinking. Is it rational to believe a god made us of mud and our reality would be different if a man and woman didn't taste the wrong fruit? Or does rational mean based on facts that can be validated? At least among the researchers, there is agreement that we are the only animal that asks these questions and attempt to answer them. I am just not sure if bonobo might not evolve as we did if we set the conditions for this evolution. — Fire Ologist

I don't disagree, and what you quoted wasn't directed at you. — wonderer1

:grin: I knew that but I thought you might think about what you said if I responded as though you were addressing me. I think to have the meaningful discussions we all want in this special forum, we need to feel safe and when we are made the subject of a post and criticized for all to see, we might not feel safe.
I know I don't like it when someone does that to me. On the other hand, over the years my posts may have improved because of all the criticism that has come my way. I work very hard at not appearing condescending because I was accused of that so often. As a general rule I try to respect everyone and protect the dignity of others. Doing so is a matter of honoring my grandmother who taught me those values.

e thermostat reacts to the cooler temperature and shuts off the air conditioner.

I could say that my air conditioner uses its thermostat to sense the temperature and then desires to cool the house so it rationally engages the air conditioner until the house reaches the system’s desired temperature.

Or I could just say it’s all a system of stimuli and responses with no inner life, self-awareness, decision-making capability or rational capability.

We could say the same thing about animals.

Determinists (use reason) to say the same thing about humans.

Maybe the better question is do humans have the ability to reason? My answer would be that formulating a question like that displays behavior of a being capable of reason.

Animals don’t ask questions. Ever.

I have two dogs. I love them. But they aren’t using reason. They are predictable because of their structure, not because of their adherence to reason. My dog is sitting at my foot leaning on me right now. He’s not communicating or hoping I like what he’s doing. He just feels good enough to pass out at my feet right now. When he begs at the dinnner table, there is no plan or thought or reason behind how his ear flops and looks cute enough to convince me to give him a treat. He’s just does what he does, and benefits from it working. If it didn’t work, he wouldn’t wonder how it didn’t work because it was perfectly reasonable to him and try to improve the reasoning. He would just be pushed into the next posture and position. Probably licking something.

We can’t even understand the nature of our own behavior when we use reason or make a choice or reflect on our own minds, but for some reason, because we love them I suppose, we see so much reason and choice and mental activity in animals. — Fire Ologist

Oh man I love this line..."I could say that my air conditioner uses its thermostat to sense the temperature and then desires to cool the house so it rationally engages the air conditioner until the house reaches the system’s desired temperature."

I am not so sure the rest of what you said is exactly right. Especially when we get to the chimps and bonobo our closest genetic match, and their communication ability. The following link is for

Vera Mont — Vera Mont

Savage-Rumbaugh a researcher, is sure bonobos are capable of language and communication. The link explanation is long, and ends with...

I was reminded of something Savage-Rumbaugh had once said to me about our species’ signature desire: “Our relationship to nonhuman apes is a complex thing,” she’d said. “We define humanness mostly by what other beings, typically apes, are not. So we’ve always thought apes were not this, not this, not this. We are special. And it’s kind of a need humans have—to feel like we are special.” She went on, “Science has challenged that. With Darwinian theory, this idea that we were special because God created us specially had to be put aside. And so language became, in a way, the replacement for religion. We’re special because we have this ability to speak, and we can create these imagined worlds. So linguists and other scientists put these protective boundaries around language, because we as a species feel this need to be unique. And I’m not opposed to that. I just happened to find out it wasn’t true.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/bonobos-teach-humans-about-nature-language-180975191/

I don't believe there is a black and white line between us chimps and bonobos, they are animals we are humans. I think we are on the same line of evolution and under the right conditions bonobos could have more complex communication than we want to admit. I am putting information about bonobo communication together with an explanation of climate change that may have caused our uniqueness.

The study of human evolution shows that, like other organisms, humans have evolved over a long period of time in the face of environmental challenges and opportunities. These challenges affected how early humans secured food, found shelter, escaped predators, and developed social interactions that favored survival. The capacity to make tools, share hunted-and-gathered food, control the use of fire, build shelters, and create complex societies based on symbolic communication set the stage for new ways in which humans interacted with their surroundings. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK208097/#:~:text=The%20study%20of%20human%20evolution,social%20interactions%20that%20favored%20survival.

result of such pattern recognition is some understanding on my part, of your need to see yourself as particularly special, and how that influences the thinking that goes into your posts. This need to see yourself as particularly special isn't something I think you have made a free willed choice to have, and not something I see you as to blame for. In fact I appreciate your skill at keeping keeping your rage covert. And of course, we are all narcissistic to some extent. — wonderer1

Thank you, I do try to be civil and avoid coming off as condescending. I think we all need a sense of being special and having something of value to offer. To me, this isn't a bad thing compared to sitting at home and doing nothing and making no effort to think or engage others. Overeating in a futile effort to end the feeling of hunger caused by unmet emotional needs. So I hope people do continue to do their best and feel that s/he is making a valued contribution. Making the effort is better than not making the effort, right? But it ain't easy.

I once had an acquaintance who steadfastly denied that animals other than man had intelligence or any form of thought; he maintained that they are little more than automata that respond to stimuli without any understanding. Then he told me that his neighbour's German Shepherd hated him. (Gee, I wonder why!) — Vera Mont

That acquaintance may have underrated the value of emotion and its part in thinking. Do you remember the original Star Trek show? In one episode Captain Kirk became two individuals, one was all bad and the other all good. The point is that we need to be balanced to have good judgment.

Rational behaviour is not just a set of behaviours distinct from everything else - talking, pondering etc. Rationality is on display in nearly everything that we do.
— Ludwig V

Barking is a behavior.
Dogs and humans might sense the loudness of the barking and so you might say as a metaphor that dogs and humans sense the loudness of this behavior. A dog doesn’t wonder if he is barking loud enough, if the volume of his barking is a reasonable volume to convey its fear of the cougar to the rest of the pack. The dog sees the cougar, and the dog barks. — Fire Ologist

I came home from Hawaii early because my sister with a timeshare in Hawaii was stressed to the breaking point and could no more be rational with me than a barking dog. She is a highly educated and successful woman, but under the circumstances, she was like a barking dog towards me. It was insane! She would talk with others like a rational human being and in a flash attack me like a dog.

I think our ability to behave as rational human beings may be fragile. I think education focused on technology and not our development as good family members and good citizens, may have led to a much higher rate of irrational behavior. I think this happened to Germany and became the Nazi phenomenon. A social value shift that may come with threats of social breakdown.

Yes, you are right. But you are setting a very high bar. Most of what we do does not involve critical thinking. Left to ourselves, we will only think critically when something is going wrong or in new and unfamiliar circumstances. You may have seen my story about the birds. Here's another. (I can't give you my source for this either, so treat it as a thought-experiment).

Meerkats actually post sentries who do not join in the feeding, but keep watch and raise the alarm when an intruder turns up. The other meerkats keep some food for the sentry, who feeds when all the others have finished. New members of the group are not permitted to act as sentries for a while. Eventually, they are allowed to stand sentry, but at first, when they raise the alarm, the others check it out before everyone rushes to their burrows underground. Eventually, when the sentry has been proved reliable, they are not checked out.
Is that not critical thinking? Or maybe critical thinking is less advanced than you think? — Ludwig V

Thank you so much for working with me on this effort to understand rational thinking and human/animal differences. I am not done looking for information because I don't think my understanding is complete. I keep hoping someone will jump in and say what I am trying to say.

I think your story is close to the story of how dogs became domesticated. A few wild dogs dared to come close to humans and over time those dogs became comfortable with humans and these dogs naturally did selective breeding, breeding with the dogs with a high tolerance for humans. This led to genetic changes that made domestic dogs domestic. Interestingly they are the only animals that will investigate where we point. Domestic dogs have learned to read us and how to manipulate us as well as how to be excellent hunting partners and service dogs. The bottom line this is genetic. Do not bring a wolf home and expect it to play fetch with you because there is a genetic difference between wild dogs and domestic ones. In the dogs or meerkats change happened over time. The animal in question became comfortable with the other and we could say built trust (has a different feeling response). This is feeling and reacting not reasoning. Chimps needing a new troop will approach very carefully and hang around the fringes until invited in.

But when it comes to rational we are speaking of something different and the problem in talking about it is how we use the word rational. Someone who believes the Bible is the word of God, has rationalized a lot to not see some problems with that belief. Someone prejudiced of people who look different and can even believe the other is not fully human have wrongly rationalized their feelings and thoughts. I wish we didn't use the same word for rationalizing a myth and other false beliefs and think this rationalization is equal to scientific, or higher-order thinking. Believing a myth or other wrong thoughts does not take critical thinking skills. Grasping science and having justice and liberty for all, does take critical thinking skills.

The difference is about HOW we think, not WHAT we think. And the difference is being as an animal or as an evolved human being.

One of the issues central to the debate about free will is the way in which thoughts and behaviour are determined by nature and nurture. This poses the problem that humans have lack of capability to change, at the level of thoughts and neurochemistry. My own view is that human beings have reflective consciousness, which is the foundation of potential change. — Jack Cummins

I just had an experience that makes me question just how much free will we have. I went to Hawaii with my sister and two other women. We stayed in her timeshare. Some problems came up and the stress took a toll on my sister, reverting her back to a three-year-old in a daycare center having to fight for a toy. Her reactions to me were insane but not unexpected. before leaving, I told all my friends I didn't want to go because I was afraid this would happen. The point is I am sure this is not what my sister would want to happen if she truly had freedom of will. Obviously, she did not have freedom of will but was thrown back in the past and lost all self-control in relation to me but oddly could snap back to appropriate behavior when speaking with others.

The most helpful information I have gotten is dog breeders do not put puppies with the same mother in the same home because since birth they competed with each other. The life story my sister created for herself, was running her, not her better judgment and in her mind, I was competing with her and inconsiderate of her feelings. This is pretty common in sister and brother relationships and it goes against any chance of having a good outcome because the person is not wholly in the here and now but has a childhood perspective of what is so.

Well, let's allow, for the sake of the argument, that animals do not and cannot debate in the way that humans do. I'll accept also that debating is a skill that demands a capacity for rational thought. But you seem to think it is a necessary (probably not sufficient?) skill for rational thought. But does that really make sense? — Ludwig V

I do not believe we are thinking rationally unless we are using higher-order critical thinking skills. Each critical thinking skill is important but maybe this one is the most challenging..

2. Open-mindedness
Open-mindedness is the willingness to consider new ideas, arguments, and information without prejudice. This critical thinking skill helps you analyze and process information to come to an unbiased conclusion. Part of the critical thinking process is letting your personal biases go, taking information at face value and coming to a conclusion based on multiple points of view .

Open-minded critical thinkers demonstrate:

Willingness to consider alternative viewpoints

Ability to suspend judgment until sufficient evidence is gathered

Receptiveness to constructive criticism and feedback

Flexibility in updating beliefs based on new information

Example: During a product development meeting, a team leader actively considers unconventional ideas from junior members, leading to an innovative solution.

https://asana.com/resources/critical-thinking-skills

Telling me why I should become a Christian, or join the Ku Klux Klan, is not the result of higher-order thinking skills, and how we behave as a society depends on how good our critical thinking skills are. And that depends on our education. Critical thinking skills do not come with our genes, only the potential to use our brains comes with our genes.

Being correct or knowing the truth is not required for rationalization. Back in ancient times, a person who conclude that the sun goes around the earth by using their observations, is being rational. — night912

I must argue against that statement. Knowing truth is essential because things go very wrong when people act on incorrect ideas and bad information. Primitive people knew that problem well. They did not have bank cards to repair all the damage of bad decisions. And democracy, like scientific research, is people working together to get things right. True Aristotle made mistakes and Greek logic defined by him was lacking. But the truth is, if we don't get things right, they can go very wrong. This is true in our private lives and public lives.

Animals only appear to use reason and to communicate their minds because WE reasoning communicating creatures see ourselves in them, NOT because we see them. — Fire Ologist

And that thought is a very big consideration for researchers. From college lectures to books based on research, I am amazed by the scrutiny of the research. These guys are real nit pickers tearing apart each others work, in an effort to be very sure the conclusion of research is based on fact and not wishful human thinking.

Humans insert “reason” and deliberate some responses. We draw these deliberations out by communicating our reasons with other humans. — Fire Ologist

So true. This could be different for apes though. We shared genes with Chimpanzees but they do not have the ability to speak. They can sign and make jesters but they can not talk so they can not share their reasoning and deliberate the thoughts of others. They can follow this leader or that one, but they are not going to debate the reasoning. Females will defend their aged male leader from some young upstart. They do have emotional bonds and this is so close to reasoning, it is hard to draw the line.

Wouldn't if be fun to be a researcher and do a study about what feeling has to do with reasoning?

↪Athena
I guess you'll have better things to do that hang around here!

I want to add that I do not at all deny that animals (including humans) do have purely mechanical responses. Examples in humans are the reflex breath as you come back to the top of the water, which is clearly evolved and rational, as contrasted with the jerk of your lower leg as your old-fashioned doctor tap just below your knee, which (so far as I know) has no evolutionary purpose. You may know that if you scratch a dog at just the right place, their back leg comes up as if to scratch themselves; they can also do the same thing when they want to scratch themselves; that response can be mechanical and irrational and can be voluntary and rational.

Often, this involves altering the meaning of words and twisting familiar concepts, and may include denial of the audience's practical experience.
— Vera Mont
You're not wrong. But, along with all the similarities, there must be differences. The same applies to chimps and horses and whales. So there is a legitimate enquiry to be had here, surely? — Ludwig V

If it is not language it is not rational. If we do not agree on the definitions of words, we are doing no better the competing groups of chimps screeching at each other. Without agreement on the definition of our words, we doing no better than pissing on a tree to mark our territory, or a fire alarm. Certain sounds like a chimp screech, a police siren, or a fire alarm are universal sounds of danger because the screech is in all these things and also bird calls. In some cases an animal will make different sounds for different threats and this close to language but not exactly language.

I am eager to get into animals and math, because I wrongly thought the ability to do math means a form of rationalizing. After reading "The Math Instinct- Why You're a Mathematical Genius(along with lobsters, birds, cats, and dogs)" Now I understand the math animals are doing is like our knee jerk or a dog moving its leg when the right is touched. It is not the problem-solving humans do until we get to hire order animals that are making choices, such as a chimp taking the dish with 7 pieces of candy and not the one with only 6 pieces. Many lions means leave the territory but only one lion can be challenged. A snake jumping in the right direction at the right time to catch prey is using math, but this is like a knee-jerk. What bats can do with sonar hearing is amazing and better than anything we have invented, or birds flying 20 thousand miles from a summer home to their winter home. These animals are doing trigonometry and geometry but it is instinct, not learned math, and most certainly not working with 1+2=3. Those numbers are like language and animals do not have language. It is more like an intuitive reaction than rationalizing, how the chimp can count, can of like making a scratch for each piece of candy and remember how many times a scratch was made.

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

I never claimed otherwise. And, in fact, the remark was not directed specifically at you - except inasmuch as you have been defending the human exclusivity position - but was an observation regarding a whole system of faulty/disingenuous human reasoning for the purpose of arriving at a desired conclusion.
Propaganda and advertising work in this same way: argument directed at a desired outcome. The purveyors of mis- and disinformation use a rational process to determine what kinds of falsehood their audience is most likely to believe and construct the most persuasive arguments to make their conclusions sound reasonable. Often, this involves altering the meaning of words and twisting familiar concepts, and may include denial of the audience's practical experience. — Vera Mont

Wow, what a depressing view of reality. I just got back from a trip to hell and I am so happy to be here.
All my ideas may be wrong, but at the moment I don't give a damn because I am going to enjoy my happiness. Today I am not in charge of the world. It is my day to enjoy my home and my life. Maybe to tomorrow I will get more serious and back to feeling responsible for the world.

The bright side is I have almost finished the book about humans, animals, and math and look forward to to discussing what I have learned. We can talk about what is so and society be reason and being happy.

Ran out of time. My ride to the airport has arrived. I will be in Hawaii for a week.

Here is a clear example of thinking which is not rational. If you poke a caterpillar with a leaf in a way that doesn't harm it, it will squirm like its being attacked. Every time, it never stops. Its a purely reactionary mind, with no forethought, adaptability, or ability to react to memory. Whereas we have a monkey using a tool. How many tests did the monkey have to do to get the right stick? What did they try before sticks? Rational thinking is a process which requires memory, adaptation, and often times proactive and not reactive. — Philosophim

I might throw in here something I just read in a math book. It has been proven a 4 month old child recognizes the difference between one thing, two things, or three things. The baby has no language so is not thinking in terms one, two, three. It is just the change in the number of objects that the baby reacts to. This does not happen when there are four things or five things. More than three is just many. It also is specific to the number of things. It does not matter if three balls become three blocks, or if red puppets become blue puppets. It is only the change in the number of things, up to three things that catches the baby's attention. This is also basic to horses, birds, and dogs.

That is knowledge of some things is hard-wired. It comes with the animal. This is not the thinking you described. It is more like the caterpillar reacting as though it were being attacked. No thinking, just a reaction. A man accidentally killed his son because he was reacting to fear, and picked up his gun when he heard an intruder and then fired that gun when his son who came home from college a day early, jumped out of the closet to surprise his dad. The reaction happened before the thinking could begin. I think it is important to understand not all thinking is rational and thank you for your example of the caterpillar. It is also a baby's reaction to the change in the number of things. This is the stimulus, this is the reaction. Not rational thinking.

Logic may also be too strong. Rational thinking is the ability to piece premises together and come up with potential solutions. Those solutions may be wrong. A rational thinker can then eliminate that wrong answer and try another route. Logic often implies deductive reasoning, but many would argue that inductive reasoning is also necessary for rational beings. — Philosophim

There is a problem with inductive reasoning. Scholasticism used Aristotle and the Bible as the foundation of education. We did not come to the modern age until much later and there was a terrible fight and strong backlash to Aristotle's inductive reasoning. We are talking a huge knowledge breakthrough that changed our cultures and our lives. There was a lot of anger towards education based on Aristotle because it prevented us from progressing intellectually.

Hume asks on what grounds we come to our beliefs about the unobserved on the basis of inductive inferences. He presents an argument in the form of a dilemma which appears to rule out the possibility of any reasoning from the premises to the conclusion of an inductive inference. There are, he says, two possible types of arguments, “demonstrative” and “probable”, but neither will serve. A demonstrative argument produces the wrong kind of conclusion, and a probable argument would be circular. Therefore, for Hume, the problem remains of how to explain why we form any conclusions that go beyond the past instances of which we have had experience (T. 1.3.6.10). Hume stresses that he is not disputing that we do draw such inferences. The challenge, as he sees it, is to understand the “foundation” of the inference—the “logic” or “process of argument” that it is based upon (E. 4.2.21). The problem of meeting this challenge, while evading Hume’s argument against the possibility of doing so, has become known as “the problem of induction”. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/

Why does 'reasoning' require a modifier? — Vera Mont

If the reasoning isn't correct, things can go very wrong. That is why it is important to have the correct facts and think things through carefully. Democracy is not about what one person thinks but together after we argue with each other and check our facts, what is true. This is akin to scientific thinking. It is not basing our understanding of reality on a myth that can not be supported with factual statements.

We have a big problem in the US. Our understanding of rational thinking is very weak. In general people don't know the difference between an opinion and a fact. All thinking is confused with being rational and that is a serious problem.

It is your opinion that I hold rational thinking as a human thing based on language that animals do not have because I want to exploit animals, is an opinion, not a fact. Let me make it clear, I care that we know the difference because it is the only chance we have of not destroying our planet. If we do not distinguish between correct reasoning and incorrect thinking, the planet is doomed and there is no other animal on earth that can do that reasoning.

This is why the definition and meaning of the phrase "Rational thinking" needs to be clearly listed and agreed upon first. If we all have different viewpoints of what the phrase "Rational thinking" means, we're never going to come to an agreement. as to whether an instance of a crow using a tool is an instance of rational thinking. — Philosophim

I can think of three major elements to rational thinking: its form is linguistic, its structure is logical, and its orientation is (ostensibly) self-interest (either direct or indirect). Under that definition, animals do not have rational thinking because they lack language. And intuitive thinking, which allows for action without explicit knowledge of the reasons for action is similarly excluded. — Baden

@Manuel said "I suppose a bare minimum has to be symbolic representation akin to something that arises with language use. Animals do not have language, if by "language" one has in mind propositional knowledge."

Perhaps we can focus on logic.

Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure of arguments alone, independent of their topic and content. Informal logic is associated with informal fallacies, critical thinking, and argumentation theory. Informal logic examines arguments expressed in natural language whereas formal logic uses formal language. When used as a countable noun, the term "a logic" refers to a specific logical formal system that articulates a proof system. Logic plays a central role in many fields, such as philosophy, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic

.

I like that the definition begins with "correct reasoning". Lenching someone does not involve correct reasoning. In court, we aim at correct reasoning. But then I think of the ancient Greeks and the argument against rhetorical speaking which may appeal to emotions more than reason.

Do you mean animals besides humans? — LuckyR

Yes. I don't think anyone here is arguing humans have not evolved from an ancestor that would be classified as an animal. The transition from prehumans to humans is better documented today and with our improved knowledge of animals having culture, our understanding of the transition is getting better.

facial anatomy suggests that A. ramidus males were less aggressive than those of modern chimps, which is correlated to increased parental care and monogamy in primates. It has also been suggested that it was among the earliest of human ancestors to use some proto-language, possibly capable of vocalizing at the same level as a human infant. This is based on evidence of human-like skull architecture, cranial base angle and vocal tract dimensions, all of which in A. ramidus are paedomorphic when compared to chimpanzees and bonobos. This suggests the trend toward paedomorphic or juvenile-like form evident in human evolution, may have begun with A. ramidus. Given these unique features, it has been argued that in A. ramidus we may have the first evidence of human-like forms of social behaviour, vocally mediated sociality as well as increased levels of prosociality via the process of self-domestication—all of which seem to be associated with the same underlying changes in skull architecture. A. ramidus appears to have inhabited woodland and bushland corridors between savannas, and was a generalized omnivore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardipithecus_ramidus

.

Their challenge was most likely climate change making life in the trees more difficult, forcing this species out of trees and making them land animals with culture and physical changes improving vocalization and indication of less aggressive behavior.

I have to change what I said about climate change. There is new information and it makes more sense.

Hominid fossils predating the emergence of Australopithecus have been sparse and fragmentary. The evolution of our lineage after the last common ancestor we shared with chimpanzees has therefore remained unclear. Ardipithecus ramidus, recovered in ecologically and temporally resolved contexts in Ethiopia’s Afar Rift, now illuminates earlier hominid paleobiology and aspects of extant African ape evolution. More than 110 specimens recovered from 4.4-million-year-old sediments include a partial skeleton with much of the skull, hands, feet, limbs, and pelvis. This hominid combined arboreal palmigrade clambering and careful climbing with a form of terrestrial bipedality more primitive than that of Australopithecus. Ar. ramidus had a reduced canine/premolar complex and a little-derived cranial morphology and consumed a predominantly C3 plant–based diet (plants using the C3 photosynthetic pathway). Its ecological habitat appears to have been largely woodland-focused. Ar. ramidus lacks any characters typical of suspension, vertical climbing, or knuckle-walking. Ar. ramidus indicates that despite the genetic similarities of living humans and chimpanzees, the ancestor we last shared probably differed substantially from any extant African ape. Hominids and extant African apes have each become highly specialized through very different evolutionary pathways. This evidence also illuminates the origins of orthogrady, bipedality, ecology, diet, and social behavior in earliest Hominidae and helps to define the basal hominid adaptation, thereby accentuating the derived nature of Australopithecus. https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1175802

Animals do not put together an argument to arrive at a conclusion. A valid/sound conclusion is the goal when one is engaged in reasoning. For example, if I have some information on the chance that it's going to rain this morning -- atmosphere, clouds, radar -- I can conclude validly that it's going to rain this morning. — L'éléphant

That point seems to be what is being argued in the Rational thinking: animals and humans thread, @Vera Mont is making strong arguments in favor of animals being rational thinkers. Can I copy and paste your argument there?

Sis, we have competent economists to answer your question. Yes, they know enough. — L'éléphant

:lol: Who is they? How many of them are there?

They already have a language. The argument is over whether and how well they learn some version of a human language. — Vera Mont

No animals don't already have a language. Language is next to culture, it has to be learned. The ability to learn a language varies across species and within the species are individual differences and the age of our ability to learn changes with our age. Older children have a greater learning ability and there are some things that if a child does not learn or experience at a certain age, the child will never be able to incorporate it in its being.

That said, many animals have warning sounds. Those sounds are instinctively known to all species because as math explains, the sounds are irritating and can not be ignored. A group of chimps may have different sounds for different threats- this would be cultural and something that has to be learned before one could know if the threat is an eagle coming from the sky, or large snake hanging in the tree or a predator coming by ground. Those warning sounds, even the more complex ones are not propositional thinking. The great ages are not going to discuss what humans are doing to their habitat and what they can do to defend it.

Intuition is rational thinking. — Vera Mont

I will use a link to explain why intuitive thinking is not rational thinking.

Intuition is defined as the ability to acquire knowledge without the use of reason [1]. Some liken intuition to a gut feeling, or to unconscious thinking. Rational thinking is defined as the use of reason, the capacity to make sense of things, and the use of logic to establish and verify facts [2].

Intuition versus Rational Thinking: Psychological Challenges ...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1546144012003791#:~:text=Intuition%20is%20defined%20as%20the,and%20verify%20facts%20%5B2%5D.

As @Manuel explains rational thinking begins with a proposition. I am learning as I read and reply and use links because I do not have a strong understanding. So here is an explanation of propositional knowledge.

Propositional knowledge is the knowledge of a proposition, or fact, that can be justified, true, and believed. It can be applied to a wide range of subjects, including science, geography, math, and self-knowledge. https://www.google.com/search ? <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declarative_knowledge#:~:text=Propositional%20knowledge%20asserts%20that%20a,referred%20to%20as%20knowledge%2Dthat" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declarative_knowledge#:~:text=Propositional%20knowledge%20asserts%20that%20a,referred%20to%20as%20knowledge%2Dthat</a>.

Now here is where the rest of the animal realm fails. It took us centuries but we now of an amazing comprehension of pi.

Succinctly, pi—which is written as the Greek letter for p, or π—is the ratio of the circumference of any circle to the diameter of that circle. Regardless of the circle's size, this ratio will always equal pi. In decimal form, the value of pi is approximately 3.14. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-pi-and-how-did-it-originate/#:~:text=Succinctly%2C%20pi%E2%80%94which%20is%20written,of%20pi%20is%20approximately%203.14.

The importance of our present knowledge of pi is mind-blowing! It tells how organism grow, and helps with navigation of air planes. This link is very complex so I am leaving just the link for those who want to know what pi has to do with the creation of the universe and how things grow. https://www.biophysics.org/blog/pi-is-encoded-in-the-patterns-of-life

This link is a little simpler..

Tracking Aircraft with a Raspberry Pi - Stephen Smith's Blog

Stephen Smith's Blog
https://smist08.wordpress.com › 2023/01/27 › tracking-...
Jan 27, 2023 — A tutorial, by Tony Roberts, on connecting a Raspberry Pi to an SDR radio to retrieve flight information from nearby aircraft.

Any way even though many of us struggle with math, it is an important component to rational thinking.

Sciencific thinking is nothing like our every day thinking.

Scientific thinking is the process of reviewing ideas using science, observations, investigational processes, and testing them to gain knowledge. The goal is to make outcomes of knowledge that may be meaningful to science. The scientific method is how scientists and researchers apply their scientific thinking. https://study.com/academy/lesson/scientific-ways-of-thinking.html#:~:text=Scientific%20thinking%20is%20the%20process,researchers%20apply%20their%20scientific%20thinking.

Oh man :nerd: A thought came up as I worked on the explanation.

Modern thinking is nothing like the thinking of the Middle Ages and around the world are people still far from proposition knowledge and thinking. Our understanding of the different modes of thinking and how far we have come in the last hundred years is still outside of our consciousness but we are not the same human beings we once were. We only had to potential to become as we are. Other animals do not have this potential.

(Experiment: have a trusted human teach a baboon to do it, then let him in among a troop of youngsters.) — Vera Mont

I am excited because you have gotten to the core of the subject. Baboons to not have the attention span of great apes. Baboons are monkeys not apes. The difference is genetic. I don't know if anyone has tried as hard to teach a baboon or done an experiment as you suggest. I think not because from our present judgment of baboons it would be futile.

Here is a link...

Monkey species include baboons, macaques, marmosets, tamarins, and capuchins. Ape species include humans, gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, gibbons, and bonobos.

In evolutionary and genetic terms, ape species are much closer to humans than monkeys are. In addition to having similar basic body structures, apes are highly intelligent and can exhibit human-like behavior. For example, chimpanzees, which are closest to humans genetically, can create simple tools and use them effectively.

Although monkeys communicate with each other, apes possess more advanced cognitive and language skills. They can't speak like humans, but they can use sign language and other bodily movements to communicate with humans effectively. Communication skills help gorillas, chimps, and bonobos develop complex social groups and even exhibit some aspects of culture. Like humans, apes can think and solve problems in their environments. https://www.wonderopolis.org/wonder/whats-the-difference-between-apes-and-monkeys#:~:text=Monkey%20species%20include%20baboons%2C%20macaques,to%20humans%20than%20monkeys%20are.

So then if we took a human, and they did the same thing as the crow without saying any words, we would think that wasn't rational thinking? How did the crow arrive at that conclusion to do what it did to begin with? — Philosophim

That is the intuitive question. As @Manuel warns, when we know something intuitively, it is important to check and double-check that intuitive thought. An intuitive thought may be the result of past experiences or spending many days trying to answer a question. We can not be sure why but the thought is just in our heads whole and complete. Because I am studying the brain I read or hear time and time again, that our brains are very active and we are not aware of all its activity.

We know humans can be aware of some of that thinking in a way we call rational thinking. Rushing out to hang someone for committing an offense with other men dressed in white sheets, is not rational thinking even if the men are aware of their reasoning. Their reason is not the careful reasoning of science. Men's behavior in times of war had little to do with rational reasoning. :heart: I hope we all gain better knowledge of different modes of thinking and different codes for thinking. How do our brains work compared to how do the brains of great apes work?

As far as your idea of the significance of the chimpanzee recognising his or her image in the mirror, it may suggest a form of personal identity based on an image of one's bodily appearance. — Jack Cummins

You made me ask the question, can a chimp recognize a picture of himself in a line up of chimp pictures? That is different from a mirror image. In the mirror, our movement is reflected. What if the chimp realized the movement in the mirror was his movement but that does not mean he could pick out an image of himself in a line of pictures?

I am watching college lectures about humans and primates and the thing that impresses me the most is how extremely picky researchers are! The question must be asked exactly right. They must be as sure as possible that they identify exactly what causes something and their peers are quick to jump on them if everything is not exactly right. This is not normal everyday thinking. It is very disciplined thinking.

About you and I thinking along the same line at the same time, you and I have experienced this often. It is enough to make me ask if we have a psychic connection but then is that even possible? I think that is unlikely but not impossible. I have a very old book about logic and the author warns us never to be too sure of what we think because we can never know enough to be certain. Science is about being as certain as we can be and history is a series of times when the general experience of the moment moves people to think and act the same, such as the hippie movement and then a fascination with drugs such as we have today.

Yes, some animals can think rationally. It depends on how you define 'rationally' of course. If you define it as, 'the brain processing humans do', then its not. I don't ascribe to this definition, but many do implicitly.

Here is a crow using a stick to get food. Do you think this is rational?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjfrxkEpfX8 — Philosophim

By definition of "rational," I would say no, the crow's behavior is not the result of rational thinking.

I like @Manuel's used to Propositional Knowledge. If the crow questioned if the stick would work, and proposed an experiment and then explained the results, the stick must be this long and have this strength to work, and we tested his experiment and found it to be true, then we have rational thinking. I hope once I learn the language of math I will be able to understand math better. Reading about Propositional Knowledge helped my brain form a degree of understanding about rational thinking. How do we understand anything without the right words?

Your example is very important because we thought only humans used tools, and we made that ability the defining marker of being human. Next, we thought culture is what defines humans and then we discovered social animals have culture. But we still have people who believe humans were made of mud and it was a god who made them so we aren't really animals like all the other animals. I don't think that belief would pass the test for rational thinking, but then when someone comes up with a crazy explanation for believing in something, we call that rationalizing.

Help, my thoughts may not be in the proper order or maybe I am not using the right words? I think I destroyed my argument. :chin:

suppose a bare minimum has to be symbolic representation akin to something that arises with language use. Animals do not have language, if by "language" one has in mind propositional knowledge.

There may well be other aspects to thinking that are not related to language, but we don't know what they are. We are back to speaking about these things through language. So, until we have some proposal as to what non-linguistic thought is, we are stuck.

As for communication? Yes, they do, and they seem to be highly efficient at it. Look at bees or birds or dolphins, they have some amazing capacities for communication that we lack.

Intuition is somewhat hard to describe. I don't think it's better than non-intuitive thinking, just different. Though we should keep in mind that our intuitions can be quite wrong. — Manuel

Very nicely said and so the debate goes on. I had to look for an explanation of propositional knowledge because that is a new term for me.

Propositional knowledge is a type of knowledge that involves knowing facts, and is also known as declarative or descriptive knowledge. It can be defined as justified true belief, which means that a person has propositional knowledge if they:
Believe something to be true
Are justified in believing it to be true
The thing they believe is actually true

Propositional knowledge can cover a wide range of subjects, including: Science, Geography, Mathematics, Self-knowledge, and Any other field of study.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declarative_knowledge#:~:text=Propositional%20knowledge%20asserts%20that%20a,referred%20to%20as%20knowledge%2Dthat.

Having the right language for this discussion is very helpful. Thank you, Manuel.

Post-hoc rationalisation probably was the original form of 'rational thinking', as social group-animals it was pretty important to justify/rationalize our actions.

So you know, it seems that Plato/Socrates (contra the Sophists) got us on the wrong track with this weird ideosyncratic notion of rational thinking to arrive at the truth. — ChatteringMonkey

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

Reason and one's relative facility in reasoning has very little to do with verbal proficiency or fluency. Individuals with too deep a regard for what is said by those who speak authoritatively are some times fooled into believing what they're told rather than what they themselves are able to discern. — Vera Mont

The argument about chimpanzees and their ability to communicate is more complex than whether they learn a language or they can not.

As a matter of learned culture, some Chimpanzees in the wild do have warning calls that identify a predator. In the learning stage, a young chimp may see a leaf fall and make the sound for an eagle, or see a wild pig and make the sound for a predator cat. The adults will look for the pedator and ignore the warning if they do not see it, or if they see it, they will repeat the warning. In time the young will make the correct sound at the correct time. Our cats and dogs may be very good at communicating with us but wolves do not have that kind of relationship with humans. The difference between domestic and non-domestic animals in the genes. Just as the learning difference between chimps and baboons is in the genes.

Here is a link explaining rational thinking requires language, not just warning sounds for predators.

Abstract
This article deals with the relations between language, thought, and rationality, and especially the role and status of assumptions about rationality in interpreting another's speech and assigning contents to her psychological attitudes—her beliefs, desires, intentions, and so on. Some large degree of rationality is required for thought. Consequently, that same degree of rationality at least is required for language, since language requires thought. Thought, however, does not require language. This article lays out the grounds for seeing rationality as required for thought, and it meets some recent objections on conceptual and empirical grounds. Furthermore, it gives particular attention to Donald Davidson's arguments for the Principle of Charity, according to which it is constitutive of speakers that they are largely rational and largely right about the world, and to Davidson's arguments for the thesis that without the power of speech one lacks the power of thought. https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/34534/chapter-abstract/292961457?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Intuition is a shortcut to an answer in the absence of sufficient evidence to draw a logical conclusion. It is based on recalled experience and knowledge. — Vera Mont

I think Baden gave a good explanation of why all thinking is not equal to rational thinking.

We could get into what emotions have to do with our thinking and question how rational we are when we are emotional. The book "Emotional Intelligence" explains how emotions mess with our thinking, and the more recent study of what hormones have to do with emotions and judgment. I used to clean a bar and on football game nights, the bar would be trashed! Watching football increases a man's testosterone level, which results in more aggressive behavior than adding a few beers, reducing one's inhibition and I should have gotten a bonus for cleaning on those nights. :grin:

Your post triggered the next thought about experience and knowledge. Individually, we are different in our ability to learn. More dramatic is the fact that baboons like to eat termites as much as chimps. They watch the chimps make tools to fish the termites, but they do not imitate the behavior, although they want the termites just as much as the chimps. I think that is equal to me wanting to understand math, and I just don't get it.

I hope we think as much about how we think as we think about how another animal thinks. Intuition is not rational thinking because there is no language involved. My point about going through the gate is knowledge can prevent us from knowing.

I can think of three major elements to rational thinking: its form is linguistic, its structure is logical, and its orientation is (ostensibly) self-interest (either direct or indirect). Under that definition, animals do not have rational thinking because they lack language. And intuitive thinking, which allows for action without explicit knowledge of the reasons for action is similarly excluded.

Animals do have communications systems though, and therefore skills, and human intuitive thinking can be a better (esp. faster) way of solving problems, avoiding danger, dealing with people etc. In fact, think about most real life conversations--they are almost entirely intuitive. Who's thinking explicitly about what to say next? — Baden

I know all that but hell will freeze over before I can explain it as well as you did. :heart:

:lol: My arguments are based on my own struggle with language and especially ordering my words so they make sense and rational thinking. Such as choosing the right words to title a thread. I am terrible at that.

I led a team of volunteers to help a young woman in a nursing home. When leaving, a young man with a very low IQ made it through a locked gate, that I could not get through because obviously the gate was locked and obviously it was necessary to have a code to get out of the secured building. But my dim-witted friend did not take time to think through the problem. He put his hand through the gate and opened it from the outside. Quite obviously our "thinking" can make us stupid. And if I were to be lost in the wilderness, I would want him to help me get out. I have known a few low IQ people who think more like animals and I mean this as a complement.

I knew a gentleman who ran from the WWII soldiers who killed everyone in his family. As a young child, he had to survive on his own in the forest. I asked him how he did that and he said he watched the animals and learned from them.

"Who's thinking explicitly about what to say next?" I am thrilled you got why I thought this thread was important. The more I thought about our thinking versus animals, the less sure I was about our own thinking! I know there is soooo much I do not know and how many books I try to read are over my head. I never habituated the steps of logical thinking so my struggle to learn seems futile. I have gone through life in a state of daydreaming and it is amazing I got this far.

Even within the categories it appears that there are vast differences in consciousness, intelligence and behaviour repertoires. — Jack Cummins

I remember when there was a lot of excitement about chimps recognizing their image in a mirror. Of course much more research has been done since then.

The ability to recognize one’s own reflection is shared by humans and only a few other species, including chimpanzees. However, this ability is highly variable across individual chimpanzees. In humans, self-recognition involves a distributed, right-lateralized network including frontal and parietal regions involved in the production and perception of action. The superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) is a system of white matter tracts linking these frontal and parietal regions. The current study measured mirror self-recognition (MSR) and SLF anatomy in 60 chimpanzees using diffusion tensor imaging. Successful self-recognition was associated with greater rightward asymmetry in the white matter of SLFII and SLFIII, and in SLFIII’s gray matter terminations in Broca’s area. We observed a visible progression of SLFIII’s prefrontal extension in apes that show negative, ambiguous, and compelling evidence of MSR. Notably, SLFIII’s terminations in Broca’s area are not right-lateralized or particularly pronounced at the population level in chimpanzees, as they are in humans. Thus, chimpanzees with more human-like behavior show more human-like SLFIII connectivity. These results suggest that self-recognition may have co-emerged with adaptations to frontoparietal circuitry.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5390703/#:~:text=The%20ability%20to%20recognize%20one's,highly%20variable%20across%20individual%20chimpanzees.

I don't know. Rational processes have come into being through it. Does that make it a rational process? — Patterner

We really need a thread for that discussion. I started a thread but left it in the logic and philosophy of math category. That might not be the right thing to do but there are reasons for doing so. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15426/evolution-animals-and-humans

To think rationally is to use (valid) reasons for your actions. If an animal can learn new information that it was not born with (instincts) and use that information in a way that provides some advantage to its survival then we could say that it is capable of rationally thinking. For instance, my cat has learned some English words like, "treat" and "outside", and has even learned to communicate to me her needs to receive treats and to go outside even though she does not have the ability to say those words. Rational thinking provides the ability for the animal to make predictions using the patterns it has experienced in its environment. — Harry Hindu

I agree with you and would gladly discuss it in another thread.

By "evidence of rational thinking" I have in mind that animals can learn and having learned appear to apply what they have learned, replicating the actions of their lesson learned to obtain a desired result. But a greater challenge to you is for an account of "problem solving" by animals - and that won't be easy. Perhaps a start would be a quick description of the process. — tim wood

Monkey see monkey do. I think we need a different thread for discussing animals. I have been watching and re-watching lectures about arthropods and was really looking forward to sharing information with you, but not in a math thread. The language skills of some great apes is amazing and they can teach their children. I can not make strong arguments about this but it is an interesting subject.

Nature or nurture? Why not both? Instinct - nature - given, but any pet owner can recite occasions when the animal exhibited evidence of rational thinking. My guess is that the both killing and mistreatment of animals makes it a necessity to resist acknowledging their "personhood." — tim wood

What do you mean by rational thinking? I have no doubt that animals are good at problem-solving.

In mathematics, a rational function is any function that can be defined by a rational fraction, which is an algebraic fraction such that both the numerator and the denominator are polynomials. The coefficients of the polynomials need not be rational numbers; they may be taken in any field K. In this case, one speaks of a rational function and a rational fraction over K. The values of the variables may be taken in any field L containing K. Then the domain of the function is the set of the values of the variables for which the denominator is not zero, and the codomain is L.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_function

Math is not a knee jerk reaction to someone walking across the yard. It does not come to us naturally but we must first learn how to learn math. How do you propose to teach your best friend (dog) to use math?

I can fully appreciate the sentiment of humans being animals. But I think the awareness of other animals is different from ours. I will never be able to tell what used the path by sniffing a spot on the ground. I can not detect that a person has cancer, or is autistic, or has dangerously high blood sugar levels by smelling it. Services dogs can. I would love to think like a dog but I will not experience life as a dog does.