Reason

===Reason, imagination, mimesis, and memory===
{{Main|Imagination|Mimesis|Memory|Recollection}}
Reason and [[imagination]] rely on similar [[mental processes]].<ref>{{cite book|author-link=Ruth M.J. Byrne|first=Ruth M.J.|last=Byrne|year=2005|title=The Rational Imagination: How People Create Counterfactual Alternatives to Reality|location=Cambridge, Mass.|publisher=MIT Press}}</ref> Imagination is not only found in humans. Aristotle asserted that {{transliteration|grc|phantasia}} (imagination: that which can hold images or {{transliteration|grc|phantasmata}}) and {{transliteration|grc|phronein}} (a type of thinking that can judge and understand in some sense) also exist in some animals.<ref>{{cite book|author=Aristotle|title=[[De Anima]]|at=III.1–3}}</ref> According to him, both are related to the primary perceptive ability of animals, which gathers the perceptions of different senses and defines the order of the things that are perceived without distinguishing universals, and without deliberation or {{transliteration|grc|logos}}. But this is not yet reason, because human imagination is different.

[[Terrence Deacon]] and [[Merlin Donald]], writing about the [[origin of language]], connect reason not only to [[language]], but also [[mimesis]].<ref>Mimesis in modern academic writing, starting with [[Erich Auerbach]], is a technical word, which is not necessarily exactly the same in meaning as the original Greek.</ref> They describe the ability to create [[language]] as part of an internal modeling of [[reality]], and specific to humankind. Other results are [[consciousness]], and [[imagination]] or [[fantasy]]. In contrast, modern proponents of a genetic predisposition to language itself include [[Noam Chomsky]] and [[Steven Pinker]].{{clarify|reason=Why are these contrasting points of view? From the description here they seem compatible with each other.|date=September 2023}}

If reason is symbolic thinking, and peculiarly human, then this implies that humans have a special ability to maintain a clear consciousness of the distinctness of "icons" or images and the real things they represent. Merlin Donald writes:<ref name=MerlinDonald>{{cite book|first=Merlin|last=Donald|title=Origins of the Modern Mind}}{{ISBN?}}</ref>{{rp|172}}
<blockquote>A dog might perceive the "meaning" of a fight that was realistically play-acted by humans, but it could not reconstruct the message or distinguish the representation from its referent (a real fight).... Trained apes are able to make this distinction; young children make this distinction early—hence, their effortless distinction between play-acting an event and the event itself</blockquote>

In classical descriptions, an equivalent description of this mental faculty is {{transliteration|grc|eikasia}}, in the philosophy of Plato.<ref name=KleinMeno>{{cite book|first=Jacob|last=Klein|title=A Commentary on the [[Meno]]}}</ref>{{rp|at=Ch.5}} This is the ability to perceive whether a perception is an image of something else, related somehow but not the same, and therefore allows humans to perceive that a dream or memory or a reflection in a mirror is not reality as such. What Klein refers to as {{transliteration|grc|dianoetic eikasia}} is the {{transliteration|grc|eikasia}} concerned specifically with thinking and mental images, such as those mental symbols, icons, ''{{lang|en-emodeng|signes}}'', and marks discussed above as definitive of reason. Explaining reason from this direction: human thinking is special in that we often understand visible things as if they were themselves images of our intelligible "objects of thought" as "foundations" ({{transliteration|grc|hypothēses}} in Ancient Greek). This thinking ({{transliteration|grc|dianoia}}) is "...an activity which consists in making the vast and diffuse jungle of the visible world depend on a plurality of more 'precise' {{transliteration|grc|noēta}}".{{r|KleinMeno|page=122}}

Both Merlin Donald and the Socratic authors such as Plato and Aristotle emphasize the importance of {{transliteration|grc|mimēsis}}, often translated as ''imitation'' or ''representation''. Donald writes:{{r|MerlinDonald|page=169}}
<blockquote>Imitation is found especially in monkeys and apes [...but...] Mimesis is fundamentally different from imitation and mimicry in that it involves the invention of intentional representations.... Mimesis is not absolutely tied to external communication.</blockquote>

{{transliteration|grc|Mimēsis}} is a concept, now popular again in academic discussion, that was particularly prevalent in Plato's works. In Aristotle, it is discussed mainly in the ''[[Poetics (Aristotle)|Poetics]]''. In Michael Davis's account of the theory of man in that work:<ref>{{cite book|chapter=Introduction|title=[[Poetics (Aristotle)|Poetics]] of Aristotle|last1=Davis|first1=Michael|first2=Seth|last2=Benardete|pages=xvii, xxviii}}</ref>
<blockquote>It is the distinctive feature of human action, that whenever we choose what we do, we imagine an action for ourselves as though we were inspecting it from the outside. Intentions are nothing more than imagined actions, internalizings of the external. All action is therefore imitation of action; it is poetic...<ref>Davis uses "poetic" in an unusual sense, questioning the contrast in Aristotle between action ({{transliteration|grc|praxis}}, the {{transliteration|grc|praktikē}}) and making ({{transliteration|grc|poēsis}}, the {{transliteration|grc|poētikē}}): "Human [peculiarly human] action is imitation of action because thinking is always rethinking. Aristotle can define human beings as at once rational animals, political animals, and imitative animals because in the end the three are the same."</ref></blockquote>

Donald like Plato (and Aristotle, especially in ''[[On Memory|On Memory and Recollection]]''), emphasizes the peculiarity in humans of voluntary initiation of a search through one's mental world. The ancient Greek {{transliteration|grc|anamnēsis}}, normally translated as "recollection" was opposed to {{transliteration|grc|mneme}} or "memory". Memory, shared with some animals,<ref>{{cite book|author=Aristotle|title=[[On Memory]]|at=450a 15–16}}</ref> requires a consciousness not only of what happened in the past, but also ''that'' something happened in the past, which is in other words a kind of {{transliteration|grc|eikasia}}{{r|KleinMeno|page=109}} "...but nothing except man is able to recollect."<ref>{{cite book|author=Aristotle|title=[[History of Animals]]|at=I.1.488b.25–26}}</ref> Recollection is a deliberate effort to search for and recapture something once known. Klein writes that, "To become aware of our having forgotten something means to begin recollecting."{{r|KleinMeno|page=112}} Donald calls the same thing ''autocueing'', which he explains as follows:{{r|MerlinDonald|page=173}}<ref>{{cite book|last=Donald|first=Merlin|title=A Mind So Rare|pages=140–141}}{{ISBN?}}</ref> "Mimetic acts are reproducible on the basis of internal, self-generated cues. This permits voluntary recall of mimetic representations, without the aid of external cues—probably the earliest form of representational ''thinking''."

In a celebrated paper, the fantasy author and philologist [[J.R.R. Tolkien]] wrote in his essay "On Fairy Stories" that the terms "fantasy" and "enchantment" are connected to not only "the satisfaction of certain primordial human desires" but also "the origin of language and of the mind".{{cite quote|date=September 2023}}
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