Catitude (yes, it is meaningful)

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fizzychicken

313 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2733662 24-Jun-2021 11:49

My tripawd cat

Screaming at me to be let in...there is a cat flap....and the door is actually wide open.

paint me like one of your french girls

contender for the most vacant, dumbest animal around. I am convinced the majority of the time her head is full of silence. She will however give affection to anyone who comes to this house, in exchange for pats.....if you don't provide pats she will just headbutt you until you do.

If she was given a prosthetic she would most likely just drag it around.

https://keybase.io/fizzychicken

BlinkyBill

1443 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#2733687 24-Jun-2021 12:15

TwoSeven:

I think that wisdom and intelligence are not the same thing, although here I am just speculating.

the thing I suggest with Intelligence is that two different species might be considered intelligent, yet one might be capable of making more complex decisions than the other.

it might be that a dependent decision maker might rely on collective thought or previously learned responses when making decisions. Decision making in this case might be just choosing a response from a set of options. For example, I got wet when I last went out in the rain. It is raining now and I don’t want to get wet - so I wont go out.

perhaps Independent decision making might allow one to both make decisions without the need for a group, and to come up with lateral solutions to previous problems. For example, I still want to go out, so giving it some thought I notice there is some cover. If I stay under it, I can be out and not get wet.

So we might think that in the first example, an intelligent decision was made - but it is likely to always the same response given the same input. In the second example, an intelligent decision was also made, however given the sense of the state of the world (rain, availability of cover) and a sense of need (desire to go out) an alternate solution to the problem can be arrived at and applied in the future.

One might suggest that Sapience is the ability to gain and use of tacit knowledge.

I don’t know why you don’t just research sapience and use it correctly. You are conflating different concepts. Got no idea what you’re attempting to describe with dependent and independent decision-making: the former relates to getting advice or guidance from others before deciding, not selecting from a set of options. Independent is not getting such guidance. If you asked someone else what might happen if you went out in the rain, then make a decision - that’s dependent decision-making. If you consider what happened last time you went out in the rain, then made a decision - that’s independent decision-making.

Wisdom (sapience) and intelligence are indeed not the same thing, but it’s not possible to demonstrate sapience without intelligence. Sapience is demonstrating great insight or wisdom; in other words an additional attribute over and above ‘average’ or ‘normal’ level of intelligence. It has nothing to do with gaining knowledge; it’s all to do with how one applies or uses the gained knowledge. Necessarily in most cases this is tacit knowledge, but not always.

Given the correct understanding of knowledge and sapience it would be very difficult to ascribe sapience to a cat or that dogs only operate on conditioned reflexes.

Rikkitic

Awrrr
18657 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#2733695 24-Jun-2021 12:39

I used to go bunny-hunting with my cat. He soon realised that I was hopeless at it and adjusted his strategy (and it was strategy) accordingly. Instead of assuming I could actually intercept the bunny, he shifted the load to only use me as a blocker since he knew the bunny would try to avoid me. That gave him more latitude to move the bunny in the direction he wanted, until he finally penned it. He wasn't a particularly wise cat, but he was a smart one.

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Eva888

2427 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#2733698 24-Jun-2021 12:43

@fizzychicken Your handsome cat made me laugh. Has a lot of attitude and what an expression.

Paul1977

5039 posts

Uber Geek

#2733857 24-Jun-2021 15:32

There's no question that cats and dogs have varying levels of intelligence, including problem solving skills. I'm not a dog owner, so can't speak much to them, but cats problem solving seems pretty limited to trial and error. They don't look at a problem and figure out the best solution, they just try anything and might eventually stumble upon a solution - which they then remember.

If an inwards swinging door was not open quite enough, our last cat quickly learned she could reach her paw through the gap and pull it open. Our current cat has not idea - he'll just scratch at the carpet or inadvertently push it completely closed. But the one who can't figure out a door, is a far more proficient hunter - he knows when to sneak and when to pounce. The "door opener" cat was a heavy footed buffoon that any prey could hear coming from a mile away (couldn't climb a tree either).

I've gone off on a tangent now, but I think my point was going to be that just because an animal shows varying levels of intelligence it doesn't necessarily mean they're capable of complex emotions. And by complex I mean "human-like".

Maybe they do feel something analogous to what we call love, I don't think there's any way to really know; but I personally think anything akin to emotions in a cat would be VERY different from us.

BlinkyBill

1443 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#2733867 24-Jun-2021 15:52

It’s entirely possible to have high intelligence and no emotions. Alexithymia is a condition that demonstrates this, as do some schizoid disorders. Conversely it’s possible to have low intelligence and high emotion; this is much more common than the reverse.

I don’t think it’s proven that there is a correlation directly between intelligence and emotion. But I think there is very strong evidence that emotions (emotional intelligence) is absolutely necessary for an individual’s existence in a society. Cats and dogs both naturally live in groups (cats less so) and therefore require emotions for this purpose.

Cats and dogs aren’t humans, who live in different sorts of societies to either cats or dogs and so cats and dogs have different emotional states than each other or humans.

It’s futile to anthropomorphise the human condition to cats, although it does make the human feel better.

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