Humans do a lot of verbal thinking and this makes it hard to understand nonverbal thinking. Verbal thinking means having words and sentences occur to you. This happens when we talk or write of course, but it also frequently happens without external expression, inside our heads as it were.
The concept of thinking in humans is sometimes limited to verbal thinking, in which case animals do not think. But humans do lots of nonverbal thinking as well and this is what animals do.
Nonverbal thinking occurs whenever there is intelligent behavior. An example of nonverbal thinking in humans is eating a meal, piece by piece and sip by sip, all the while talking about something else. Making the many decision required to eat the meal requires a lot of nonverbal thought. As discussed in the last post, horses also exhibit elaborate intelligent behavior when grazing. This too is nonverbal thinking.
If you watch yourself carefully you will see that you do a great deal of nonverbal thinking as you move about and do stuff. Every action involves multiple decisions.
Moreover you need a great deal of understanding of the world around you in order to do what you do, even to do the simplest things. And so it is with horses and other critters. The challenge is to figure out what the horse or other animal understands, that is, what concepts do they use when they think non-verbally?
For example simply putting on your socks requires knowing what socks are, knowing that you need to put them on, knowing where the are, knowing how to get there, knowing how to select them, knowing how to get them out, knowing where to go to put them on, and knowing how to put them on. That is a lot of knowing and a lot of thinking.
Many things that horses and other animals do are just as complicated as putting on your socks. These actions require a lot of nonverbal thought. The challenge is to figure out what this thinking is and how to describe it, especially the concepts that the critter must have in order to do what they do.
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