That’s me all over: I was closer to right the first time, and thought I was wrong!
Certainly true; however, there are many very significant similarities in how dogs (domesticated, home-sharing doggies, more than wolves) and humans think. That’s what prompted this side-show: it was claimed that dogs and humans do not think in similar ways. They most certainly do. Dogs have a great many mental traits that are extremely human-like.
Yes, they also have differences. No one says there is anything like identity.
So what? We’re talking about highly social animals, and I mentioned four sterling examples.
“Hey, let’s talk about aquatic mammals.”
“Okay, there’s dolphins, whales, manatees, sea otters…”
“Stop cherry-picking! There are far more land mammals!”
There is one specific point where the ancestory of humans and dogs converge. I didn’t know it off the top of my head, but by following the layers of clades backwards found I it, and it is pretty deep on the placental mammal tree and contains a large percentage of placental mammal species, and that group makes up the clade boreoeutheria. And that clade does include dolphins, whales, manatees, sea otters. And if you picked those examples to claim that the root boreoeutherian was aquatic, it would be equally cherry-picking and equally wrong as what you are doing by picking out the social animals and ignoring the non-social ones. Cetacians, manatees, and sea otters all evolved aquaticness independently from each other from land-based ancestors in cases of convergent evolution. (Oh, wait, that sounds kinda familiar…)
I think you may be missing my point. Dogs and humans behave in similar ways. I agree with that. That does not mean that they think in similar ways. And by “think in similar ways” I mean that very literally–as in, use the same pathways in their brains to process the information, decide on an action, and execute it. It is the same as a pocket calculator and Microsoft Excel both telling that 2+2=4 does not mean that both calculations involve the same code or the same CPUs.
tl;dr: You know how dogs act, you don’t know how dogs think.
You don’t know that another human “thinks the way you do.” All you know about other people is their behavior.
Meanwhile, dogs exhibit very sophisticated emotional suites of behavior, such as jealousy, resentment, loyalty, protectiveness, embarassment, and even humor. Also, their physical brains are quite similar to human brains. They have the same overall mechanisms in place for cognition and emotional interaction.
We observe dogs dreaming. That is a kind of “thinking” we know they perform, very much the same way we do.
Yep; and Lemur866 points out that humans, dogs, elephants, and dolphins developed high-order social behaviors as convergent (or parallel) evolution – exactly the thing you claimed could not possibly have happened.
Dude, I’ve admitted when I was wrong, as I have been a few times in this sideshow: it’s time for you to admit that you’re wrong. Your accusation of cherry-picking was a particularly egregious boner.
What the actual fuck? Have I fallen into Bizzarroland? This whole damn conversation with you I have been arguing that the intelligence of various groups is convergent evolution and not derived from the common ancestor. What Lemur866 said is agreeing with what I said. You are the one that has been arguing that this isn’t what has been happening, and you are the one that Lemur866 was disagreeing with in his post. If you think what I have been saying is different than what Lemur866 has been saying, then you have been misreading me so very badly that it staggers the imagination.
ETA: Apparently you don’t understand what the term “convergent evolution” means. Convergent means similar but not the same solutions to similar problems. Convergent evolution does not mean identical results. You need to reread your Gould, and maybe some stuff written in this decade.