Vera Mont

I don't think irrationality - thinking contrary to factual information, as in ideological zealotry, or baseless prejudice, or self-destructive delusio...

Reasoning and assessment are rational thinking, that require some degree of critical thinking. So do the accumulation of wealth, invention, skill acqu...

I don't know if I could use the word surprise: for me, change in direction and opinion have been gradual processes, rather than revelations, though I ...

I don't think there was such a time. I made up my first poem before I could write and I told stories to my pets, relatives, playmate and little brothe...

Oh, it's always that. I just meant that I don't get so emotionally invested in a story that I agonize over it. It's more an intellectual exercise for ...

We owe a lot to our good teachers. I was lucky to have several outstanding ones.

Something a bit like that happened to me on the Gr. 13 English final. They gave us a dozen titles to choose from, one of which perfectly fit a story I...

I rather liked the poem idea, too, but there may not be enough participants who can both master the form and remain faithful to the spirit. It sounds ...

That sounds wonderful. And I wonder....

I think I know why. She's held up some mirrors we'd rather not look into. And she could be devastatingly funny. In my literary firmament, she's up the...

Here is a little quote from a Fay Weldon novel, Rhode Island Blues that I'd like to share for no particular reason. The character is a film editor. It...

I'm not so sure. If snails and spiders have it, it's more likely biological; no thought required. Where thinking comes in : level 1. association of a ...

Not for the son of a deity got on a mortal. Look how the Greek gods treated their illegitimate children!

According to one apocryphal account, Jesus did run away - to France, I think, with Mary Magdalene - to live out his life under an assumed name and hav...

I have copious notebook scribblings to refer to - so many it gets confusing, so I organize it and five minutes later I lose track again, frantically p...

All dogs know their feeding time, without any bells. Every living thing has time sense and arranges its feeding, resting and moving routines according...

Usually decisions that turn out to be wrong. "An alien machine you don't know what it does? Beam it aboard!" Don't be so sure. Anyhow, it wouldn't rul...

Yet another criterion. The more requirements you add, the fewer entities may exercise a faculty that was once available to everything in possession of...

The hardest part for me is language. I needed a large dry and a smaller wet planet that humans could colonize and where they would develop differently...

Writing stories is one of the ways I keep sane. World-building takes a lot of time and thought, but there is something quite magical in immersing ones...

What have clocks to do with rational thought? For 100,000 years of intelligent human development no clocks of any kind existed. Up until four hundred ...

I wonder how you know this. Or what difference it makes to rational thinking.

yes: When but not what time. Because he doesn't know the names humans have artificially given the hours and minutes of the day. Okay.

So have I. All the world is accessible to me, including the observed and recorded behaviour of animals in the wild. And that's all you can know of Put...

Sure he does. Even the dumbest dog knows the sounds and smells of its people and their stuff. You're using more words to describe: dog expects human's...

It depends on how big a god I was. Creator of life on Earth? Master of this galaxy? In charge of the whole Big Shebang? I'll settle for the galaxy for...

Do you know of a man named Vladimir Putin? Is he accessible to you? Your implied certainty of another's capabilities is based on not being able to acc...

I just came in here for a brief respite from fighting over animal intelligence. I used to love the TV series Ballykissangel, in which the village was ...

Their thinking is on a fairly rudimentary level. They do have a cerebellum, as do lizards and turtles, so the 'reptilian brain' is not quite as you de...

Well, they did survive, so they must have made some rational decisions along the way. We can't see the process, only the result.

The only political component I can see is the enacting of laws against cruelty to animals. The same factions are working to reduce cruelty to other hu...

The "I'm deaf" tactic. And then there is the "Who, me? I was just standing there, minding my own business. It was the cat." And the "Toilet paper? Wha...

It doesn't reflect the human's accurately, either, but that doesn't matter, because a common language gives us a thumbnail picture of what is in the o...

It pleases us - me, anyway - to believe that we have some limited freedom to choose within the given restrictions of physics, biology, environment and...

Indeed. Can you point to species not only capable, but very often guilty of acting, speaking and thinking in ways that are anti-rational? I can.... So...

Why would they need to think exactly the same way we do in order to be considered rational? And only to communicate with other people. In fact, when w...

We ask those questions all the time, regardless where stand on free will. Of course we're not 'truly' free. In order to live, we must be constrained b...

Graphic and physical. It's what feral human children do to survive in the wild.

It was a clumsy example of how dogs sense time. I subsequently found an article about it that does a better job. Yes, they know how long it should be ...

Dogs surelook expectant! You get clues off the standing up, prancing and sitting down every two minutes, tail wagging every time a car goes by and slo...

Well, sometimes.... That's the extreme end of the cognitive spectrum. Unfortunately, this also leads to the highest rate of cognitive dysfunction. The...

Knowing that there are extreme ends on every spectrum does not require to accept everything other poeple impute to some aspect of that spectrum. I see...

Yes. Sure. In domestic animals. I think that it's generally caused by human activity, deliberately as in laboratory experiments, or inadvertently as i...

Used your same word is all. I'm fine with more precision. Did I say that rational thought must include the entire range of human thought and imaginati...

Instinctive behaviour can usually be explained rationally. However, when pulling one's hand out of a fire, one has no time to think, rationally or oth...

I prefer Mark Twain's distinction : "Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to."

I know you've been saying that. I didn't see it demonstrated. In any case, 'strongly related' is not the same as 'dependent on'. What are they using i...

That's the inevitable outcome of using words according to their actual meaning. I was attempting to correct a misapprehension that resulted from a bia...

The case I've been attempting to make is that words have ideology-neutral meanings, and are not defined by "philosophical stance". When that is not th...

Probably lots. I only checked Oxford, Collins and Webster and they don't mention language.