Do animals regulate their body budgets by interoception? I cannot speak for the entire animal kingdom here but for mammals—rats, monkeys, apes, dogs—I think we are on pretty safe ground answering yes. Do animals experience affect? Again, I think we can give a pretty confident yes, based on some biological and behavioral clues. Can animals learn concepts and can they categorize predictively with those concepts? Definitely. Can they learn action-based concepts? Unquestionably yes. Can they learn the meaning of words? Under some circumstances, some animals can learn words or other symbol systems,
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