Why do we have minds and animals do not have?

Question

When I have asked the question, I have absolutely known that all animals have brains like humans. The question was intended to know why do animal do not think like humans although they have minds and brains?

Answer 1

This is very tricky territory since everyone debates what "mind' and "think" mean. Educators now tend to talk about many types of intelligence, many of which are more developed in animals than in man.

There is a type of intelligence which Michael Jordan and the greatest athletes demonstrate which is not about solving mental problems or expressing things in words but about judging movements in space and feeling how the body moves.

Obviously cats and dogs or lions and wolves possess more of this type of intelligence than most humans. They have to have it to survive.

Many people talk of "street smarts" and "social intelligence" which are more important for success in life than brain power or what many would call "analytical intelligence." Animals hunt in packs very often and have unbelievable communication skills when they need to warn each other of danger.

I would only admit that each type of animal and each human has differing degrees of many types of intelligence.

Answer 2

Other animals do have brains of course, and they can be considered to have "minds" as well, if by this we mean that they are capable of learning and planful (purposive) behavior.
However, human beings seem to have very highly developed and complex brains. And what gives us a tremendous edge and really make us unique is that, somewhere along the way of our evolution, we developed the ability to utilize language.
Animals may be pretty smart, but as far as we know, no other creature on earth comes even remotely close to us in terms of our linguistic abilities--and this helps make our minds so wonderfully and amazingly sophisticated.

Answer 3

Animals may be smarter than a lot of people. My German Shepard has been known to play me like a fiddle. He is very wise and can sometimes manipulate a situation to his benefit. Also, I recently watched a video showing how crows had devised a brilliant scheme to break open hard shelled nuts. They would actually drop the nut on the roadway at a cross walk. When a car ran over the nut, breaking open its shell, the crow would wait for the light to change and then enter the intersection with the flow of people crossing, to collect their nut. Amazing! Another video shows a monkey taunting and teasing to young tigers , just to mess with them! So funny!!!

Answer 4

I guess you are wrong. Almost every animal have brain. So they have mind. But maybe you were trying to ask if they have moral behavior. They have, but in different ways. Try to be more accurate in your question and do a research on the Internet. It will help you a lot!

Answer 5

Since we can't truly measure the intelligence of a non-human animal (except against what we ourselves deem to be intelligence) we really have no idea how non-human animals think. Note that non-human animals have been around for millions of years and "civilized" homo sapiens only about 5500 years (early Mesopotamia). The fact that we have destroyed our planet in such a short period of time makes me question our intelligence and the "evolved" thinking of homo sapiens.

Answer 6

Well, animals have minds but the difference is in the level of sophistication ... we can think in very high order abstractions. It is not, and can not be, known how we came to have brains capable of this kind of complex thinking.

I think it's because of the huge advantage it gives in terms of survival -- when you can begin to think abstractly and lay plans, you can not only modify your environment in a permanent, organized, and sustainable way (agriculture, building shelters, use of fire etc) but you begin to cooperate to create a complex society and culture that passes along these behaviors. That forces every human to pretty much NEED to be able to think to survive in human culture - so having smart minds would be self-reinforcing, sort of, and we'd increase in sophistication. Animals occupy ecological niches where the brain capacity they'd need to be as smart as us, would cost them more than it's worth in terms of their species survival.

Answer 7

Animals have minds, and many are quite intelligent, but they are not capable of higher order thinking ,like human beings. In the Bible, God gave man dominion over all the animals on the earth , and to do this we have been given the better minds.

Answer 8

What makes you think they don't?

The trouble is a lack of communication abilities between the species. It is very possible that some animals are more cognizant than we, just that we're too arrogant to accept it.

Answer 9

Animals have mind and personality. Wha they do not have is eternality of soul, which humans do have.

Answer 10

Depends on how you define mind. But mostly because we are more highly evolved than most animals.