On Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:48:40 -0400, JohnH
wrote:

It may turn out that the ability to reason is not limited to humans.
Our real unique specialty (in addition to complex reasoning) seems to
be the ability to manipulate symbols, record history, learn from it,
and pass it on to the next generation.

No fair, I said you couldn't use porpoises.

Actually I've seen some dogs and cats that seem to have the ability
for basic reasoning. Here's an example: Back in the early 90s we
inherited a cat from my mother. We took the cat to our home which the
cat had never seen before. Almost immediately he got up on the back
of a sofa and started looking out the front window as a dog walked by
the house. The dog turned down our driveway heading for the back yard
and the cat immediately ran into the kitchen on the back of the house
and waited at a window for the dog to show up. Is that reasoning or
not?

The other attributes just add credence to the theory that something
special happened to get man started.

I'd argue that quite a few special things happened over a long period
of time, hundreds of thousands of years. Every time that one of
those special events resulted in a smarter, more adaptable, more
survivable being - the resulting offspring tended to do better, live
longer and have more offspring with the same special trait that they
inherited. There were other "special events" that didn't work out so
well. Their offspring didn't do so well and are no longer around.