[QUOTE]Originally posted by robinrohan:
"feelings"--an emotion as opposed to an abstract idea. My dog whimpers because it feels sad. But I don't think the dog is thinking. It doesn't know why it feels sad. I think a dog's whole consciousness is one feeling after another--feelings of comfort, pain, lacks, cosiness, etc. Without language, we cannot think.[/B][/QUOTE]
How can you say that some beeing can actually feel something, but not know why it is sad ?
If the dog only feels sad, and doesn't connect it with a "why" what good would that feeling possible do to the dog ?
That would be a dog on LSD.
How would such a creature function in a group ? I would really like to see a dog like that. It sounds really unrealistic.
It can't learn anytning from the feeling!
Imho, if dogs couldn't connect pain with the action that caused it, dogs would be extinct, wouldn't they ?
or...
I throw a stick, and when the dog brings it back, I give the dog a reward, and he feels happy. The dog connects the action of fetching the stick with the fact that he was rewarded directly from me, and/or with the good feeling.
Isn't that an act of thinking ??
I also disagree with "without a language, we cannot think".
What do you mean by language ? Spoken language ? Sign language ? Image language ? The internal language in your brain ?
How do you suggest a 1-month old baby actually learn to speak in the first place if it has no language to do the reasoning with from the beginning ? By copy-paste ?
...another thing... the other day i watched something on TV about chimps. Some scientists were communicating with the chimps via 150 images, which the chimps could point at on a computer screen to form simple sentances. They understood concequeses in the future. One monkey were given a mirror, which she broke. She broke maybe 3 mirrors. Then they told her that if she didnt brake a mirror for 2 days she would get some blueberries. She really wanted to brake the mirror, but instead she protected it for 2 days, and got the blueberries. Then afterwards she broke the mirror. ( to her joy )
They also played numbergames with the chimps, in which she showed the chimp maybe 25 berries. Then she hid some of them in her hand, and left 7 of them on the ground. The chimp calculated how many were not hidden and deduced that she must have 18 in her hand.. and so on...