Do animal species have no intelligence?
Some organisms that are more developed, what about their actions? See, the body is a tool for the soul.
And different bodies have different capacities. So, objectively speaking, the level of consciousness of an ant and the level of consciousness of a pet dog, it's quite different. Animals, different animals are quite, dogs sometimes can be trained to do a lot of things.
So, they can perceive reality in a much broader way. But they don't have free will in the sense that they will act according to their instincts. Now, for all of us, there are instincts which come up.
Okay, come on, do this. Instincts are like programmed intelligence. And some instincts we just get from birth.
Like even birds, when they migrate from one place to another, it's one of the mysteries of nature. Now, birds can go thousands of miles. And they go to distant land, they just know where they are meant to go.
How do they have a compass? What do they actually go there? And they may go and live in another distant continent and when their descendant flies back from there, their descendant comes back and makes a nest on the same tree in which the ancestor was living. Now, how do they know that? So, there is definitely, there are lower species also which have advanced intelligence. And in some ways, the advanced intelligence of some of the lower species can supersede human intelligence also.
The way, say, spiders can make a web. We can't make that kind of thing with our mouth or with our hands or anything like that. We need complicated machines to do that.
So, for specific skills, animals can have specific intelligences which may supersede human intelligences. But there is the capacity of conscious moral choice which animals don't have. This action, they'll understand.
Now, when a lion sees a deer, for the lion, the deer is just food. And the lion will pounce on the deer and eat the food. For us human beings, we can choose various types of food.
This food is a violent food. I don't want to eat this. And this food is not violent.
I can take this food. So, that kind of the ethical dimension of our actions, the conscious perception of that, that is something which is distinctively human. So, broadly speaking, you could say that there are four in the cognitive level, there are four differences.
One is self-awareness. Self-awareness means, say, right now I'm talking to you, I can conceptually place myself where you are and look at myself. How am I talking? See, I can become aware of myself and I can become aware of my thoughts.
This capacity to conceptually make oneself the object of our consciousness, not the subject of our consciousness. That is self-awareness. That is distinctively human.
Along with self-awareness comes creative imagination. Okay, I'm doing things this way. I can do things in a different way.
All living beings eat food. But it is humans who cook their food and create hundreds and thousands of cuisines. We're all going to eat, but we see the food in nature, but from there we have creative imagination.
The food can be like this. The food can be like this. Then there is, so, this is how things are, but this is how things can be.
That capacity to visualize is there. And then, before that creative imagination comes, conscience. Conscience means our ethical sense.
Hey, this is not right. This is right. That ethical sense is not just guided by survival instinct.
Now, there is a part of us which is driven by survival instinct, but there is something more. If somebody sees a child drowning, they themselves may not know swimming also, but they will jump in and somehow try to save that child. And when they do risk their life to save somebody who is drowning, we consider it noble.
We consider it heroic. So, this innate sense of right and wrong which transcends our sense of what is good and bad for my survival, that is also distinctly human. So, self-awareness, conscience, creative imagination, and then last is willpower.
Willpower means that this is what I am doing, but I want to change. I want to do like this. So, that's why for example, humans can fast.
Animals, they may fast because there is starvation and there is no food. But for them to consciously choose to fast, that level of self-reflection they don't have. So, we can choose.
So, these four capacities, being aware of ourselves, having an ethical compass to see whether I am right or wrong, to have a creative imagination to create a better, to envision a better future, and then the willpower to work towards getting that future. That's what differentiates humans from animals. So, animals may have specific intelligences which are more than ours.
But this four set of cognitive abilities, that places us at a different degree of consciousness.