Deduce or Dead use

It is often said that what separates us humans from lower life forms is the ability to think. But do animals think? If a wild dog feels hungry, he might observe a sheep as a viable source of food, dog is at location A, sheep at B. Conclusion: move to B, kill sheep, eat it, survive. Thought process or instinct? A thought process implies a decision, but here the decision is clear, to reach the sheep the dog has to change its location. A trained dog knows it will get fed by its master, so will not chase the sheep. This is learned behaviour, we have replaced one instinct with another. What role does intelligence play here? We could argue that an intelligent dog might kill two sheep, one to eat now and one later. A squirrel in anticipation of winter stores his nuts. Is he more intelligent than the dog? instinct tell either animal that nuts keep, but dead sheep go bad. Almost all carnivores know not to consume bad flesh.
Never the less, why is not instinct deemed a thought process. Because it is an automated process; observe sheep, kill it, etc, no decision involved.

Humans often act in similar ways, reacting to something they observe, and undertaking a course of action without thinking about what they are doing. My adult daughter visited me the other day and observing two frying pans stacked on top of each other thought she would do me a favour by packing them away. The mistake was that had she observed more carefully she would have noticed that they were stacked with the larger one on top of the smaller, not as one might expect. But she packed them away in the conventional fashion with the smaller over the larger. However, there was something in the larger one that I did not want disturbed, which was why they were stacked somewhat unusually.
Observation is not just about seeing something, you have to think about what you have seen, notice its characteristics and INDUCE a conclusion.

Deductive logic, as we have seen takes the form of drawing a conclusion from two statements or arguments. Such as
Some Greeks are lifeguards. Some lifeguards are tiresome. Therefore some Greeks are tiresome.
Which is Unsound, as the tiresome lifeguards may all be Romans, eg. Here, no sound conclusion can arise from the arguments even though they are valid because of the selection implied in both arguments.

Inductive logic is the process of making generalisations based on specific instances or observations. An inductive argument is said to be cogent if and only if the truth of the argument's premises would render the truth of the conclusion probable i.e. the argument is strong, and the argument's premises are, in fact, true. Specific facts are used to create a theory that explains relationships between the facts and allows prediction of future knowledge.

I always hang pictures on nails.
Weak induction: Therefore: All pictures hang from nails.
Strong induction: Therefore: All pictures in my flat hang from nails.

Returning to the frying pans: the pans are stacked unusually (correct observation), conclusion, there might be a reason why. Proposition, investigate further.

Here we are approaching the 'scientific method', which I would like to explore in the next post.