[The Golden Rule as a basis for rights]

Yes.  On that point, I'm inclined to agree with you.

 

But the question itself, "How must I act," can only be meaningful if you care about the "I".  If you detach your hopes and desires from morality, as such, then you logically cannot give a damn about morality itself.  And if you do not personally care to be good then why bother trying to be?

 

By Kant's own definition his ethics is not and cannot be of any value, to anyone, under any circumstances.

 

This is why you need to think about the meaning of your "self".

Kant's view is that we obtain a better decision if we somwhat detach ourselves from our emotions. Rules and principles do just that. So it is for  lawyers when they need legal advice, or doctors when they're ill--by not administering to themselves.

 

From that point onwards, Kant created the categorical as the best, most comprehensive principle.

 

In passing, it's a straw dog to suggest that anyone is purely altruistic, caring nothing for their own personal well-being...

[Concrete-boundedness and empiricism]

You've identified concrete, in the scientific scope 'ceteris paribus'.

 

The question is addressing 'concrete-bound'. I am familiar with 'concrete-bound', not 'ceteris paribus'.

One reference I find is from OPAR, Chaper 4 on Objectivity sets the context:

While you may disagree with Austrian economics regarding rent control, the fact that if you accepted it, it would apply to the concrete case built from New York, and be equally applicable to Detroit.

 

A disagreement with Austrian economics does not disqualify the example given.

 An individual that grasps the Austrian economics as it applies to New York, then asks, "What about Detroit?" is treating Detroit as a unique, unprecedented concrete, demonstrating a concrete-bound mentality.

Well, yes, of course...IFF you accept Austrain School then the Austrian theory would hold in all cases...because that's how it's written per intent.

 

But beyond my disagreement with the theory as such, you still have an issue of locality. in other words, although the truth of Austrian theory may hold in all cases, local conditions may add factors (coefficients) that would alter the outcome.

 

For example, take gravity. dropping quarters are single-factor events (systems) fastballs are double factors involving underspin that causes a rise to the plate, while blowing leaves have three: gravity, drag coefficient (parachute) and wind.

 

In sum, Austrian school assumes to speak of the comprehensive: that no local conditions would basically alter the outcome from, say, NYC to Detroit. So in this case, yes, all events are equally concrete as they can represent truth anywhere.

 

My only response is that the truth- potential of this statement is itself testable, much as one 'tests' gravity out on falling leaves. Can it alone predict where the leaf will land? 

 

 It has nothing to do with Rand's posted comment that some people refuse to connect the dots...as true as that observation  might be

[The Golden Rule as a basis for rights]

Who or what dictates "duty"(defined by what standard), and what would be an example of nonreal interests?

'Duty is to apply one's question,. "How must I act?" to a standard that's detached from sentiments of self-interest. According to Kant, thinking first in terms of direct self-interest will, more often than not, offer you an un-realistic appraisal of the best course of action. In other words, real self-interest necessitates a method for detaching subjective desires from decision-making.

 

For example, in killing innocent civialians in time of war (applicable, as well, in Kant's age), one's first instinct would be to rid oneself of a potential problem.

 

Then, detach the categorical in your mind--"Act only upon that principle which might be willed universal law." (Note how the statement combines both the golden rule and reciprocity!) Indirect self-interest, as it were--But kant was interested in the method whereby we think things correctly thru to the end.

[Difference between human emotions and animal instinct]

How does this make any sense at all? I don't know what epistemology you subscribe to but this is a whole lot of gobbly gook.

 

 

Again, I have no idea where you're getting this but you should know that this is not consistent with Objectivist epistemology. What is a 'more proveable sense'?

 

 

Colors are the result of varying wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. According to your epistemology, do you deny the distinction between red and green too?

 

 

That upon which the most things in a given context depend.

The gobbly in the gook is the attempt to gussy up the word 'generalization' with the more profoundly-sounding 'concept'. What I'm talking about is that doing philosophy is not the ability to employ scholastic terms to everyday modern English.

 

Emitted wavelenghts are measurable (Well, actually, colors are caused as much by absorbtion as emission). This measurement- difference corresponds nicely to what we humans see as 'colors', at least within a tiny part of the electromagnetic band.

 

Now the Physicist can call these difference 'fundamental' only in so far as the predicate is added..."[fundamental] to the pertception of different colors by the human eye".

 

In many other ways, it's not. For example, individual colors are not 'fundamental' if the standard of judgment is the electromagnetic spectrum in its entirety. Agruably, then, you're correct in so far as you emphasize context.

 

So in what sense would you say that a 1% DNA variation causes a 'fundamental' distinction between a chimp and a human? Well, if the standard were procreation, the answer would easily be speciation. As for competitive adaptation, the answer is also easy in so far as humans have thrived at the expense of all great apes.

 

In all cases, we discover what we've always come to expect in terms of a general ontology of science: quantitative differences eventually become qualitative. But first, you must observe and measure, Until that;'s done we really don't know where the tipping point resides.

 

Finding tipping points is what science does. In this sense, empiricism justifies its own epistemology by its method. What's therefore fundamental for the scientist is accounting for cause. What, in that 1% DNA difference accounts for speciation?

 

OTH, labeling certain of these distinctions as 'fundamental' is what normative epistemology does because, after all, 'fundamentals' are the differences themselves that science discovers. But in back of this normativity, or 'ought', is the subjectivity of the epistemo-philosopher who determines fundamentality itself. "Things are as fundametal as i say they are at the time that i say it".

 

But this is as profound as putting lipstick on a pig. By many other criteria, chimps and humans are fundamentally the same.

[Difference between human emotions and animal instinct]

 

Do animal cognition researchers claim that animals can form at least some rudimentary concepts just as man does? If so, how can animals do that without language, either spoken language or audible sounds or sign language of some kind? (True language, not just approximate communication of percepts or states of agitation or contentment )

Do animal cognition researchers use the term "concept" in the same way that Objectivism uses it? How does their understanding and usage of "concept" compare and contrast with the Objectivist understanding of it?

Do animal cognition researchers understand the phenomena of "perceptual association" and "perceptual generalization," and how those processes differ from concept formation?

 

"Never underestimate the power of the perceptual level of cognition in animals that are constituted to live on that level in a correspondingly conducive habitat. The perceptual level is more effective for those animals than man may have hitherto assumed. Both the recent experiments and the vast array of past observations of animals historically have amply demonstrated this. Those observations do not demonstrate, however, that animals are using human concepts, or functioning on a conceptual level at all, as that form of cognition is understood by man."

 

Mikee, of course you answered most of your own questions in a subsequent post ( I LIKE). Permit me, then,  to deal with the issue of the Rand lexicon vs that of science-- in this case, Biology.

 

In the sense of Quine, Rand uses a normative epistemology that's redolent with 'oughts'. She likewise employs 'first-principle argument. Both of these strategies are consistent with most of philosophy.

 

Science, OTH is 'second principle' whose strategies deal in quantitative distnctions via measurement. To this end, all first principle and/of normative statements are 'zero-sum' hypotheses in equal measure.

[The Golden Rule as a basis for rights]

I would like to elaborate on that.  Collateral damage aside, the ARI article he linked to explicitly advocated the deliberate targeting of noncombatants as a means of destroying the enemy's resolve.

1. Can it objectively benefit us to deliberately kill civilians?
2. Does it benefit an individual to apply the golden rule to others?

Since "moral" should mean "self-interested" the OP should be answerable in terms of costs and benefits.  I think that would be a worthwhile line of reasoning.

In this particular case, there's a mis-calculation. Killing innocent civilians more often than not reinforces the will to resist.

 

Which leads me to the same broader point that Kant discussed in Crit#2 (Practical Reason). Ethics can never be fully self-interested because we don't know what our inerests truly are until we work relationships out with other people. This, in the very least, gives us an opportunity to assess cause and effect.

 

Second, if we follow a path that's duty-bound, we might better understand how our real interests follow a directed course of action.

 

Otherwise, the notion of selfishness collapses into a hopeless tautology in which all ethical actions--charitable, sacrificial, et al-- are 'self-interested'.

[Concrete-boundedness and empiricism]

What are you arguing against and by what method did you come to oppose it?

'Concreteness' is a somewhat useless metaphor. For example, if you were to say, "leaves floating to the ground, dropping a quarter  and airplanes landing are 'concrete' examples of gravity", you'd need to disambiguate.

 

All three event-systems would have different coefficients added to the one for gravity to give a trajectory.

[Difference between human emotions and animal instinct]

So what? Maybe other animals form simple concepts but no other animal is capable of moving beyond this and certainly isn't capable of conceptualizing on a level anywhere close to that of humans. This difference is what gives rise to the many many other differences between man and animal. As such, it's fundamental.

 

We know nothing as to how other animals might 'conceptualize' because the meaning of 'concept' refers to how we humans understand how humans think. In other words, 'concept' is really just a philosophically-sounding synonym for 'generalization'. Sometimes, we say, 'abstraction, too.

 

In the Scholastic period, 'concept' referred to 'meaning', as to create a third category of metaphysics next to 'word' and 'object', in hopes of resolving the Great Nominalist debate. Hence the modern confusion. For example, Deleuze uses concept in the older, traditional way: "Philosophy is the study of concepts"...

 

In this sense, it's impossible to understand what things mean to another species. For more, please see Nagel, "What's it like to be  a bat". He, btw, was the advisor to Binswanger.

 

Beyond saying that concepts are 'fundamental' to human distinction, we would have to ask what is meant by 'fundamental in another, more provable sense. After all, the etimology means 'base', from the Middle French 'fond', from the Latin.

 

For example, can you say that our neuronal cells are different, or even the networking? Well, no, only that we have more mass, a far higher % of 'mirror cells' and the same rain-forest structureless networking with far more junctions than strands.

 

Re DNA ,can you say that there's a 'fundamentally' different variance in the % of shared versus different genes? No, again, as the distinction between homo and chimp is normally givenn at 1%. Ontogeny seems to recreate phylogeny on a relatively smooth curve of variability.

 

So other than an excuse for hand waving with still more adjectives such as 'essentially', i'm at a loss as to what 'fundamental might mean....

[Difference between human emotions and animal instinct]

Indeed. Which is what I meant by "negative" or "positive". Perhaps I should have been more clear - when I say a trait is "negative", it means that it's not well adapted to the organism's current environment or situation. It doesn't, in whatever situation, help the organism survive. Assume the inverse for a "positive" trait.

 

 

I think you're making a very important point here that human_murda may be missing. Just because our environment and situation is fundamentally different from other animals, does not mean that we do not adapt to it. If certain traits turn out, over a prolonged course of time, to be more well suited to the environment we've created for ourselves, those traits will become dominant in the long term. This is evolution, and this is natural selection.

I really don't think we're 'fundamentally' different than other animals, taken as a discreet class. Are not humans and great apes 'more alike' than,say, fish?

 

In any case, Kingdom charts (animal, plant, spore) down to species are rather precise as to what the differences are. To be 'fundamental' , then, is to beg the biological question with a first-principle, normatively philosophical response.

 

In this sense, i would say that the mental burden of the biblical Genesis remains an issue...and perhaps affected Rand, as well.

["Blaming the Victim"]

Perhaps it's best to begin with Socrates: "No one intentionally missed the mark (adika)".

No one, therefore, blames the victim, as this statement is merely a rhetorical gesture, a poisioning of the well, as it were.  

 

Rather, there are various degrees and ways of understanding victimhood. To this end, I would agree with Ludi's story that sexual language, by its nature, is ambiguous. This is because in many real circumstances the sentiment itself of desiring sex is... ambiguous. Messages, then, are apt to be misunderstood.

 

To this end, many college campuses have adopted a "If not definately yes, then no" policy in which the burden of proof (illegally?) falls upon the male. For example, if he admits that he was taking advantage of her 'maybe-language' , then it's rape.

 

The definition of rape is therefore stretched beyond 'involuntary' to desigate 'not explicitally permissive'; it's moreover done under the proviso that colleges act 'in loco parentis'.  Now speaking as someone with two college-grad daughters who now both teach and give female counseling on campuses, that's fine with me.

 

In passing, none of this has anything to do with the sexist subtext that says, "She was really asking for it" This is nothing but the toxic rhetorical obverse to "victim blaming'. I contend that taken together, these statements form a polemical cloud that obscures the possibility of seeing reality.

 

That's why, lastly, the issue frequently comes doown to forensics: is there evidence of trauma? This is ostensibly why college clinics run late hours. In counseling the incoming freshmen with their 'standard' boy/girl speech. , my two offer printed directions as to where this is located...

[Concrete-boundedness and empiricism]

My point was, if something applies, in general, to a city, as a city - using New York City as a concrete example to illustrate your point - a concrete-bound mentality will as afterwords ask - Well, what about the city of Detroit? Does it apply to there too?

No, a first-principle, normatively-bound mentality would apply a general rule to all particular cases and say. "i've described reality without investigating the particulars --ie Detroit vs NYC.

 

IMHO, the meaning of 'concrete' (and, again, we're only dealing with metaphors!) would mean, "Let's look into the particulars of, say , Detroit vs NYC and determine to what extent first-principle, normative statements apply".

 

In a patrallel sense, you might take gravity and say that it's a universal co-efficient that figures into the equations that describe blowing leaves, airplanes, baseballs, tumbling boulders, and planetary orbits. OTH, you would say that, concretely, the equations are different with respect to other coefficients in all particular cases.

 

Concretely, leaves behave differently than baseballs. Cooncretely, housing conditions in large cities appear to vary greatly.

 

On a philosophical plane, my position resembles that of Cartwright, "How the laws of physics lie".. Maddy "I'm a second-principle sort of gurl" and, of course, Quine: "All philosophy is that of science".

[Difference between human emotions and animal instinct]

Bee make hives, termites make nests, birds build nests, but none of them use a full sense of concept. Many more don't alter a thing on purpose (you won't find an iguana making things) The only point that matters is that at best, non-conceptual creatures have limited ability, and still only alter the environment incidentally, yet not really as an end beyond needing some cover. There are borderline cases, like chimpanzees or dolphins. That doesn't rule out natural selection though, especially since natural selection is a mathematical construct of how all living things evolve. Doesn't matter how smart you are, something like being born with malformed fingers makes you less likely to survive, it just so happens reason helps to make you considerably more likely to survive. How reason and language even appears is part of natural selection.

If you define 'conceptualization' as the type of brain activity particular to humans then your statement is a tautology. Rather, IMHO, the issue is to abandon first-principle. normative posuring for the sake of understanding how other animals and plants adapt.

 

In other words, to paraphrase Nagel, what's it lkie to be an iguana? My bet is that, in the very least, an empirical iguana-ology would perforce demonstrate how iguanas adapt to an altered environment. For example, as humans encroach, do they change their diet to mice and kittens?

 

My experience in India,, btw, revealed that villages adopt and raise pet cobras (invaribly named 'Krishna!) to deal with rhodents. And, of course we have wolves, which are nothing but undomesticated doggies.

 

Re your thought experiment and homo sapiens: 'Ecology' as a science questions precisely what you assert. Without trees, our populations have always dropped. This is also basic Archaeology 101.

[Difference between human emotions and animal instinct]

Do you have citations for any of this? Or anything you're saying, at this point?

 

You're not discussing philosophy anymore. You've mixed up your philosophy with science, and now you're making a mess of the both of them. The consensus in the biology community is that humans do undergo evolution and are affected by natural selection. The fact that your philosophy disagrees doesn't really mean anything. Nature and reality don't bow to the whims of what you want to believe, as Rand would inform you.

 

 

You've fundamentally misunderstood the point being made here.

 

Humans have genes, DNA, et cetera. You've agree to this. I've pointed this out repeatedly: evolution is a mathematical construct. If a trait makes you more likely to survive - which traits are wont to do, as well as the inverse, even in humans - it will tend to be passed on, whereas a trait that makes you less likely to survive will tend to not be passed on. This is not something that is affected by the existence of reason. Reasons helps us survive, yes, but if you have two perfectly reasonable people, and one of them has negative traits that the other does not, the one with fewer negative traits is more likely to survive. This is how evolution works, simplistically.

you wrote:" if you have two perfectly reasonable people, and one of them has negative traits that the other does not, the one with fewer negative traits is more likely to survive. This is how evolution works, simplistically."

 

Uhhh, not really. 'Traits' that assure a greater possiblity of survival are not negative or positive in any objective sense. Rather, they are adaptive to alterations in the environment.

 

The classic example given by Darwin is that, with respect to bird predators, white moths survive at a greater frequency when they adhere to clean white walls, while mutated black moths have better chances when soot and grime from factories turn walls black..

 

Humans adapt with respect to color, too. Given less access to hospitals and post-natal care by virtue of racial prejudice, African American babies die with a greater frequency than whites.

 

Of course, the same can be said of prison. Because of the huge disparity by % of young black males who are incarcerated--thereby denied the opportuunity to procreate-- the application of justice and socioeconomic environment favor certain groups over others.

 

Of course, the key issue here is to consider human-created institutions as 'environmental'. At the very least...grudgingly so, as epigenetics has really taken off....

[Concrete-boundedness and empiricism]

You are missing the point here.

No, i'm disagreeing with your point. You're substituting a normative statement for empirical reality.

 

In other words, you're using a first-principle argument that-- in the perfectly non-real world of a hyper-formalized model of classical economics-- a lessening of profit by rent control will automatically cause a housing shortage.

 

This, however, only a hypothese that might be tested, again, ceteris paribus. Regrettably, 'testing' would involve number-crunching, a procedure that first-principle, Austrian-based 'economics' is opposed to.

[The Golden Rule as a basis for rights]

If you state the golden Rule in the obverse, saying, 'Don't do anything to others that you wouldn't have them do to you", what you uncover is the concept of 'reciprocity'.

 

In other words, the reason why acting selfishly should be done with extreme caution is because it encourages others to do the same. Then everyone acts in the manner of obtaining a narrow self interest.

 

For example, if there's a written charter that protects civilians in the time of war, violation puts your own non-combatants at risk.

 

To this end, consider the American attitude that they could bomb Iraq, et al, with impunity because no Islamic nation had the means to recriprocate. Hello, 9/11!

 

So now, in order to launch drones, America has turned itself into a torture/security state to protect its own citizens. This is the price of 'acting in one's own selfish interests'.

[Concrete-boundedness and empiricism]

You might want to re-read what was stated. Applying a principle across the board, rent controls in a city lead to shortages of rental units. If the factors brought up are all focused on the city of New York as the concrete example - the concrete-bound mentality is not viewing the application to a city in general, but only to the city used as in the illustration.

 

By identifying the factors involved. i.e., one of the factors is: when the price of rent is lower than the cost of providing more units, the return on investment is not high enough to encourage building new rental units (in whatever city - even if it is just the city of New York, used as the concrete.)

In science, the operative term for applying 'concreteness' is called 'ceteris paribus'.

* Rent control does not necessarily drive rents beneth production costs.

* That being said, you're assuming that the builder would not settle for a lower rate of profit.

* You're assuming knowledge of extrinsic factors that would apply even if builders would accept said lower rate of profit.

* you're assuming that city officials that imposed rent control were not aware of the owners' high rate of profit, and would failry demand less.

* you're assuming that city officials did not have an ace up their sleeve in the form of federal funds which might replace private investment money, after all.

 

So all you're left with is a small set of normative statements--not an empirical observation of the real world of economic behavior--which defeats the purpose of concreteness as such. It's as if you said that. 'concretely',that airplanes drop like rocks because, after all, they're objects under the influence of gravity.

[Difference between human emotions and animal instinct]

That quote isn't even about instincts or evolutionary biology anyway. I can't find where Rand said that either. That's a difference, yes, but I don't think anyone denied that humans have profound cognitive ability to alter the environment.

Rand is wrong. All animals alter their environment.The best example, of course are beavers.

[Concrete-boundedness and empiricism]

One of the concrete-bound mentality examples given in ITOE was along the lines of outlining the issues that arise with regard to government controls within a sector of the economy. Picking price controls on rent, showing through the various studies of places such as New York, where when the price controls were imposed, led to shortages in available places to rent.

 

The concrete-bound mentality finally understands how this applies to rent control in the city of New York and then asks "What about rent control in Boston?" or What about price control of beef in the supermarket or wages employees can get paid by an employer?" as former President Jimmy Carter mandated.

 

It is a failure to be able to abstract the general principle and apply it, either across the board, or more broadly.

You seem to be using the metaphor 'concreteness' to stand for the ability to apply an eaxmple to a larger framework. That's fine.

 

 The issue comes with the question of relevancy. In other words, how might a specific context alter the applicication of a given, concrete entity?

 

For example, if price controls on rent led to a housing shortage in NYC, how would that necessarily apply inm, say, Chicago?

[What are the implications of existence regarding plasma?]

Could you mean "But atoms, versus a state of electrons, protons and neutron as plasma, are two distinct forms of existence."?

 

frank harley, do you intend to side-skirt this?

In terms of QM, a relational state is frequently all that's known. For example, although  'electrons' are said to exist as matter of convenience, all we empirically know are spectral lines of absorbtion, phase states, etc. In other words, we assume a materiality based upon-- and causal of-- observed effects.

[Concept-Formation & Mathematical Process]

I think that one can overplay one's hand here. One can and does quickly arrive at floating abstractions within mathematics. I believe that this discussion should be limited to a discussion of natural numbers. Primitive societies, such as existed in Europe during the dark ages, can lose sight of what "two means". As a result, you end up with differing words for this concept, such as a yoke of oxen, brace of geese, pair of threes in poker, a couple, duo, dyad, etc. Through a process of unit reduction, we can identify each of these concepts as representing and instance of "two". Such an identification might have seemed remarkable to a primitive consciousness.

 

This does not mean that there is an isomorphism between Randian concepts and those within mathematics.

All concepts in math are justified by 'formal proofs' wich do not involve arithmetic (numbers).

 

Kindly, moreover, clarify your 'primitive society comment for Europe's 'dark Ages'...

[What are the implications of existence regarding plasma?]

I qualified my definition of 'existant' in a previous post: what we would find on earth in a state conducive to earth-ly existence.

 

Arguably, an 'existant' can also mean any thought-object, whether verifiable in terms of reality or not. As previously stated, i found this definition to be totally, worthlessly redundant for the unambiguous expression , 'thought object'.

 

Otherwise, of course, plasma is the fourth state of matter in a strict sense defined within a Physics text.

Yet you wrote: :Calling plasma a state of matter in physics is not strictly correct". Even Wiki will say you're wrong. any physics text, as well.

 

Have i therefore missed your own reasoning as to why said references are wrong?

[Concrete-boundedness and empiricism]

'Empiricism' means sensory data. A good example is that we see the spectral lines change and measure accordingly; we do not see electrons. Therefore, QM has always been clear that its work is highly instrumental in the manner somewhat defined by Mach.

 

Concrete, I suppose, is a metaphor that, in this case, assumes that electrons really exist.

 

'Boundaries' define the limit of the particular observation. This stipulation is somewhat necessary in so far as many cartesian functions will eventually cross either/or the x and y axes, therefore giving a singularity, or nonsense.

 

Perhaps the best examples are both Relativities: infinite mass at infinite speed when time stops,, zero gravity, infinite gravity (black holes)....

[Concept-Formation & Mathematical Process]

Plas,

 

Yes, Bergson thought we have an intellectual power he called intuition, and it is in contrast and in some tension with (but also in some support of) what we call the intellect, our power of concepts, judgments, and inference.

 

In Creative Evolution, he writes:

 

That is a bit odd.

 

In addition to Bergson’s resonance with Rand on differentiation and integration, at least in a certain consciousness we have in metaphysics, I see also the following rough resonance:

 

Integration of this perspective with the circumstance of our broader geometries such as ordered geometry or affine geometry and with Rand’s cast of similarity classes of qualities in terms of measure-value suspensions could pay dividends.

Ordered geometry means 'unmeasured'--or using algebra--, of which 'affine' (parallels) are a part.Can Rand's concepts be reduced to math?

[Difference between human emotions and animal instinct]

Louie said:

I agree with this. Nothing like a "heuristic" qualifies remotely as a "instinct". Instinct and automatic are not isomorphic.

That's because 'instinct' is such a bad word that you'll just waste time arguing over its meaning. What it seems to indicate is behavior not associated with cognition.

 

Kahneman and Tversky demonstrated that lots of what we normally call 'thought' really isn't...hence, 'heuristic'. So in terms of Ockham's principle, perhaps it's easiest to define behavoir as either thought-motivated or not, ostensibly making 'heuristic' and instinst equivalent.

[Difference between human emotions and animal instinct]

Here is my current understanding, looking for criticism and/or addition if any:

 

There is no fundamental difference, the difference lies in scope and completeness. Animal instinct is a complete package of preprogrammed hardwirings that is able to automatically guide the animal in question through its life. Human emotions are left-overs from evolution that used to be a more complete package in our ancestors, but due to the advent of the rational factuality, are now only pieces of its former self.

'instinct' is a usable format means what an animal is pre-wired to do without the use of either thought or emotion.

 

'Emotion' ,OTH,, indicates behavior that stems from a stimulation of said 'emotive region' of the brain. In all animals, this structure (Thalmic system) is connected to the cerebral cortex via a mediated unit normally called the 'hypocampus'.

 

What's true is that all animals are wired differently, and have various differences in cerebral matter, homo sapiens the most.

 

Re Homo sapiens, Kahneman and Tversky have theorized two modes two modes of  thought, slow and heuristic. The later refers to instant, rule of the thumb '"instinct" that is, indeed an evolutionary adaptation that has less use now than during the paleolithic, or in certain inner cities in the USA.