That may have something to do with the fact that even the biggest neural networks have a "cortex size" one or two orders of magnitude smaller than a cat and "ex

That may have something to do with the fact that even the biggest neural networks have a "cortex size" one or two orders of magnitude smaller than a cat and "exist" (number of impulses processed * amount of time that would take in an animal) for a few weeks. That means one should expect them to perform tasks about as well as a mouse brain can do them, between a third and halfway to adulthood. And yes, that level of cortical processing does not seem to support coming up with symbolic systems and attempting to use them to describe the world around them. Absolutely. Mice don't do that either.