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The ability to reflect on prior decisions, even decades prior, when considering present and future decisions, is what I believe primarily separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.
Indeed, many other animal speeches communicate quite effectively, some can gesture, learn, adapt, develop new hunting strategies. Wild apes have been seen to commit "raids", which are synchronized and planned attacks on other groups of apes.
Many other animals can learn new tasks, like a mouse learning a maze.
But really only humans can reflectively connect prior memories beyond a Pavlovian "bad/good" response. The margins of "human" consciousness includes those with autism, who despite other severely limiting mental abilities, can still recall prior events.
I think that if I would ever lose a considerable portion of my memory, I'd feel considerably less human.
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"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel
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