Quote:
Quote by: Athena  For us to be the humans as we expect humans to be, requires not only several brain and sensory functions, but also training for being human. |
Humans require conceptual knowledge.
Animals are perceptual. The brain of an animal takes the information gathered from its senses and integrates it into a percept. It uses the percept, "This tree harms me." "That animal hurts me." "This tastes good." to determine its actions. (NOTE: The animal does not consciously think "this tree harms me" it's a pain/pleasure mechanism that is automatic and subconscious).
Humans are conceptual:
"Man's sense organs function automatically; man's brain integrates his sense data into percepts automatically; but the process of integrating percepts into concepts—the process of abstraction and of conceptformation—is not automatic.
The process of concept-formation does not consist merely of grasping a few simple abstractions, such as "chair," "table," "hot," "cold," and of learning to speak. It consists of a method of using one's consciousness, best designated by the term "conceptualizing." It is not a passive state of registering random impressions. It is an actively sustained process of identifying one's impressions in conceptual terms, of integrating every event and every observation into a conceptual context, of grasping relationships, differences, similarities in one's perceptual material and of abstracting them into new concepts, of drawing inferences, of making deductions, of reaching conclusions, of asking new questions and discovering new answers and expanding one's knowledge into an ever-growing sum. The faculty that directs this process, the faculty that works by means of concepts, is: reason. The process is thinking."
Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
A human that lives with animals never learns to use his conceptual power of his brain, yet he is still capable of it.