Dogs are probably the best example I can think of. They learn through experience and clearly reason, but without a complex language to define abstract concepts. Its very basic reasoning, but they do learn and apply that learning.
To your point, experience is the training. Without language/data to represent human experience and knowledge to train a model, how would you give it 'experience'?
And yet dogs, to a very high degree, just learn the same things. At least the same kinds of things, over and over.
They were pre-designed to learn what they always learn. Their minds structured to readily make the same connections as puppies, that dogs have always needed to survive.
Not for real reasoning, which by its nature, does not have a limit.
> just learn the same things. At least the same kinds of things, over and over.
Its easy to train the same things to a degree, but its amazing to watch different dogs individually learn and reason through things completely differently, even within a breed or even a litter.
Reasoning ability is always limited by the capacity of the thinker to frame the concepts and interactions. Its always limited by definition, we only push that limit farther than other species, and AGI may eventually push it past our abilities.
To your point, experience is the training. Without language/data to represent human experience and knowledge to train a model, how would you give it 'experience'?