At this point in the series, a different kind of pressure usually appears.
Readers begin to say things like:
Surely animals must represent something.
Surely this smuggles intelligence in through the back door.
Surely this is just semantics.
These reactions are revealing.
They tell us less about animal behaviour than about our own semiotic predicament.
The human default: meaning everywhere
Humans are not merely sensitive to meaning.
We are organised by it.
Our behaviour is routinely coordinated through:
symbols,
narratives,
explicit commitments,
articulated reasons.
As a result, we are deeply inclined to assume that competent behaviour must involve something like understanding.
This inclination is not a philosophical mistake.
It is a structural feature of human life.
Semiotic competence as a special case
Human meaning-making is extraordinarily powerful.
It allows us to:
detach action from immediate context,
coordinate across time and distance,
stabilise institutions,
argue about what ought to count.
But precisely because this capacity is so central for us, we tend to treat it as the default explanation for competence as such.
This is the first confusion.
Projection as explanation
When we encounter complex animal behaviour, we instinctively project inward:
intentions,
representations,
plans,
beliefs.
This projection feels explanatory because it mirrors how we would have to operate to behave that way.
But mirroring is not explanation.
It is anthropomorphic substitution.
Why the projection persists
The projection is hard to relinquish for three reasons.
They do not offer inner drama.
They offer structure.
Structure without interior theatre
What this series has argued is not that animals lack complexity.
It is that their complexity is organised differently.
Competence arises from:
richly structured value systems,
tight organism–environment coupling,
dynamic constraint landscapes,
ongoing actualisation of possibility.
None of this requires an inner stage on which meanings are consulted.
Meaning as an evolutionary addition, not a prerequisite
This reframing also helps to place human semiotic capacity correctly.
Meaning is not the foundation of biological competence.
It is a late and specialised addition that enables a different order of coordination.
Confusion arises when we reverse this order and treat meaning as basic.
Why intelligence talk muddies the water
Terms like intelligence, problem-solving, and cognition often function as placeholders.
They mark our sense that something sophisticated is happening without specifying how.
In animal contexts, these terms frequently smuggle representation back in under a looser name.
This is not illumination.
It is evasion.
The cost of confusion
When we over-intellectualise animal competence, two things happen.
We misunderstand animals.
And we misunderstand ourselves.
We lose sight of the distinctiveness of human meaning-making by treating it as ubiquitous.
Clearing the ground
The aim of this series has not been to diminish animals.
It has been to clear conceptual space.
Once we stop asking what animals think, we can finally ask how their behaviour is so reliably, flexibly, and robustly organised.
That question no longer requires mystery.
Looking ahead
With this confusion addressed, we are finally in a position to be precise.
In the final post, we will ask what this framework actually changes — for biology, for AI, for cognition studies — and just as importantly, what it does not license us to conclude.
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