Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
I have not assumed that as a requirement. So I do not get your point. The brain and it states are part if the body. I just said something about the mental models we seem to have. Of course there are alternative explanations to behavior but you have to evaluate the evidence and see what theory is for now reasonable to hold for true (if any).
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There are points that hint towards "we have no real way of deciding" and points that hint towards "we can decide" - actually more points for the first one. In the end those two models are identical and we will never know - still it tells something about "reflecting prior to acting", because if we cannot decide what we are doing, then we cannot reflect prior to acting. Of course it is an irrelevant point - we will not know this, thus it is unimportant - and it does not differ us (in any way) from animals. NTL we simply dont know enough to really tell how decisicions or cognition works - neither for human nor for animals - and we most assuredly cannot decide what mental capacities an animal has. As I said - some are surprisingly intelligent (e.g. recognition of oneself in mirrors (basic abstraction), some sense of time, ability to reflect about the knowledge of others, ability to react to the beat in music, etc) and we still haven't found the limits. Thus stating "animals have no sense of time and cannot reflect prior to acting" is simplifying.
Then you said that crows reacting to others can simply be a learned reaction - of course it is. Nearly all behaviour (including reflection, human behaviour and mental processes) is a learned behaviour. This does not change the needed mental capacities in any way, nor does it negate a possible ability to reflect about abstracts (knowledge of others) or time.
And animals sure have some kinds of languages and react to the statements of others. Whether they are self reporting or not? We dont know.
--edit: I do not want to state that animals have the same mental capacities as human - because I cannot state such a thing because we simply dont know. Current research hints that some animals have (at least) the mental capacities of small children - they only lack hands.