Will, Reasoning , Animality

On the model of human Experience presented here, Will is the process of setting oneself in motion, into which Reasoning effects a type of connectivity. Now, in the absence of any direct access, the question of whether or not non-human animals are capable of Will and/or of Reasoning is indeterminable, i. e. the abundant empirical evidence of intelligent animal behavior is always susceptible to a reduction to mechanistic explanation. Likewise, both the traditional thesis that Rationality is the defining characteristic of the specifically human animal, and its modification, that humans possess greater Rationality than do other animals, are sheerly speculative. However, humans do evince a greater diversity of motions, as well as a greater diversity of organized motions, than do other animals, from which more comprehensive Reasoning, as the organizer of those motions, can be at least inferred, even if a capacity to perform abstract calculations cannot be. So, even without the speculation that has been its traditional support, there remains sound grounds for the thesis that humanity is a higher species than other fauna.