From numbers and information to communication
When I walked my dog, I decided his sniffing was equal to humans reading a newspaper and that made me more patient as I waited for him to move on. Eventually, I started carrying a book I could read while he read the information on the ground.
When chased by a dog or a bear, I don't intentionally communicate I am scared but I have been told when we are scared animals can smell it. I have also heard running away from a bear is probably not a good idea. That identifies you as the prey, something to eat.
Question: Is an animal's response the result of rationally thinking through a communication or something else?
Throughout the animal kingdom, from the simplest creature to the most complex, some form of communication takes place. Although most of us think of it in terms of sound, actually there are four methods of communicationauditory (sound), visual (sight), tactile (touch), and chemical (smell and taste). https://tpwd.texas.gov/publications/nonpwdpubs/young_naturalist/animals/chemical_communication/#:~:text=Throughout%20the%20animal%20kingdom%2C%20from,chemical%20(smell%20and%20taste).
When chased by a dog or a bear, I don't intentionally communicate I am scared but I have been told when we are scared animals can smell it. I have also heard running away from a bear is probably not a good idea. That identifies you as the prey, something to eat.
Question: Is an animal's response the result of rationally thinking through a communication or something else?
Comments (15)
What do you mean by rational thinking? I have no doubt that animals are good at problem-solving.
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.
Bears certainly have some instinctual intelligence. But they also learn. If a bear is not raised and taught by its mother, it does not do what bears do. I don't know if it would die very young.
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.
Quoting Patterner
Is natural selection a rational process?
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.
I agree with you and would gladly discuss it in another thread.
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
You read emails, they read peemails.
Quoting Athena
Just as we, they try to be rational. That helps them to survive. Information like what is food, where is food and predators and how to avoid them (or kill them) that can kill you are important.
Feelings, anger and fear, happiness etc. are the easiest things to "communicate". "I'm here" or "Warning" are also easy. What animals lack is to communicate in the advance way we can do with an advanced language, and they also lack a collective memory. This is central. It can be seen even from the simple fact how much philosophy, the love of wisdom, put's emphasis to language. It's really not an accident or coincidence. Wit a collective memory, especially with written language, all information can add up on a totally different level, which creates then all that advanced "rational thinking" that separates us from other animals.
Also I'm sure that animals have some equivalent number system like "no predators, one predator, two predators, many predators". That might be totally enough for them, a system of zero, 1, 2 and many is sound and rational. If they see three or more predators, there's no reason (or time) to count, just flee! Yet there's no reason for them to then to think about transcendental numbers or imaginary numbers... the problems they face can already be dealt with the simple "arithmetic".
(Clever Hans the horse. Not perhaps a great mathematician, but an awesome horse in reading human body language)
Also when you don't have that collective memory, the findings or innovations of some extremely smart animal won't go on as information to the next generations.
This means that you can hunt animals even today with totally same strategies that people used tens of thousands of years ago. Animal predators can also use tactics to hunt their prey, but not with the ability and tactics that humans can. Like one group of people approaching the animals by making noise and hence guiding the animal pack to go away, only then to be ambushed with others lying in wait, armed either with spears or arrows or present day hunting rifles. In a similar way, a hunter using an elkhound has been effective in the past and will be also in the future: a moose won't think that a small barking dog next to it poses any danger to it. And a future moose will not notice it either.
(This moose doesn't know in what danger it is)
Assume if moose would behave as humans in this case: first as a collective they would notice that they are hunted. Then they reason out how they are hunted and then decide how to avoid this and then teach these methods to the next generations. Yet for now, the basic survival skills for an animal is hearing, eyesight, scent and general alertness. Yes, some things can be taught by their parents. Yet these teachings are not learned rules like "If an elkhound comes to you, get the hell out of Dodge. Preferably first kick the little dog that it cannot follow you. Here's a picture of an Elkhound, if you counter one".
Quoting Harry HinduNo, for the above reason.
Quoting Harry HinduUnder relatively simple conditions, yes. We can calculate where Pluto will be in a hundred years. But we cannot predict what mutations to human DNA will take place at any point in the future. Or how many children my son will have, or if any will be poets, cure cancer, or be a mass murderer.
No. It is not reason that they use, although they can be described as intelligent.
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.
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?