How would distinguish conceptual behavior?

[dan2100]

OK, I am not referring to optical (or other illusions) here. I agree that perceptions and conceptions are different kinds of abstractions, but I think it is useful to include them both in the category of 'abstractions'. Perceptions would be of a lower order than conceptions and historically (and evolutionally) would occur first. Conceptions would normally be based on repeated perceptions, however, it is possible to have concepts by postulation (due to Northrop) in which we haven't actually perceived an object with said characteristics. An 'electron' would be in this category.

I'm curious as to your purpose for introducing the abstraction angle. Are you emphasizing the abstraction aspect in order to highlight the subjectivity generated by the observer?

The word 'abstract', as a verb, often means something along the lines "to remove or extract". It also implies not all of something. So we abstract (extract some, but not all) from the stimuli we receive and thus perceive objects. So yes, there is an element of subjectivity in this process.

I would disagree about subjectivity -- at least as I normally think of that term in this context -- and use relativity instead. Perceptual processes necessarily are selective, but they are not a free for all. This is no different, in some respects, to how a fishing net works. It's not subjective, but it only catches fish and other things over a certain size -- all else being equal. You wouldn't, I trust, call such a fishing net subjective because it didn't catch everything.

[tjohnson]

Also, sensation is another category all together. Perceptions are experienced, in a sense, as totalities or as discrimination of entities.

I don't see how this can be reconciled with the idea of evolution. If we evolved from much less developed organisms and this was a gradual evolution then did we one day all of sudden be able to "perceive objects"? I believe that the ability to manufacture representations of objects was a gradual process which started out very simply and became more complex as our organs evolved. Organisms around today, like a worm, would perceive grass and pavement for example.

[dan2100]

Also, sensation is another category all together. Perceptions are experienced, in a sense, as totalities or as discrimination of entities.

I don't see how this can be reconciled with the idea of evolution. If we evolved from much less developed organisms and this was a gradual evolution then did we one day all of sudden be able to "perceive objects"? I believe that the ability to manufacture representations of objects was a gradual process which started out very simply and became more complex as our organs evolved. Organisms around today, like a worm, would perceive grass and pavement for example.

This is in regards to humans now -- the distinction between sensation and perception -- and I was not offering how this came about. My guess is, though, that it would have to arise long before humans came on the scene.

[tjohnson]

I would disagree about subjectivity -- at least as I normally think of that term in this context -- and use relativity instead. Perceptual processes necessarily are selective, but they are not a free for all. This is no different, in some respects, to how a fishing net works. It's not subjective, but it only catches fish and other things over a certain size -- all else being equal. You wouldn't, I trust, call such a fishing net subjective because it didn't catch everything.

I agree. There main idea is we abstract from something and we don't abstract all there is.

[dan2100]

I would disagree about subjectivity -- at least as I normally think of that term in this context -- and use relativity instead. Perceptual processes necessarily are selective, but they are not a free for all. This is no different, in some respects, to how a fishing net works. It's not subjective, but it only catches fish and other things over a certain size -- all else being equal. You wouldn't, I trust, call such a fishing net subjective because it didn't catch everything.

I agree. There main idea is we abstract from something and we don't abstract all there is.

I'm not sure where you're going with this. I also think "abstract" as a verb has a connotation of a conscious process -- or, at least, a process open to conscious control. Would you agree that, for the most part, sense perception is not a conscious process and is mostly only open to trivial conscious control, such as looking this way instead of that or touching this rather than that?

But in so far as you might treat perception as a process of abstraction, sure, like all such processes, it's going to filter out something -- in fact, probably most things. For instance, as you might be aware, the eye alone filters out all sorts of what we might call noise and the wider visual system is really good at detecting some things and not others in the visual field, such as, for humans, color, motion, and edges. But what's the point here where presumably we're discussing how to detect concepts? In other words, why reiterate this point?

[Dragonfly]

I would borrow a distinction from Kelley here: between perception and perceptual judgment. The former is what you perceive or, more spefically, the perception itself. The latter is, to use your term, the interpretation. For example, in the classic example, you see a straight stick in water and might judge it to be bent. Your actual perception here is just how the straightness of the stick is perceive when part of it is submerged in water.

No, we don't perceive in general a bent stick, as we have the experience how a stick in water will look like, it's our experience that determines our perception and it has become an automatic response; only a person who has no experience of how straight things look when they're partially submerged in water would perceive a bent stick (or perhaps when the circumstances are so particular that we still may be tricked in thinking that the stick is bent). In the same way we don't perceive people at a distance as tiny dwarfs, our brain automatically compensates for the perspective effect. But the Ames room shows how we can be misled: we perceive in that case that for example the person at the right is much bigger than the another person at the left of the room, even when we know that we are tricked - the person at the left may actually be the bigger one (if well done, the illusion can be very strong). A perception is an (automatic) interpretation.

That's also demonstrated in the ambiguity of some images, like that picture of a young woman that also can be seen as an old hag, the vase versus the two faces or the Necker cube. In those cases we perceive one of both possibilities (though we may shift quickly to the other one). We also may know rationally that our perception is wrong, but still be unable to "get" the correct perception. One good example is when I look through a telescope at the moon. When the lighting is "wrong" (when the light comes from below in the field of view, instead of from more or less above) I tend to see craters not as concave structures, but as convex "domes". I know this is an incorrect perception, but I find it often very difficult to "switch" to the correct one, my brain insists on telling me that I'm seeing domes instead of craters, although I know very well that these are craters and not domes. A perception can definitely be wrong.

[tjohnson]

I'm not sure where you're going with this. I also think "abstract" as a verb has a connotation of a conscious process -- or, at least, a process open to conscious control. Would you agree that, for the most part, sense perception is not a conscious process and is mostly only open to trivial conscious control, such as looking this way instead of that or touching this rather than that?

I think it can be both conscious and unconscious. Sometimes when something strikes our eye it doesn't feel right and we then concentrate on what we are perceiving - to try and abstract more information or verify what we are abstracting.

[dan2100]

I'm not sure where you're going with this. I also think "abstract" as a verb has a connotation of a conscious process -- or, at least, a process open to conscious control. Would you agree that, for the most part, sense perception is not a conscious process and is mostly only open to trivial conscious control, such as looking this way instead of that or touching this rather than that?

I think it can be both conscious and unconscious. Sometimes when something strikes our eye it doesn't feel right and we then concentrate on what we are perceiving - to try and abstract more information or verify what we are abstracting.

I don't disagree with that in one way -- hence my comment about "trivial conscious control." But my point was more that perception is almost exclusively not consciously controlled -- save in that trivial sense. However, my saying "trivial" here might trivialize (no pun intended) this process -- as most perception seems more an active collection of perceptions than just sitting back and registering an inventory of, say, objects in a room. Most is, as I believe Alva Noë points out, intimately linked with behavior and action. I.e., animals perceive to guide their behavior and their behavior is also coupled with perceptual feedback -- as any casual observer of animals will notice. (I'm watching a human right now interact with a laptop.)

But my point is not to deny this link or that the process of perception as such is not passive. Rather it was to state it's basically automatic and not, for the most part, under conscious control. Also, with rare exception, it seems, this process does not vary much between individuals. Two individuals, e.g., given the same object to perceive under the same circumstance seem to have pretty much the same perception -- even if they might otherwise judge and evaluate it differently. (Think of the mirage example. Someone unfamiliar with mirages seems to see the same exact thing as someone familiar with them, though the latter will likely say, "That might be a mirage and not a lake off in the distance.")

[tjohnson]

I don't disagree with that in one way -- hence my comment about "trivial conscious control." But my point was more that perception is almost exclusively not consciously controlled -- save in that trivial sense. However, my saying "trivial" here might trivialize (no pun intended) this process -- as most perception seems more an active collection of perceptions than just sitting back and registering an inventory of, say, objects in a room. Most is, as I believe Alva Noë points out, intimately linked with behavior and action. I.e., animals perceive to guide their behavior and their behavior is also coupled with perceptual feedback -- as any casual observer of animals will notice. (I'm watching a human right now interact with a laptop.)

But my point is not to deny this link or that the process of perception as such is not passive. Rather it was to state it's basically automatic and not, for the most part, under conscious control. Also, with rare exception, it seems, this process does not vary much between individuals. Two individuals, e.g., given the same object to perceive under the same circumstance seem to have pretty much the same perception -- even if they might otherwise judge and evaluate it differently. (Think of the mirage example. Someone unfamiliar with mirages seems to see the same exact thing as someone familiar with them, though the latter will likely say, "That might be a mirage and not a lake off in the distance.")

Yes, there is definitely invariance under transformation (jargon alert in perceptions amongst different perceivers as well as in the same perceiver but at different times. When seeing, some light energy is transformed into nervous energy but information is retained during the transformation. So I agree that the signal processing aspect of perception is automatic but it takes learning or programming to get the information out of the signals. Organisms that may not even have what we call 'consciousness' are still abstracting information from their environment but they wouldn't be doing so to the extent that they could perceive "objects", for instance.

[dan2100]

I don't disagree with that in one way -- hence my comment about "trivial conscious control." But my point was more that perception is almost exclusively not consciously controlled -- save in that trivial sense. However, my saying "trivial" here might trivialize (no pun intended) this process -- as most perception seems more an active collection of perceptions than just sitting back and registering an inventory of, say, objects in a room. Most is, as I believe Alva Noë points out, intimately linked with behavior and action. I.e., animals perceive to guide their behavior and their behavior is also coupled with perceptual feedback -- as any casual observer of animals will notice. (I'm watching a human right now interact with a laptop.)

But my point is not to deny this link or that the process of perception as such is not passive. Rather it was to state it's basically automatic and not, for the most part, under conscious control. Also, with rare exception, it seems, this process does not vary much between individuals. Two individuals, e.g., given the same object to perceive under the same circumstance seem to have pretty much the same perception -- even if they might otherwise judge and evaluate it differently. (Think of the mirage example. Someone unfamiliar with mirages seems to see the same exact thing as someone familiar with them, though the latter will likely say, "That might be a mirage and not a lake off in the distance.")

Yes, there is definitely invariance under transformation (jargon alert in perceptions amongst different perceivers as well as in the same perceiver but at different times. When seeing, some light energy is transformed into nervous energy but information is retained during the transformation. So I agree that the signal processing aspect of perception is automatic but it takes learning or programming to get the information out of the signals. Organisms that may not even have what we call 'consciousness' are still abstracting information from their environment but they wouldn't be doing so to the extent that they could perceive "objects", for instance.

The technical term you use I've read only being used to cover the phenomenon of things like perceiving the same object despite it being move for one observer -- for instance, to use a visual example, how someone sees a bird not as a series of separate objects appearing and disappearing, but as one object (a bird) flying through the air or flitting from branch to branch. I've never seen it used for different observers.

I disagree about animals, especially humans, learning to perceive objects in general. I do agree that there are situations where one learns to peceive something -- as in your case of an experienced physician examining an x-ray and "seeing" a tumor or other problem. But in the general case, the subject must already perceive objects. The learning is often a refining or honing of this process, but no subject starts with, say, sensations and then learns to build perceptions from them. (This doesn't mean no subject starts with sensations, but if any do the process of moving a perceptions is not a learning process.) Why do I believe this? Because, as I believe Hume pointed out, there are nothing in sensations themselves from which to perceptions -- atl east, such that a subject who doesn't already have perceptions could, save by sheer luck, learn that, say, a chaos of sensations is actually a bird landing on the roof.

Also, just to reiterate an earlier point I made but which no one here seems to have acknowledged, in order to know about things like how the nervous system works -- as in your detailing the process -- you already have to have reliable perceptions of the world. Without them, none of this science would be known. And the same applies to knowing about other people: you must perceive them first before you can share data, theories, speculations, and good beer with them.

[tjohnson]

The technical term you use I've read only being used to cover the phenomenon of things like perceiving the same object despite it being move for one observer -- for instance, to use a visual example, how someone sees a bird not as a series of separate objects appearing and disappearing, but as one object (a bird) flying through the air or flitting from branch to branch. I've never seen it used for different observers.

I disagree about animals, especially humans, learning to perceive objects in general. I do agree that there are situations where one learns to peceive something -- as in your case of an experienced physician examining an x-ray and "seeing" a tumor or other problem. But in the general case, the subject must already perceive objects. The learning is often a refining or honing of this process, but no subject starts with, say, sensations and then learns to build perceptions from them. (This doesn't mean no subject starts with sensations, but if any do the process of moving a perceptions is not a learning process.) Why do I believe this? Because, as I believe Hume pointed out, there are nothing in sensations themselves from which to perceptions -- atl east, such that a subject who doesn't already have perceptions could, save by sheer luck, learn that, say, a chaos of sensations is actually a bird landing on the roof.

Also, just to reiterate an earlier point I made but which no one here seems to have acknowledged, in order to know about things like how the nervous system works -- as in your detailing the process -- you already have to have reliable perceptions of the world. Without them, none of this science would be known. And the same applies to knowing about other people: you must perceive them first before you can share data, theories, speculations, and good beer with them.

Yes, I agree that with humans, who do have an advanced nervous system, that perceiving objects is pretty well automatic. My point was that it did not happen overnight and that there must be a continuum from [not perceiving objects] to [perceiving objects] in the animal kingdom. I don't think the expression "perceiving objects" is accurate, to me it makes more sense to speak of constructing objects from data. This way we can simply say that other organisms cannot construct objects as well as we can.

Also, I am not suggesting we don't have "reliable perceptions of the world", I am trying to point out that they are constructions, even if they remain consistent.

[Christopher]

Also, I am not suggesting we don't have "reliable perceptions of the world", I am trying to point out that they are constructions, even if they remain consistent.

Actually, your post made a very cool point. Perceptions are automatically constructed and delivered to consciousness without conscious intervention. But the hard circuitry that delivers those finished products of perception are evolved. It's easily possible that the hardwiring could choose to shape sensory input into very different things than we observe.

For example, I point out the McGurk Effect because it is just that cool: your eyes detect someone saying "ga." Your ears detect someone saying "ba." But you perceive someone saying "da." The perception combines two sensory inputs and produces a third that is, well, just not the real thing. But then that makes you wonder... what is the real thing?

Watch and be amazed:

After you watch the short 5-second video, listen to it again with your eyes closed.

Edited April 6, 2010 by Christopher

[tjohnson]

Actually, your post made a very cool point. Perceptions are automatically constructed and delivered to consciousness without conscious intervention. But the hard circuitry that delivers those finished products of perception are evolved. It's easily possible that the hardwiring could choose to shape sensory input into very different things than we observe.

For example, I point out the McGurk Effect because it is just that cool: your eyes detect someone saying "ga." Your ears detect someone saying "ba." But you perceive someone saying "da." The perception combines two sensory inputs and produces a third that is, well, just not the real thing. But then that makes you wonder... what is the real thing?

Watch and be amazed:

After you watch the short 5-second video, listen to it again with your eyes closed.

That's really neat It never occurred to me how much we notice the movement of the lips but I guess a deaf person would eh?

[Christopher]

That's really neat It never occurred to me how much we notice the movement of the lips but I guess a deaf person would eh?

It gets even crazy. The "d" sound like dog and audacious (if I am choosing good examples, I might not be) are actually different frequencies of sound. If you record the frequencies produced for the "d" sound in both these words, they don't match up! What does match up is the shape of the mouth near the back of the throat when making the "d" sound in both these words, and that is what we perceive. In other words, when we listen to people speak, we hear sounds based on the shape of the mouth producing them and not just the actual frequencies being produced! THAT is evolution for you.

Edited April 6, 2010 by Christopher

[Leonid]

Perception is automatic but active process. Our brain run very powerful simulation software which is constantly corrected and upgraded by external inputs. "The "perception of the world" is merely the way humans turn sensory information into awareness. What is that all about? Here's one idea that will serve the purpose for this discussion (Fischler and Firschein, 1987, 233)

"No finite organism can completely model the infinite universe, but even more to the point, the senses can only provide a subset of the needed information; the organism must correct the measured values and guess at the needed missing ones."..."Indeed, even the best guesses can only be an approximation to reality - perception is a creative process." Donald C. Mikulecky

http://views.vcu.edu/~mikuleck/

Concepts are based on percepts but don't substitute them. Man and allegedly conceptual dog have to think in concepts. This would be their specific way to interact with reality. The only proper way to do that is to use concepts' designators-words. Every conceptual being has to develop language.

[Xray]

Christopher: It gets even crazy. The "d" sound like dog and audacious (if I am choosing good examples, I might not be) are actually different frequencies of sound. If you record the frequencies produced for the "d" sound in both these words, they don't match up! What does match up is the shape of the mouth near the back of the throat when making the "d" sound in both these words, and that is what we perceive. In other words, when we listen to people speak, we hear sounds based on the shape of the mouth producing them and not just the actual frequencies being produced! THAT is evolution for you.

D is a so called alveolar consonant, where the front part of the tongue touches the alveolar palate.

Despite the differnce of sound frequency (depending on the phonetic surroundings in which the "d" is pronounced), its phonematic function is to differentiate, e. g. dog from log.

Dan Ust: I actually do expect most animals, especially vertebrates and some mollusks, to exhibit some level of conceptual behavior -- given my readings in ethology. (Also, similar tests have been done already and seem to show some ability to apply abstractions, ergo, some conceptual ability. I'm mainly bringing this up to focus discussion here -- rather than to shock the world with evidence for concepts in dogs, cats, parrots, and rats.)

If one puts before a hungry dog a bowl of rusty nails and another bowl full of meat, the dog will have no problem in mentally abstracting the dish which is more likely to yield a meal.

As for higher developed animals, ike e.g. dogs, they can calculate in the abstract up to a certain level, and sometimes perform remarkable tasks.

As for humans, since all human thinking is done in concepts, to speak of an "anti-conceptual mentality" makes no sense.

Imo the so-called m "anti-conceptual mentality" is a pure Randian invention, the term ACM an arbitrary label she attaches to those who in her mind, don't reflect enough about existence.

http://praxeology.net/rand.htm

Edited April 11, 2010 by Xray

[dan2100]

Dan Ust: I actually do expect most animals, especially vertebrates and some mollusks, to exhibit some level of conceptual behavior -- given my readings in ethology. (Also, similar tests have been done already and seem to show some ability to apply abstractions, ergo, some conceptual ability. I'm mainly bringing this up to focus discussion here -- rather than to shock the world with evidence for concepts in dogs, cats, parrots, and rats.)

If one puts before a hungry dog a bowl of rusty nails and another bowl full of meat, the dog will have no problem in mentally abstracting the dish which is more likely to yield a meal.

As for higher developed animals, ike e.g. dogs, they can calculate in the abstract up to a certain level, and sometimes perform remarkable tasks.

Do you believe any ability to make distinctions at all is a sign of conceptuality? Or would posit that there are some abilities to make distinction that are non-conceptual? If you hold the former view, then, it seems to me, there is no difference between perceptual abilities and conceptual ones -- or that the former abilities are merely a subset of the latter. (I'm not saying this view is wrong, but I'd like to see more than just a bald statement that it is the case.)

As for humans, since all human thinking is done in concepts, to speak of an "anti-conceptual mentality" makes no sense.

Imo the so-called m "anti-conceptual mentality" is a pure Randian invention, the term ACM an arbitrary label she attaches to those who in her mind, don't reflect enough about existence.

http://praxeology.net/rand.htm

Not sure why you raised this issue in this context or why it matters to this discussion.

[Xray]

Do you believe any ability to make distinctions at all is a sign of conceptuality?

Or would posit that there are some abilities to make distinction that are non-conceptual? If you hold the former view, then, it seems to me, there is no difference between perceptual abilities and conceptual ones -- or that the former abilities are merely a subset of the latter. (I'm not saying this view is wrong, but I'd like to see more than just a bald statement that it is the case.)

Imo thinking in concepts is not only restricted to humans possessing the capacity of language which allows them use audio-visual symbols in communication.

I have e. g. observed our dog Mira, when she sees a car resembling ours in size and color, becoming joyfully alert, thinking a family member might be in it. So without needing to have the capacity of language, the dog, via her personal contact with an entity (which is called 'car' in English), has formed a mental concept (= an idea) of this entity in connection to her specific 'interests' as a family dog.

Dan Ust: Not sure why you raised this issue in this context or why it matters to this discussion.

The thread has "conceptual behavior", in its title, and this made me think of Rand's term "anti-conceptual mentality",

But you are correct: to deal with that extensively would be off-topic here. I'll see if I can find another thread where it fits in better.

Edited April 15, 2010 by Xray

[dan2100]

Do you believe any ability to make distinctions at all is a sign of conceptuality?

Or would posit that there are some abilities to make distinction that are non-conceptual? If you hold the former view, then, it seems to me, there is no difference between perceptual abilities and conceptual ones -- or that the former abilities are merely a subset of the latter. (I'm not saying this view is wrong, but I'd like to see more than just a bald statement that it is the case.)

Imo thinking in concepts is not only restricted to humans possessing the capacity of language which allows them use audio-visual symbols in communication.

I have e. g. observed our dog Mira, when she sees a car resembling ours in size and color, becoming joyfully alert, thinking a family member might be in it. So without needing to have the capacity of language, the dog, via her personal contact with an entity (which is called 'car' in English), has formed a mental concept (= an idea) of this entity in connection to her specific 'interests' as a family dog.

I would make two distinctions here. One is between conceptuality and language. Here I'm inclined to agree with you, but I stated as much earlier.

The other is between having concepts and having the ability to compare perceptions. Here I'm not sure that the example you use is a bona fide example of conceptual behavior. This is why earlier I put forth tests like being able to distinguish some more abstract similarities and differences, such as roundness. Granted, the borderline might be fuzzy and such a test might be setting the threshold too high for certain organisms. (What if they only have very low level concepts? A analogy might help here. I recall a test to find out why two numbers are alike. The two numbers were 49 and 169. Well, they're both odd numbers, both end in 9, but they're also the squares of two prime numbers. I can imagine some people never getting this -- maybe even some who could never get it because they simply can't grasp that concept. Now, were we to try detecting concepts by only seeing if someone got the square of a prime number feature, we'd be setting the bar too high. Likewise, if we just look for those noting both numbers end in 9, we might be setting the bar too low: some people might get that at a purely perceptual level merely because the 9s look alike (more so if they're in the same typeface) and we might have only detected their ability to make perceptual-level comparisons. This is, of course, presuming there is a valid distinction between conceptuality and perceptual discrimination.)

Dan Ust: Not sure why you raised this issue in this context or why it matters to this discussion.

The thread has "conceptual behavior", in its title, and this made me think of Rand's term "anti-conceptual mentality",

But you are correct: to deal with that extensively would be off-topic here. I'll see if I can find another thread where it fits in better.

Good. I prefer not to mix the issues, especially as any discussion here of the "anti-conceptual mentality" is likely to involve more heat than light.

[imurray]

There are journals that talk about this stuff. On top of that, they're often peer reviewed and written by people who know what the hell they're talking about. Just saying...

[dan2100]

There are journals that talk about this stuff. On top of that, they're often peer reviewed and written by people who know what the hell they're talking about. Just saying...

And this means what? Mere mortals can't aspire to such knowledge and shouldn't bother discussing these things?

[imurray]

There are journals that talk about this stuff. On top of that, they're often peer reviewed and written by people who know what the hell they're talking about. Just saying...

And this means what? Mere mortals can't aspire to such knowledge and shouldn't bother discussing these things?

Nope, just that one might want to start there first rather than sitting around speculating out of their derriere. Mortals have already done a lot of the work - why not try to understand what they've done first and then try to move the discussion forward...?

[dan2100]

There are journals that talk about this stuff. On top of that, they're often peer reviewed and written by people who know what the hell they're talking about. Just saying...

And this means what? Mere mortals can't aspire to such knowledge and shouldn't bother discussing these things?

Nope, just that one might want to start there first rather than sitting around speculating out of their derriere. Mortals have already done a lot of the work - why not try to understand what they've done first and then try to move the discussion forward...?

I thought it might be apparent that some of us -- me, for example -- have read some of primary literature. Recall my somewhat scattered review here of Furnishing the Mind.

Also, those who have read up on ethology and psychology here might have noticed my line of questioning and reasoning here is falling basically inside that ambit. When researchers inquire into whether non-human animals have concepts, their general approach is to figure out ways to test whether an animal has or can acquire concepts via behavioral tests.

[Rich Engle]

How to distinguish it? When something within homo sapiens (or close to, or associated with, like dogs) think of some shit and then go out and start trying to do it.

Like crying, there's no trying in baseball. Not that the failures can't be fun to watch, upon occasion.

That's not the problem. The problem is usually what the concept is, and 80/20 Vegas odds (against) are being benevolent on that one.

You tolerate he/she/them/ and maybe Cousin It because at least they thought of something.

Who cares who what where Cousin It it came from; by then they did it and it's too late. You either duck and cover, or send a fruit basket.

But that's where hope and faith come in.

There. All done.

r

Always There To Help

Edited April 22, 2010 by Rich Engle

[dan2100]

How to distinguish it? When something within homo sapiens (or close to, or associated with, like dogs) think of some shit and then go out and start trying to do it.

How do you know an animal, human or otherwise, is "think[ing] of some shit"? How do you an animal, human or otherwise, is starting to try to do "some shit" it or she or he thought of?

I believe some of the test I mentioned -- e.g., like seeing if an animal can pick out some object based on higher order abstractions, such as roundness -- actually get at conceptual capability. This test doesn't rely on getting into the animal's mind to know if it's thinking. Instead, the test is behavioral. (Of course, it presumes that behavior reveals what's going on in the animal's mind -- that behaving in certain complex ways is only likely if the animal has some conceptual capabilities.)

Your approach, though probably said in jest, seems too much wait and see. Many people who are surely conceptual might never evince this, too, because you might never observe them planning stuff and then carrying out their plans. You might only see them doing stuff like walking the dog or eating lunch in the park.