Your consciousness makes you know who you are. Aniamls don't have conscious, they can't do the difference between themselves. An animal won't reconize itself in a mirror. It's in no way connected with one's intelligence.
I could have added quotes, it's almost exactly what my philosophy teacher told us as our very first lesson.
I'm not quite sure if i'm following you there... What do you mean by rational? Do you mean only humans think about what they see and experience? .
Unfortunately, on more than one occasion, I've had people ask where the exit was when they were almost standing in front of the door -- even looked at it ::).No, not quite. Some animals, especially those as complex as dogs and cats do indeed think about what the see and experience. Like you said, they can learn that they go out through a door, they can learn to anticipate what is about to happen by indicators like reaching for door handles, etc.
But they don't conceptualize. They can't take what they learned about your door and apply it to all doors they'll ever experience. In fact, they don't have a sense for "door" at all. If they were to see a strange door of totally different size, shape, color, etc from any door they've experienced they may not know that it's a door at all (especially if it doesn't share obvious characteristics with the doors they know and love).
We humans on the other hand can conceptualize "door". When confronted with a door like object we've never experienced we can observe it, sum it up as "door like enough" to be considered a door, and then apply all that we know about doors in general to this door. AND if we learn anything new from this specific door we can decide if our learnings apply to all doors in general or are unique to this specific door.
That's rational, and that's what separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom.
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