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Old 04-14-2011, 09:38 AM   #22 (permalink)
Jinn
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I feel you there, and I might be willing to include the higher order primates in "humanity" if only because of how much non-verbal human intelligence they possess. In this case it could have been actual historical memory and the memory of time spent with the woman being pleasant the current experience being unpleasant. This is the most obvious example of a Pavlovian response, even something animals as "simple" as dogs possess.

What I was referring to is reasoned examination of the past, beyond a simple bad/good analysis. We can make decisions that directly undermine the "good" factor of previous experiences ("Man, getting laid was pleasurable") based on a complex web of related knowledge ("STDs, babies, relationships") that I don't think any animal truly possess.

I'm sure to be proven wrong by certain exception (as a matter of fact I just found this article about birds using social context to alter their behavior: Scientists Rethinking Nature of Animal Memory) but I still consider it a largely a human behavior. Saying that there is *anything* 100% unique to humans anatomically or neurologically is folly, considering we're only a couple hundred thousand generations away from other "stupid" animals.
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