First, I am not a 'scholar', just a disabled truck mechanic.
My 'views' are merely observations and ideas from the 58 years of my life.
While some of it is referenced from random studies and inputs I have no actual references to give that would allow you a direct research query.
That being said, consider this:
Stomping Grounds
A tiger hunts in a range. It's range is limited by its means.
It's range may migrate as its food sources change but it only has a limited range.
It doesn't use conveyance to increase its hunting range.
It's reality of life is limited to itself.
Humans use conveyance to increase their range.
Horses, trains, cars, boats, airplanes and even rockets to outer space.
Their reality of life is a far greater range than the tiger.
Migration
A long time ago humans migrated.
Migration patterns of different species have been studied for decades.
There is a question of migration motivation (why migrate) that humans apply to other species based on our observations and documentations.
What I would like to know is if a bird thinks about its Winter home in the South while it is in the North for the Summer?
When it comes time to head South for the Winter, does it have a destination in mind?
We do when we relocate.
When a wildebeest migrates, does it know at the start of its journey that it will cross the Nile full of crocodiles? Is the Nile plunge a complete surprise each year?
Simplistic Reality
The simplest reality is that of an object.
The object exists.
When my truck needs fuel it doesn't move itself to go find fuel.
When it is broken, it doesn't mend itself or complain.
It remains simply in a state of existence.
When an organism needs fuel, it goes looking for fuel.
Its existence is life.
For it to have life it needs certain things for that life to continue.
Its existence is dependent on obtaining those things.
Without them, it no longer lives.
At that point, it becomes an object.
It no longer seeks out its sustenance.
Rational Thought
An object has no rational thought.
(True AI is not here yet)
It does not contemplate, evaluate or motivate.
Living organisms all have a certain degree of rational thought.
They evaluate and motivate themselves in an effort to maintain their lives.
Every organism alive does this to a certain degree, even plants and bacteria.
In a certain way, it is simplistic reality to attempt to preserve its life.
Humans contemplate.
We are baseline organisms first and foremost but we tend to make the process of life complicated because we rationalize and contemplate reality.
We assign value to occurrences and objects where no value is needed and change our patterns of actions to include those values while we attempt to survive.
A raccoon will eat a two week old sandwich found in the dirt.
To the raccoon, it is food.
A human will not eat, even when hungry, anything it cannot justify in its value system.
To 'live' a human requires its values to be fulfilled.
An organism needs its requirements to be fulfilled.
The ladder of rational thought ranges from the most simplistic organism to the most complicated.
Along that ladder, organisms add to their basic life parameters values to which they assign as quality of life.
As rational thought increases 'life' becomes more complicated.
The Plateau of Complex Reality
On this planet, we (humans) consider ourselves the most rational complex lifeforms at this point in time.
We consider ourselves the baseline for intelligent life.
We have mastered the ability to obtain the basic elements of life.
Since we are not as 'occupied' with the quest for sustenance our minds wander and we start trying to figure out the 'why' of reality.
The more we figure out, the more complicated it all gets.
However, the raccoon understands reality in a simplistic way.
Not complicated at all.
Having time to complicate our reality we start to attempt to change it so it fits into the little boxes we say it has to fit into.
When we can get reality to do what we want, we feel justified but reality has a habit of just being reality no matter how big the box is.
When reality doesn't work the way we imagined it, we get upset.
Thing is, reality doesn't exist because we say it does.
It just exists.
Well, I'm just offering up some points for pondering.
Hopefully, it may inspire your mind to think someplace it didn't before.
If not, okay, no worries.
You might try using Google Scholar to find papers and articles on subjects for more research.
Most of the articles provide names that you might try emailing.
Some might respond but if you don't try, you will never know.
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. Search across a wide variety of disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions.
scholar.google.com
School for Champions is not so much a source as it is a place to gather ideas.
www.school-for-champions.com
There is a feedback blog where you can pose questions on multiple subjects.
Human Knowledge.net is a rather old website that allows you to read up on a multitude of subjects .
xtropy
humanknowledge.net
What is the
meaning of life?
What are the
limits of intelligence? Of
logic?