> > Sounds interesting, I shall check out the book. I would never deny > complex emotion in other animals as it's a primitive way of letting > yourself know if things are going well. I'm happy to consider myself > an ape, but I'm aware there are differences between us and chimps, I > just don't know if there are more similarities between us. I'll be > interested to hear of the extent of chimp reasoning, I've read a lot > of things where chimps have learned sign language but it's confused > as to whether they are just learning behaviour and getting a reward > at the end. I think that to be charitable they have a limited > potential (compared to us) but then maybe it shows how smart they are > that they can fit what must be for them an alien idea into their > world. > > To me abstract reasoning is the ability to take oneself out of the > moment and consider different options, I would have thought that > would require conceptual thought. I don't know of anything else that > can do that, but then perhaps most thinking is pre-verbal and we just > justify it with reason later. So maybe other animals do this but to a > lesser degree. But that is the key difference.
I read somewhere that the DNA difference between a semian and a human is one percent. Perhaps, this is the reason why the Catholic Church is very sensitive about issues relating to cloning and biological engineering. I could picture the movie, "The Island of Dr. Moreau", involved with this topic.
