> Abstract thinking, in the capacity of quick intuitive guessing, does not an abstract model make. You're conflating terms. Reasoning in abstract terms require

> Abstract thinking, in the capacity of quick intuitive guessing, does not an abstract model make. You're conflating terms. Reasoning in abstract terms requires the capacity to model what you are reasoning about in abstract terms. As far as I'm concerned, that's not conflation. As soon as the world appears to you in terms of higher level concepts, you have a model of it in your head that's abstract; not concrete. You seem to disagree, on the basis that an abstract model necessarily entails using glyphs? A prediction, e.g. "the bike will tip over if it stops moving" requires that I understand on some level the concept of causality, the concept of a bike, the concept of movement etc. Using my understanding of these concepts, I can predict potential outcomes for my actions. You call it intuitive guessing, and maybe you never needed training wheels, but this is something that most people have to learn and internalize. In my view, the notion, while riding, that it'll hurt more if you fall off at a high speed is similar in nature to "F = m₁m₂/r²", differing mostly in scope, terminology and subject. Newton's law of universal gravitation is a lot like an "intuitive guess" in that it's a prediction based on limited information that broke down with the introduction of new information. > Running around interacting with the environment requires no more abstraction than an animal is capable of. I agree. When did you last see another animal ride a bicycle, though? Even animals that are much quicker to react than us and have mastered within months of their lives movement and spatial awareness to a degree which most humans can only ever hope to ever achieve suck at simple mechanical obstacles. We're amazed when cats, that can jump several body lengths from one thin branch to another to catch a bird before it has thought to fly off, do something as conceptually simple as opening a door using a handle to get where they want to go. A dog that can smell and track down a hare in a field of flowers will amuse us to no end if it shows the slightest hint of recognizing some concept more advanced than a ball.