Is there a continuum from unintelligent creatures to intelligent ones? Octopuses have great intelligence and imagination. And what about an ant colony? Individual ants are quite stupid, but by interaction they form a "macro-organism" which exhibits remarkable "intelligence."
The main thing separating humans from "lower animals" is language. Is complex language a key to consciousness and advanced thought?
When we "think", do language centers in our brain emit words or sentences? For some people, yes; for others, no. I think. I often "think in words" but feel that that slows and weakens my thinking. My occasional flashes of creative insight arrive WITHOUT words.
Here are some other useful posts that I agree with:
Living creatures (creatures of life) are divided into two groups:
1) Rational humans that think objectively.
2) Irrational animals.
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I think there is a category error there.
An intelligent species has the capacity to imagine, evaluate, and choose. This would certainly include most animals, such as squirrels and crows. Non-intelligent species operate instinctively, their behavior is "hard-wired". This would (I imagine) cover all plant-life, and probably most insects, and certainly all bacterium.
Since "irrational" usually implies faulty logic and/or a faulty brain (a human condition), the distinction I think you're referring to would be between rational (intelligent) and non-rational animals (non-intelligent).
Man is rational, but animals are not is an error we have inherited from Aristotle. See Aristotle's De Anima. Part of Aristotle's foolish hylomorphism metaphysical nonsense. Substance - form.
Aristotle tells us that the substance of man has the form of rationality. Intelligence. He claims this form is eternal and imortal and survives the death of a body, that is substance.
This piece of sophisticated stupidity is still in mutant forms current among Catholic theologian Aristotle, Aquinas fanbois. It long was the basis for cretinist claims animals were mere automatons, that did not suffer or feel pin. That has been an excuse for centuries on cruelty to animals.
Historical note: It is said, with controversy, that Epicurus about a century after Aristotle cliamed that animals have free will. Two centuries later, the Roman natural philosopher Titus LUCRETIUS Carus, "challenged the assumption that humans are necessarily superior to animals, noting that mothers in the wild recognize and nurture their babies as do human moms."
I also tend to think we (and especially atheists) overstate the importance of thought, and understate the importance of instinct and intuition. Instinct is like an ever present machine that works so flawlessly most of us barely notice it's there.
Yes. Quite often masquerading as "rational thought" or "common sense", at least to the unwary.
I'm often fascinated by the categorizations and evaluations the mind seems to supply instantly, despite most people imagining their thoughts on their subjects to be rational and well considered. "That is a country music station" or "that person over there is homeless" or "that is classified as a skyscraper not an apartment". We make these determinations seemingly instantaneously, faster than we can consciously process the thought passing through our mind, and act on the assumption we formed until or unless that assumption is challenged. Yet we like to imagine that our thoughts on art, economics, and architecture are well-considered and rational, not emotional or reactive.
Somewhat related, but I've been thinking lately about where people could derive their knowledge and models beyond the culture they live in. Then you recognize that essentially none of us read, and even fewer read anything approaching esoteric. Which basically makes most of us microcosms of the culture we live in, and friends we keep.
So most of our objective, rational thought is just socially accepted, common knowledge among our social group.