Neil Moffatt
Coleen Walter@NicelyManifest Your question led me to other questions. Thoughts are abstractions with roots in the physical-body and environment. Thoughts shape personality in the individual and the culture within a group.
Should we consider the possibility that some animals (elephants, rats, crows) may have culture or just dismiss that as anthropomorphism? Elephants mourn and grieve lost calves. Trees communicate through their fungal networks and seem to reach consensus about sharing resources. 1 of 2
@coleenwalter I think we fail to want to see in animals what we see as defining features of ourselves. Panskeep spent a decade or more studying animal emotion - and warned that this was pointless by others - in order to then study human emotion. We share 6 basic emotional systems with animals, one of which is the rage circuit ...
You can see in dog eyes that there is a lot of sentience. That tends to correlate with thinking.
@NicelyManifest I was grateful to see an open ended question on Mastodon today. My answer was probably strange but that’s where the question took me.
@coleenwalter Thanks. Much of modern life and dialogue tends to be trapped in habits I feel.
Education systems do not help - they strait jacket children rather than expand and evolve them.
I have many dialogues with AI regarding the mind. Many very interesting responses. Recent one is how we do not consciously think - that thinking is the role of the subconscious. What we call thinking is enabling steering and vetting that thinking.