| It all comes down to self-awareness. The "I think, therefore I am" thing (who was that...Descartes?).
Animals are self-aware, but not on the same level as you and I. They, like all life, vainly try to perpetuate their own lives and those of their families into permanence. We all have those sorts of prime directives embedded in us. It's survival-mode, and it's what has gotten us to the nice comfy state we're in now as a civilization.
But we can step back from all that and expand. We can know that we're on a planet that is essentially naught more than a grain of sand on an infinite beach (someone said that once...don't recall). I doubt Fido is concerned about the Mars Rover. He's still wondering where his next meal is coming from.
Animals can't expand on knowledge. Fido learns how to sit, stay, roll over, play dead, and wait until his owner says to eat the biscuit on his nose, but that doesn't mean that future generations of dogs will be able to expand on that into doing the Triple Lutz Jump on skates. Stories can be passed down from human to human, as can other information. Some things can, in theory, live in perpetuity with us de facto.
So is it strictly intelligence and an advanced brain? I'd have to say so. |