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Full Idea
Democritus recognised that animals have a share of reason.
Gist of Idea
Animals have a share of reason
Source
report of Democritus (fragments/reports [c.431 BCE]) by Porphyry - On Abstinence 3.6.7
Book Ref
Democritus: 'Early Greek Phil VII: Democritus', ed/tr. Laks,A/Most,G [Harvard Loeb 2016], p.229
A Reaction
Since he considers thinking to be the interaction of atoms in the body, which animals evidently possess, this seems consistent. No one seems to observed animals closely before the 20th century, other than to exploit them.
Related Idea
Idea 20913 Democritus says the soul is the body, and thinking is thus the mixture of the body [Democritus, by Theophrastus]
| 20916 | Animals have a share of reason [Democritus, by Porphyry] |
| 1875 | Dogs show reason in decisions made by elimination [Chrysippus, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| 3615 | Little reason is needed to speak, so animals have no reason at all [Descartes] |
| 17204 | Animals are often observed to be wiser than people [Spinoza] |
| 12483 | Unlike humans, animals cannot entertain general ideas [Locke] |
| 5061 | Animals are semi-rational because they connect facts, but they don't see causes [Leibniz] |
| 5054 | Animal thought is a shadow of reasoning, connecting sequences of images by imagination [Leibniz] |
| 5032 | It seems probable that animals have souls, but not consciousness [Leibniz] |
| 6713 | If animals have ideas, and are not machines, they must have some reason [Berkeley] |
| 19220 | We may think animals reason very little, but they hardly ever make mistakes! [Peirce] |
| 22651 | Dogs' curiosity only concerns what will happen next [James] |
| 4908 | No one knows if animals are conscious [Carter,R] |