Near the end of the Jan 30 discussion we talked about the “unit perspective of man” as a way of contrasting human consciousness to that of non-human animals. As I understand it this means humans are capable of forming abstractions ie. separating attributes (eg table shape) from their specific measurements. We form the concept “table” and can think about it in the absence of perceiving any specific table.(Perhaps this is what Jon was referring to when he spoke about the uniquely human ability to “think” about things in their absence.) I wonder if some non-human animals are able of doing something like this but only in a very rudimentary way. They can recognize enough similarities among entities to be able to react accordingly. For example, a young African gazelle may see cheetah X at a particular moment and learn (or instinctively know) “danger” impelling it to run. At another time, it sees another cheetah Y which may be larger, moving differently, etc but is similar enough that it again recognizes danger and runs. Although it recognizes enough similarities in its environment to be able to survive it cannot do what a human can do ie think conceptually about “cheetah” (eg in a scientific study).
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