[Koshkin]

> if animals can think

Well, it is not an easy question to answer. First off, everyone would agree that humans, apes, dogs, squirrels, spiders - all "think" in essentially different ways. This is important. Humans, for example, think mostly in terms of the language (words, phrases) - the way they would talk to other people (or post on Facebook, for that matter). Other animals do not do that. From that perspective, computers are closer to humans than animals. Again, this is an important difference that cannot be ignored. It would help if we had different words for these different levels of "thinking", but we don't.

[khedoros1]

> First off, everyone would agree that humans, apes, dogs, squirrels, spiders - all "think" in essentially different ways.

I wouldn't, and a lot of the other comments on this story imply that they wouldn't, either. As an example, when I think, it's not usually in the form of words until I try to map my thoughts and feelings into a more concrete form. I'm particularly conscious of this because I frequently wrack my mind looking for the word that closest matches the thought that I'm trying to convey. The thought itself starts in a wordless form.

I can force my thoughts into an "audible" internal monologue, and I do when I'm reading, writing, or conversing, but it's a relatively forced way of thinking for me.

[Koshkin]

An insect's "thinking" consists mostly of following instincts and some acquired reflexes. There's (much, much) more to the human thinking than that, and there are a few levels of consciousness in between.

[khedoros1]

If you'd stuck to that in the original post, I would've upvoted and moved down the thread. I was replying to the stronger claims that things like other advanced mammals "all think in essentially different ways", and your characterization of the nature of human thought.

[aleksei]

Can you point to some to research on the subject? I would think it's not at all clear in which manner animals think, be it in terms of a language or not. Even for humans language may just be a layer on top of thought, and in fact there are those who claim not to think in any specific language.

[gaius]

This is called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis if you want to do more reading https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

[FooHentai]

I have a pet theory (hypothesis?) that infant amnesia is due to acquisition of language. When you gain language and start thinking in it, you lose the ability to meaningfully access memories made beforehand.

[Broken_Hippo]

This theory is likely at least partially correct, mostly because of what we figured out from kids born deaf. I can't remember where I read this stuff, though:

It used to be society thought a deaf person also meant you had low IQ. The signs were everywhere. It winds up that sign language was the key to not having a low IQ. It is almost like you need to learn the language of your brain.