Dear Anonymous, Not sure

Dear Anonymous,

Not sure what you're getting at. When we run at the sight of a gun, what are we doing if we are not thinking? If we didn't recognize the object as a "gun" would we still run? Probably not. So how do we recognize the "gun" as a weapon to be feared? Doesn't that involve thinking? But do we need to process the gun as a symbol in order to be afraid?

Conversely, when the chimpanzees "monkey" about with the sticks or the boxes, don't they need to reconceptualize (however you want to think about that term) the sticks or boxes as objects to be used to solve a problem? And how do they reconceptualize them if they don't have language? That's the puzzle that underlies thinking (at least from our perspective).