"This form of deliberative reasoning is essentially ‘imagination’, it is a distinctly human ability"
A completely unfounded supposition, as so often appears to be the case when some human monopoly is claimed. We didn't magically sprout whole new categories of ability during a measly few million years of evolution.
Anecdotally, I see crows getting out out the way of my car. Not confused and haphazardly as many birds do, but in calculated, deliberate, unhurried steps to somewhere just outside my trajectory - steps which clearly takes into account such elements as my speed and the state of other traffic on the road. Furthermore, when it's season for walnuts and the like, they'll calmly drop their haul on the asphalt, expecting my tyres to crush it for them. This - in my rural bit of Northern Europe - appears to be a recent import or invention; I never saw it done until two years ago.
And there's The Case of the Dog and the Peanut Butter Jars. My dog, my peanut butter jars, and they were empty, but not cleaned. Alone at home, she found them one day, and clearly had experimented on the first one, which had bitemarks aplenty on the lid. The rest she managed to unscrew without damage. Having licked the jars clean, apparently she got to thinking of the grumpy guy who woul eventually be coming home. I can think of no other explanation why I found the entire stash of licked-clean jars hidden - although not succesfully - under a rug.
Tell me again about imagination and its distinctly human nature.
Of course. This is extremely annoying, esp. now that the Internets are choke-full of counter examples. Descartes wrote many stupid things about animals being "automatons", but at least he had the excuse of living in a pre-Youtube erra.
> When placing a glass on the edge of a table, for example, we will likely pause to consider how stable it is and whether it might fall. On the basis of that imagined consequence we might readjust the glass to prevent it from falling and breaking.
Or, if you're a cat, you might push it over the edge for the fun of it:
reminds me of my dog and cat when I was a kid in Germany whenever we left the house the cat, a Siamese who had learned to open doors, would open the door to the garbage and the dog would then pull it into the kitchen to spread on the floor for a party.
Well, just because you can't think of one, doesn't mean your explanation is correct, surely. This could easily be explained by an instinctual "hide food remnants to avoid attracting bigger things".
In some formal scheme yes. In the actual situation no, it could not easily. Or we can reduce the question to a squabble of semantics: Alright, the dog's actions were not conscious and actively planned, but then neither are ours. I fail to see the fundamental difference, and have never really heard a coherent case made that there is one.
You are of course right that argument from own lack of imagination is no proof of anything.
I should think it fairly clear, unless you propose some definite, qualitative difference between the dog and the rest of us.
It's not clear that such a difference exists, is it?
A completely unfounded supposition, as so often appears to be the case when some human monopoly is claimed. We didn't magically sprout whole new categories of ability during a measly few million years of evolution.
Anecdotally, I see crows getting out out the way of my car. Not confused and haphazardly as many birds do, but in calculated, deliberate, unhurried steps to somewhere just outside my trajectory - steps which clearly takes into account such elements as my speed and the state of other traffic on the road. Furthermore, when it's season for walnuts and the like, they'll calmly drop their haul on the asphalt, expecting my tyres to crush it for them. This - in my rural bit of Northern Europe - appears to be a recent import or invention; I never saw it done until two years ago.
And there's The Case of the Dog and the Peanut Butter Jars. My dog, my peanut butter jars, and they were empty, but not cleaned. Alone at home, she found them one day, and clearly had experimented on the first one, which had bitemarks aplenty on the lid. The rest she managed to unscrew without damage. Having licked the jars clean, apparently she got to thinking of the grumpy guy who woul eventually be coming home. I can think of no other explanation why I found the entire stash of licked-clean jars hidden - although not succesfully - under a rug.
Tell me again about imagination and its distinctly human nature.