This paper analyzes debates on animal language in eighteenth-century German philosophy and science. Adopting a history of ideas approach, I explain how the study of animal language became tied to the investigation into the origin and development of language towards the end of the eighteenth century. I argue that for large parts of the eighteenth century, the question of the existence of animal languages was studied within the context of the philosophical question of whether (...) animals possess reason. In Germany, the debate concerning animal reason was influenced by Christian Wolff and was taken up by diverse thinkers such as Winkler, Meier, and Reimarus. I argue that in the second half of the eighteenth century the study of animal language became more loosely related to the question of whether animals possess reason: animal language was studied not only in light of the debate on animal reason but also because it sheds light on the nature of animals, on the differences and similarities between animals and humans, and on the origin and development of language. This systematic study of animal language coincided with the rise of linguistics, anthropology, and biology as independent sciences. (shrink)

Literature’s qualities can be highlighted by combining it with other forms of art. Manga, which is a Japanese traditional literary genre that involves visual art, has gained worldwide popularity in the last few decades. Subsequently, it was adapted into anime. This study explores the legitimacy of manga in literature, its global influence among notable figures such as prime ministers or presidents, and the zenith it attained in anime, which is a universal language. Are manga and anime universal solely due (...) to their graphics and stories? Or is it rather because of their ability to connect people to the sacred? Is image universal? If so, what kind of image? Static one? Moving one? Which, manga or anime, can rather be considered universal? What does the future hold for literature and its various adaptations? (shrink)

Recent discussions of animal communication and the evolution of language have advocated adopting a ‘pragmatics-first’ approach, according to which “a more productive framework” for primate communication research should be “pragmatics, the field of linguistics that examines the role of context in shaping the meaning of linguistic utterances”. After distinguishing two different conceptions of pragmatics that advocates of the pragmatics-first approach have implicitly relied on, I argue that neither conception adequately serves the purposes of pragmatics-first approaches to the origins (...) of human linguistic communication. My main aim in this paper is to motivate–and begin to articulate–an intermediary conception whose scope is narrower than Carnapian pragmatics but broader than Gricean pragmatics. To do so, I first spell out what I take to be the key insight offered by proponents of the Gricean approach concerning the emergence of linguistic communication, namely, its being communication ‘from a psychological point of view’. I then develop this insight using key elements from the anti-Gricean ‘biosemantic’ account of linguistic communication due to Ruth Millikan, Philosophical Perspectives 9, Ridgeview Publishing, Atascedero CA, 1995, Millikan R Varieties of Meaning. Mass.: The MIT Press, Cambridge, Millikan, Beyond concepts: unicepts, language, and natural information, Oxford University Press, Oxford UK, 2017, and elsewhere). I argue that the intermediary pragmatics-first approach that I propose, which draws on both Gricean and Millikanian resources, would be better equipped to serve the purposes of those who search for potential precursors of human linguistic communication in animal communication. (shrink)

The as-structure provided by language, even in the sciences, is always constitutive of experience and never merely designative. “From Saying…it comes to pass that the World is made to appear” (Heidegger 1971 [1957]: 101).

The twentieth century saw what could be described as a parting of the ways between humans and other species of animal in many parts of the world. Increasing urbanization and the intensification of farming resulted in restricted opportunities to interact directly with other animals, particularly freeroaming animals in their natural habitats. At the same time, changes in technology led to greatly increased opportunities to come into contact with animals indirectly through their representation in media such as film, television, and (...) the internet. This extra stage of mediation between actual animals in the world and a human population’s experience of them is extremely important, because representations necessarily are partial. Among the forces that potentially influence representations are powerful commercial forces. They pressure for increased intensive confinement of animals, increased human use of habitats, larger catches of animals in the wild, and numerous other ways of increasing the utility drawn from animals. At the same time, these forces are resisted in a variety of directions by those working for animal welfare, rights, . (shrink)

The study of animal cognition raises profound questions about the minds of animals and philosophy of mind itself. Aristotle argued that humans are the only animal to laugh, but in recent experiments rats have also been shown to laugh. In other experiments, dogs have been shown to respond appropriately to over two hundred words in human language. In this introduction to the philosophy of animal minds Kristin Andrews introduces and assesses the essential topics, problems and debates (...) as they cut across animal cognition and philosophy of mind. She addresses the following key topics: what is cognition, and what is it to have a mind? What questions should we ask to determine whether behaviour has a cognitive basis? the science of animal minds explained: ethology, behaviourist psychology, and cognitive ethology rationality in animals animal consciousness: what does research into pain and the emotions reveal? What can empirical evidence about animal behaviour tell us about philosophical theories of consciousness? does animal cognition involve belief and concepts; do animals have a ‘Language of Thought’? animal communication other minds: do animals attribute ‘mindedness’ to other creatures? moral reasoning and ethical behaviour in animals animal cognition and memory. Extensive use of empirical examples and case studies is made throughout the book. These include Cheney and Seyfarth’s ververt monkey research, Thorndike’s cat puzzle boxes, Jensen’s research into humans and chimpanzees and the ultimatum game, Pankseep and Burgdorf’s research on rat laughter, and Clayton and Emery’s research on memory in scrub-jays. Additional features such as chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary make this an indispensable introduction to those teaching philosophy of mind, animal cognition. It will also be an excellent resource for those in fields such as ethology, biology and psychology. (shrink)

This article establishes grounds on which attributions of information and encoding in animal signals are warranted. As common interest increases between evolutionary agents, the theoretical approach best suited to describing their interaction shifts from evolutionary game theory to communication theory, which warrants informational language. The take-home positive message is that in cooperative settings, signals can appropriately be described as transmitting encoded information, regardless of the cognitive powers of signalers. The canonical example is the honeybee waggle dance, which is (...) discussed extensively in the second and third sections. The take-home negative message is that signals are not always a consequence of coadaptation. The communication theory approach is just one end of a continuum explored more thoroughly by evolutionary game theory. The fourth and fifth sections explore this wider framework, as well as overturning some widely held misconceptions about information theory. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas’s work seemingly places a great emphasis on language leading some commentators towards a Kantian reading of him where moral consideration would be based on the moral patient’s capacity for reason with language functioning as a proxy for this. Although this reading is possible, a closer look at Levinas’s descriptions of language reveal that its defining characteristic is not reason but the capacity to express beyond any thematized contents we would give to the Other. This expressivity (...) (which Levinas calls face) would confront me with their singularity, infinity, and interiority tying me to them in a relation of responsibility. And the “content” of such an expression is a vulnerability and exposure tied to their mortality which continually entreats me though I cannot take it away. It is by means of this bare expression of an exposure to death as the core of language that it will become possible for non-human mortal beings to have what Levinas calls language. This possibility, although not explicitly addressed by Levinas, is at least left open by his account of Bobby the dog as well as his agnosticism over a snake’s face. (shrink)

According to the mental continuity claim (MCC), human mental faculties are physical and beneficial to human survival, so they must have evolved gradually from ancestral forms and we should expect to see their precursors across species. Materialism of mind coupled with Darwin’s evolutionary theory leads directly to such claims and even today arguments for animal mental properties are often presented with the MCC as a premise. However, the MCC has been often challenged among contemporary scholars. It is usually argued (...) that only humans use language and that language as such has no precursors in the animal kingdom. Moreover, language is quite often understood as a necessary tool for having representations and forming beliefs. As a consequence, by lacking language animals could not have developed representational systems or beliefs. In response to these worries, we aim to mount a limited defense of the MCC as an empirical hypothesis. First, we will provide a short historical overview of the origins of the MCC and examine some of the motives behind traditional arguments for and against it. Second, we will focus on one particular question, namely whether language as such is necessary for having beliefs. Our goal is to show that there is little reason to think language is necessary for belief. In doing so, we will challenge a view of belief that is widely accepted by those working in animal cognition, namely representational belief, and we will argue that if belief is non-representational, then different research questions and methods are required. We will conclude with an argument that to study the evolution of belief across species, it is essential to begin the study of subjects in their social and ecological environment rather than in contexts that are not ecologically valid along the social and ecological dimensions. Thus, rather than serving as a premise in an argument 3 in favor of animal minds, the MCC can only be defended by empirical investigation, but importantly, empirical investigation of the right sort.. (shrink)

Music and language are universal human abilities with many apparent similarities relating to their acoustics, structure, and frequent use in social situations. We might therefore expect them to be understood and processed similarly, and indeed an emerging body of research suggests that this is the case. But the focus has historically been on the individual, looking at the passive listener or the isolated speaker or performer, even though social interaction is the primary site of use for both domains. Nonetheless, (...) an important goal of emerging research is to compare music and language in terms of acoustics and structure, social interaction, and functional origins to develop parallel accounts across the two domains. Indeed, a central aim of both of evolutionary musicology and language evolution research is to understand the adaptive significance or functional origin of human music and language. An influential proposal to emerge in recent years has been referred to as the social bonding hypothesis. Here, within a comparative approach to animal communication systems, I review empirical studies in support of the social bonding hypothesis in humans, non-human primates, songbirds, and various other mammals. In support of this hypothesis, I review six research fields: (i) the functional origins of music; (ii) the functional origins of language; (iii) mechanisms of social synchrony for human social bonding; (iv) language and social bonding in humans; (v) music and social bonding in humans; and (vi) pitch, tone and emotional expression in human speech and music. I conclude that the comparative study of complex vocalizations and behaviors in various extant species can provide important insights into the adaptive function(s) of these traits in these species, as well as offer evidence-based speculations for the existence of “musilanguage” in our primate ancestors, and thus inform our understanding of the biology and evolution of human music and language. (shrink)

Are animals moral agents? In this article, a theologian and an anthropologist unite to bring the resources of each field to bear on this question. Alas, not all interdisciplinary conversations end harmoniously, and after much discussion the two authors find themselves in substantial disagreement over the answer. The article is therefore presented in two halves, one for each side of the argument. As well as presenting two different positions, our hope is that this article clarifies the different understandings of morality (...) in our respective fields and will help to offset confusion in interdisciplinary dialogue. In what follows, we each present our case. In the first section, Adam Willows argues that moral activity necessarily involves the use of reason, symbolic thought, and language and is on that basis an exclusively human affair. In the second, Marcus Baynes-Rock discusses his experience of relationality with other creatures; a relationality which, he argues, creates a shared understanding of obligations which are characteristically moral. (shrink)

Researchers have converged on the idea that a pragmatic understanding of communication can shed important light on the evolution of language. Accordingly, animal communication scientists have been keen to adopt insights from pragmatics research. Some authors couple their appeal to pragmatic aspects of communication with the claim that there are fundamental asymmetries between signalers and receivers in non-human animals. For example, in the case of primate vocal calls, signalers are said to produce signals unintentionally and mindlessly, whereas receivers (...) are thought to engage in contextual interpretation to derive the significance of signals. We argue that claims about signaler-receiver asymmetries are often confused. This is partly because their authors conflate two conceptions of pragmatics, which generate different accounts of the explanatory target for accounts of the evolution of language. Here we distinguish these conceptions, in order to help specify more precisely the proper explanatory target for language evolution research. (shrink)

Natural Language Processing (NLP) research on AI Safety and social bias in AI has focused on safety for humans and social bias against human minorities. However, some AI ethicists have argued that the moral significance of nonhuman animals has been ignored in AI research. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate whether there is speciesism, i.e., discrimination against nonhuman animals, in NLP research. First, we explain why nonhuman animals are relevant in NLP research. Next, we survey the (...) findings of existing research on speciesism in NLP researchers, data, and models and further investigate this problem in this study. The findings of this study suggest that speciesism exists within researchers, data, and models, respectively. Specifically, our survey and experiments show that (a) among NLP researchers, even those who study social bias in AI, do not recognize speciesism or speciesist bias; (b) among NLP data, speciesist bias is inherent in the data annotated in the datasets used to evaluate NLP models; (c) OpenAI GPTs, recent NLP models, exhibit speciesist bias by default. Finally, we discuss how we can reduce speciesism in NLP research. (shrink)

I show that there are good arguments and evidence to boot that support the language as an instrument of thought hypothesis. The underlying mechanisms of language, comprising of expressions structured hierarchically and recursively, provide a perspective (in the form of a conceptual structure) on the world, for it is only via language that certain perspectives are avail- able to us and to our thought processes. These mechanisms provide us with a uniquely human way of thinking and talking (...) about the world that is different to the sort of thinking we share with other animals. If the primary function of language were communication then one would expect that the underlying mechanisms of language will be structured in a way that favours successful communication. I show that not only is this not the case, but that the underlying mechanisms of language are in fact structured in a way to maximise computational efficiency, even if it means causing communicative problems. Moreover, I discuss evidence from comparative, neuropatho- logical, developmental, and neuroscientific evidence that supports the claim that language is an instrument of thought. (shrink)

The relationship between language and consciousness has been debated since ancient times, but the details have never been fully articulated. Certainly, there are animals that possess the same essential auditory and vocal systems as humans, but acquiring language is seemingly uniquely human. In this essay, we investigate the relationship between language and consciousness by demonstrating how language usage implies the self-awareness of the user. We show that the self-awareness faculty encompasses the language faculty and how (...) this self-awareness, that is uniquely human, enables us to create social realities through utilizing the social character of the language. We conclude that it is self-awareness that empowers humans to form collective intentionality and to structure societies. Establishing the relationship between self-awareness, language and society sheds light on connections between philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and philosophy of society. (shrink)

The problem of animal consciousness has profound implications on our concept of nature and of our place in the natural world. In philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience the problem of animal consciousness raises two main questions (Velmans, 2007): the distribution question (“are there conscious animals beside humans?”) and the phenomenological question (“what is it like to be a non-human animal?”). In order to answer these questions, many approaches take into account similarities and dissimilarities in animal (...) and human behavior, e.g. the use of language or tools and mirror self-recognition (Allen and Bekoff, 2007), however behavioral arguments don’t seem to be conclusive (Baars, 2005). Cognitive neuroscience is providing comparative data on structural and functional similarities, respectively called “homologies” and “analogies”. Many experimental results suggest that the thalamocortical system is essential for consciousness (Edelman and Tononi, 2000; Tononi, 2008). The argument from homology states that the general structure of thalamocortical system remained the same in the last 100-200 million years, for it is neuroanatomically similar in all the present and past mammals and it didn’t change much during phylogeny (Allen and Bekoff, 2007). The argument from analogy states that the key functional processes correlated with consciousness in humans are still present in all other mammals and many other animals (Baars, 2005). These processes are information integration through effective cortical connectivity (Massimini et al., 2005; Rosanova et al., 2012) and elaboration of information at a global level (Dehaene and Changeux, 2011). On this basis, the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness states that all mammals, birds, and many other animals (such as octopuses) possess the neurological substrates of consciousness (Low et al., 2012). Conscious experience is private (Chalmers, 1995; Nagel, 1974) therefore the answer to the phenomenological question may be impossible. Nevertheless, cognitive neuroscience may provide an answer to the distribution question, showing that conscious experience is not limited to humans since it is a major biological adaptation going back millions of years. (shrink)

Scholarly opinions vary on what language is, how it evolved, and from where or what it evolved. Long considered uniquely human, today scholars argue for evolutionary continuity between human language and animal communication systems. But while it is generally recognized that language is an evolving communication system, scholars continue to debate from which species language evolved, and what behavioral and cognitive features are the precursors to human language. To understand the nature of protolanguage, some (...) look for homologs in gene functionality, brain areas, or anatomical structures such as the supralaryngeal vocal tract; others point toward primates, their gestural, vocal, multimodal, and in later evolving hominins also their pantomimic communication systems; and still others draw parallels between the musicality that characterizes language and the pitch found in the numerous sounds produced by animals. Accordingly, protolanguage theories today are multiple and diverse, and protolanguages might have also been diverse. This special issue on Evolving (Proto)Language/s for Lingua bundles several of the protolanguage theories that were put forward at the sixth edition of the Ways to Protolanguage conference series, held at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, in 2019. Not aimed at surveying all the different ways there are to conceptualize, study, and model protolanguage/s, this issue provides interested readers with good overviews on the role played in current theorizing on protolanguage/s by (paleo)anthropology, genetics, physiology, developmental, evolutionary, ecological, and pragmatic research lines. (shrink)

Mental representations remain the central posits of psychology after many decades of scrutiny. However, there is no consensus about the representational format(s) of biological cognition. This paper provides a survey of evidence from computational cognitive psychology, perceptual psychology, developmental psychology, comparative psychology, and social psychology, and concludes that one type of format that routinely crops up is the language-of-thought (LoT). We outline six core properties of LoTs: (i) discrete constituents; (ii) role-filler independence; (iii) predicate–argument structure; (iv) logical operators; (v) (...) inferential promiscuity; and (vi) abstract content. These properties cluster together throughout cognitive science. Bayesian computational modeling, compositional features of object perception, complex infant and animal reasoning, and automatic, intuitive cognition in adults all implicate LoT-like structures. Instead of regarding LoT as a relic of the previous century, researchers in cognitive science and philosophy-of-mind must take seriously the explanatory breadth of LoT-based architectures. We grant that the mind may harbor many formats and architectures, including iconic and associative structures as well as deep-neural-network-like architectures. However, as computational/representational approaches to the mind continue to advance, classical compositional symbolic structures – that is, LoTs – only prove more flexible and well-supported over time. (shrink)

Chimpanzee language studies have generated much heated controversy, as Roger Fouts can attest from firsthand experience. Perhaps this is because language is usually considered to be what truly distinguishes humans from apes. If chimps can indeed be taught the rudiments of language, then the difference between them and us is not as great as we might have thought. It is a matter of degree rather than kind, a continuity, and our species is not so special after all. (...) The advantage of this continuity thesis, as Fouts has emphasized, is that it conforms to the general tenets of evolutionary theory, and fits well with the evidence from paleontology and genetics that suggests that apes and humans are close cousins. It also .. (shrink)

Some philosophers (e.g. Descartes) argue that there is an evidential relationship between language and thought, such that presence of language is indicative of mind. Recent language acquisition research with apes such as chimpanzees and bonobos attempts to demonstrate the capacity of these primates to acquire at least rudimentary linguistic capacity. This paper presents a case study of the ape language research and explores the consequences of the research with respect to the argument that animals lack mind (...) because they fail to display linguistic capacity. (shrink)

With insights from philosophy of language and semiotics, this article addresses judicial choices and semantic errors involved in United States v. Stevens, 130 S.Ct. 1577 (2010) (refusing to read “killing” and “wounding” to include cruelty and thus striking down a federal statute outlawing videos of animal cruelty), and Snyder v. Phelps, 131 S.Ct. 1207 (2011) (finding a First Amendment right to picket military funerals and verbally attack parents of dead soldiers as part of purportedly-public expression). -/- This article (...) maintains that a better understanding of semiotics (the theory of signs) exposes the flaws in both decisions and bolsters the arguments of the lone dissenter in both cases, Justice Alito. Such a better understanding of semiotics involves grasping (a) how expression involves signs, (b) how signs work in general, and (c) the differences between three basic kinds of signs (indexes, icons and symbols). This article maintains that the expression involved in Stevens and in Phelps was a type of indexical or quasi-indexical expression that, for reasons similar to those involved in child pornography cases, should have no First Amendment protection. -/- This article also notes shifting interpretive positions in the Court that cry out for reform. Although Chief Justice Roberts uses a textualist approach in his majority opinion striking down the animal cruelty statute in Stevens, his majority opinion in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 132 S.Ct. 2566 (2012), has no trouble finding a “penalty” a “tax,” upholding the Affordable Care Act, and chastising the dissent for voting to strike down a statute simply because “. . . Congress used the wrong labels.” Id. at 2597. -/- This article attempts to expose such gamesmanship in “textualism” and attempts to lay out a better semiotic path for the Court. It calls for more forthright judicial decision-making in constitutional and statutory interpretation; calls for rejecting mechanical notions of law that conceal judicial choice involved in constitutional and statutory interpretation; and calls for rejecting claims that dictionaries can settle constitutional or statutory interpretation issues without reference to constitutional and statutory goals. -/- Keywords: interpretation, construction, meaning, plain meaning, originalism, original intent, canon, semiotics, signs, signals, symbol, icon, index, signifier, signified, ordinary meaning, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, animal cruelty, first amendment, statutes. (shrink)

Through the reconstruction of Leibniz's theory of the degrees of knowledge, this e-book investigates and explores the intrinsic relationship of imagination with space and time. The inquiry into this relationship defines the logic of imagination that characterizes both human and non-human animals, albeit differently, making them two different species of imaginative animals. -/- Lucia Oliveri explains how the emergence of language in human animals goes hand in hand with the emergence of thought and a different form of rationality constituted (...) by logical inferences based on identity and contradiction, principles that are out of reach of the imagination. The e-book concludes that the presence of innate principles in human animals transforms the way in which they sense-perceive the world, thereby constantly increasing the distinction between human and non-human animals. -/- Keywords: human and non-human animals, Leibniz and Locke on ideas, Leibniz on bodies, Leibniz on conceivability, Leibniz on degrees of knowledge, Leibniz on degrees of perception, Leibniz on innate ideas, Leibniz on modality, Leibniz on similarity and congruence, Leibniz on space and time, Leibniz’s philosophy of language, theory of types. (shrink)

This essay discusses how medieval authors from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries dealt with a philosophical problem that social institutions pose for the Aristotelian dichotomy between natural and artificial entities. It is argued that marriage, political community, and language provided a particular challenge for the conception that things which are designed by human beings are artefacts. Medieval philosophers based their arguments for the naturalness of social institutions on the anthropological view that human beings are political animals by nature, but (...) this strategy required rethinking the borderline between nature and art. The limits of nature were extended, as social institutions were considered to be natural even though they are in many ways similar to artificial products. (shrink)

One of the most important abilities we have as humans is the ability to think about number. In this chapter, we examine the question of whether there is an essential connection between language and number. We provide a careful examination of two prominent theories according to which concepts of the positive integers are dependent on language. The first of these claims that language creates the positive integers on the basis of an innate capacity to represent real numbers. (...) The second claims that language’s function is to integrate contents from modules that humans share with other animals. We argue that neither model is successful. (shrink)

Combinatorial behavior involves combining different elements into larger aggregates with meaning. It is generally contrasted with compositionality, which involves the combining of meaningful elements into larger constituents whose meaning is derived from its component parts. Combinatoriality is commonly considered a capacity found in primates and other animals, whereas compositionality often is considered uniquely human. Questioning the validity of this claim, this multidisciplinary special issue of the International Journal of Primatology unites papers that each study aspects of combinatoriality and compositionality found (...) in primate and bird communication systems, tool use, skills, and human language. The majority of authors conclude that compositionality is evolutionarily preceded by combinatoriality and that neither are uniquely human. This introduction briefly introduces readers to the major findings and issues raised by the contributors. -/- . (shrink)

A cosmological principle, because it was the first to be created, Exu presents itself as the creative protomatter, whose expansive and unfinished character makes possible the appearanceof all other creations. He is the animating principle of existence and in everything there isExu. The crossroads is its space-time and this fact would explain why “black culture is acrossroads culture”. But, incarnated in Afro-diasporic practices in the Atlantic bands, Exunot only vigorously maintains his multifaceted power, showing that colonial redemption didnot obtain the (...) expected result, but also shows that its everyday meanings in the African BlackDiaspora here in the Americas they are the result of battles, negotiations, authoritarianism,power regimes, violence, transgressions, silencing and alliances experienced in the colonialdynamic, as Luiz Rufno reminds us in his book Pedagogia das Encruzilhadas (2019). (shrink)

This is a theoretical treatment of the term "Sha Zhu Pan" (杀猪盘) in Chinese, which translates to “Pig-Butchering” in English. The article critically examines the propagation and validation of "Pig Butchering," an animal metaphor, and its implications for the dehumanisation of victims of online fraud across various discourses. The study provides background information about this type of fraud before investigating its theoretical foundations and linking its emergence to the dehumanisation of fraud victims. The analysis highlights the disparity between academic (...) literature, subjected to rigorous peer-review processes, and sensationalised narratives prevalent in the media. While academic works subject "pig butchering" to critical scrutiny and refrain from endorsing derogatory terms to depict fraud victims, numerous media outlets employ this term uncritically, further worsening the predicament of these victims. "Pig butchering" is firmly rooted in the concept of dehumanisation, and this article underscores how language moulds perceptions of fraud and behaviour, extending to the development of preventive strategies. The role of law enforcement agencies in generating and disseminating materials is also a central theme, emphasising their responsibility as trusted sources of information. We suggest that these agencies should adopt non-victim shaming language to encourage victims to report crimes and alleviate the stigma attached to victimisation. Additionally, the article offers valuable cross-cultural insights by comparing metaphors from Chinese and Nigerian contexts. This comparative analysis enriches our comprehension of the global dimensions of online fraud and its cultural diversities, highlighting the substantial impact of language on perceptions and behaviours. We advocate for a departure from victim-blaming tendencies perpetuated by select media outlets, urging a more compassionate and accurate portrayal of those affected by online fraud. We, therefore, call for a more empathetic and accurate portrayal of individuals affected by online fraud, aligning with the broader objective of promoting understanding and support for these victims. (shrink)

Large Language Models (LLMs) are generative AI systems capable of producing original texts based on inputs about topic and style provided in the form of prompts or questions. The introduction of the outputs of these systems into human discursive practices poses unprecedented moral and political questions. The article articulates an analysis of the moral status of these systems and their interactions with human interlocutors based on the Habermasian theory of communicative action. The analysis explores, among other things, Habermas's inquiries (...) into the analogy between human minds and computers, and into the status of atypical participants in the linguistic community such as genetically modified subjects and animals. Major conclusions are the LLMs seem to qualify as authors that originally participate in discursive practices but do display only a structurally derivative form of communicative competence and fail to meet the status of communicative agents. In this sense, while the contribution of AI writing systems in public discourse and deliberation can support the process of mutual understanding within the community of speakers, the human actors involved in the development, use, and diffusion of these systems share a collective responsibility for the disclosure of AI authorship and verification and adjudication of validity claims. (shrink)

Animal mind philosophy and the related philosophy of language are rich and developing fields of philosophy. Enriched with the language of comparative concepts, they can become the threshold of a cumulative, verifiable strictly scientific "philosophy of pure mind", asserting a fundamentally new view of the problem of society, man and his place among other beings. My understanding of the mind through the prism of nonverbal and verbal thinking allowed me to get an idea of three completely different (...) stages in the development of the mind – reason, mind and wisdom. I understand reason as thinking by classification concepts of natural language, mind – as thinking by concrete scientific comparative concepts verified with the help of the senses. Whereas wisdom, understood by me in the light of "pure reason", is connected with the generalization of many particular comparative concepts. At the same time, I proceed from the fact that we are all perceiving beings, and our brain, being formed in the light of the relations of similarity and difference, perceives (comprehends – grasps) the energy present in the environment (energy in general), and converts it into sensory data. Presented by the Aristotle-Rotenfeld philosophical Matrix, in the form of concrete universal concepts of different types, they expand its cognitive capabilities step by step. Thus, with the help of spatial representations and integral visual images – drawings used by me, I show how to make nonverbal rational thinking of humans and animals verbal, expressing it in comparative terms. (shrink)

There are two main approaches within classical cognitive science to explaining how humans can entertain mental states that integrate contents across domains. The language-based framework states that this ability arises from higher cognitive domain-specific systems that combine their outputs through the language faculty, whereas the language-independent framework holds that it comes from non-language-involving connections between such systems. This article turns on its head the most influential empirical argument for the language-based framework, an argument that originates (...) from research on spatial reorientation. I make the case that neuroscientific findings about spatial reorientation in rodents and humans bolster the language-independent framework instead. (shrink)

Does the capacity to think require the capacity to sense? A lively debate on this topic runs throughout the history of philosophy and now animates discussions of artificial intelligence. Many have argued that AI systems such as large language models cannot think and understand if they lack sensory grounding. I argue that thought does not require sensory grounding: there can be pure thinkers who can think without any sensory capacities. As a result, the absence of sensory grounding does not (...) entail that large language models cannot think or understand. I also consider to what extent quasi-sensory grounding can at least boost the performance of a language model. (shrink)

Paper presented at the Heidegger Circle 2011. Although Aristotle’s influence on young Heidegger’s thought has been studied at length, such studies have almost exclusively focused on his interpretation of Aristotle’s ethics, physics and metaphysics. I will rather address Heidegger’s appropriation of Aristotle’s ontology of life. Focusing on recently published or recently translated courses of the mid 20’s (mainly SS 1924, WS 1925-26 and SS 1926), I hope to uncover an important aspect of young Heidegger’s thought left unconsidered: namely, that Dasein’s (...) existential structures – Befindlichkeit, Understanding and being-with-one-another through language – arose from his close reading of Aristotle’s ontology of life, of animal life. (shrink)

Philosophers and cognitive scientists have worried that research on animal mind-reading faces a ‘logical problem’: the difficulty of experimentally determining whether animals represent mental states (e.g. seeing) or merely the observable evidence (e.g. line-of-gaze) for those mental states. The most impressive attempt to confront this problem has been mounted recently by Robert Lurz. However, Lurz' approach faces its own logical problem, revealing this challenge to be a special case of the more general problem of distal content. Moreover, participants in (...) this debate do not agree on criteria for representation. As such, future debate should either abandon the representational idiom or confront underlying semantic disagreements. (shrink)

The field of language evolution has recently made Gricean pragmatics central to its task, particularly within comparative studies between human and non-human primate communication. The standard model of Gricean communication requires a set of complex cognitive abilities, such as belief attribution and understanding nested higher-order mental states. On this model, non-human primate communication is then of a radically different kind to ours. Moreover, the cognitive demands in the standard view are also too high for human infants, who nevertheless do (...) engage in communication. In this paper I critically assess the standard view and contrast it with an alternative, minimal model of Gricean communication recently advanced by Richard Moore. I then raise two objections to the minimal model. The upshot is that this model is conceptually unstable and fails to constitute a suitable alternative as a middle ground between full-fledged human communication and simpler forms of non-human animal communication. (shrink)

All that philosophical “theories” of truth do is to demonstrate what is entailed by assuming our common uses and common understandings of the concept of truth. But our common understanding of what truth is is only a part of how truth functions. If we only look at that, we are missing the rest of the picture, namely how truth functions as the foundation for all human communication. I propose that truth functions a lot like morality, in the sense that both (...) truth and morality are normative systems that regulate human behaviour. To best understand this we need to imagine why truth was needed in the first place, and what role it plays in human communication as a whole. Here the philosophical approach of defining the “State of Nature” comes into play, and we obtain an account starting with drawing the relevant distinction between humans and non-human animals, and then showing how a crisis could have arisen from the initial development of language and how collective acknowledgement of truth as a default notion could have solved it, in the same way that collective acknowledgement of a moral system solved the problem of cheats and free riders. To do this, I utilize the idea of common pool resource management, as outlined in the work of the Institutional Economist Elinor Ostrom. (shrink)

Descartes famously constructed a language test to determine the existence of other minds. The test made critical observations about how humans use language that purportedly distinguishes them from animals and machines. These observations were carried into the generative (and later biolinguistic) enterprise under what Chomsky in his Cartesian Linguistics, terms the “creative aspect of language use” (CALU). CALU refers to the stimulus-free, unbounded, yet appropriate use of language—a tripartite depiction whose function in biolinguistics is to highlight (...) a species-specific form of intellectual freedom. This paper argues that CALU provides a set of facts that have significant downstream effects on explanatory theory-construction. These include the internalist orientation of linguistics, the invocation of a competence-performance distinction, and the postulation of a generative language faculty that makes possible—but does not explain—CALU. It contrasts the biolinguistic approach to CALU with the recent wave of enthusiasm for the use of Transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs) as tools, models, or theories of human language, arguing that such uses neglect these fundamental insights to their detriment. It argues that, in the absence of replication, identification, or accounting of CALU, LLMs do not match the explanatory depth of the biolinguistic framework, thereby limiting their theoretical usefulness. (shrink)

Human beings, according to Aristotle, are not the only political animals. Bees, wasps, ants and cranes are the other political species mentioned by Aristotle in the History of Animals. Politics, I, 2 confirms this point and makes the additional statement that human beings, if not the only political animals, are nevertheless more political than the other political animals. There has been a traditional scholarly agreement that the capacity for rational speech is the reason why human beings are more political. This (...) traditional view seems to have some support from the same chapter of Politics, where Aristotle addresses, right after having stated that human beings are more political, the role of language in human beings’ political life. This paper contests this traditional view about language and claims that it is the more political character of human beings which explains the political role of language and not vice versa. -/- . (shrink)

Robert Nozick famously raised the possibility that there is a sense in which both deontology and utilitarianism are true: deontology applies to humans while utilitarianism applies to animals. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in such a hybrid views of ethics. Discussions of this Nozickian Hybrid View, and similar approaches to animal ethics, often assume that such an approach reflects the commonsense view, and best captures common moral intuitions. However, recent psychological work challenges this empirical assumption. We (...) review evidence suggesting that the folk is deontological all the way down—it is just that the moral side constraints that protect animals from harm are much weaker than those that protect humans. In fact, it appears that people even attribute some deontological protections, albeit extremely weak ones, to inanimate objects. We call this view Multi-level Weighted Deontology. While such empirical findings cannot show that the Nozickian Hybrid View is false, or that it is unjustified, they do remove its core intuitive support. That support belongs to Multi-level Weighted Deontology, a view that is also in line with the view that Nozick himself seemed to favour. To complicate things, however, we also review evidence that our intuitions about the moral status of humans are, at least in significant part, shaped by factors relating to mere species membership that seem morally irrelevant. We end by considering the potential debunking upshot of such findings about the sources of common moral intuitions about the moral status of animals. (shrink)

I defend the thesis that psychological states can be literally ascribed only to living creatures and not to nonliving machines, such as sophisticated robots. Defenders of machine consciousness do not sufficiently appreciate the importance of the biological nature of a subject for the psychological significance of its behavior. Simulations of a computer-controlled, nonliving autonomous robot cannot carry the same psychological meaning as animate behavior. Being a living creature is an essential link between genuinely expressive behavior and justified psychological ascriptions.

The question of our place in nature has long been with us. One answer lies in comparing humans with other animals , thereby highlighting the uniquely human. To this end, I examine the distinction between humans and brutes as delineated by Descartes, Kant, and the Chicago pragmatist George Mead. This selection not merely assures a wide-spectrum of opinion still alive today, it marks a general historical shift from the metaphysical dualism of Descartes' mechanical world and spiritual self, to the epistemic (...) dualism of Kant and his double sense of self, finally to Mead's naturalistic monism, in which consciousness emerges naturally from the non-conscious. Apart from illuminating issues current in the animal-rights literature, examining this single topic casts a new light on these figures, especially Kant and Mead . Descartes' dualism is understandable simply given his scientific commitments, and the chasm he found in the human/brute gap was as much a result of this scientific motivation as any religious or moral one. For Kant, brutes lack the power to judge, understand, or reason. But more importantly, they lack autonomy and are therefore without moral worth. The unbridgeable chasm, metaphysical for Descartes, became for Kant primarily moral. Brutes do have representations and desires, however, and, by virtue of being alive, an immaterial principle; Kant consequently rejected Descartes' animal-machine hypothesis. Darwin's account of the human/brute gap and Mead's Darwinistic psychology are discussed. Selfhood and consciousness are unique to humans, although brutes are conscious in another sense. Mead's different uses of 'consciousness' are separated in order to clarify this difference as well as the role of language in the emergence of mind. Mead argued that humans perceive social objects prior to physical objects while brutes perceive none of these, lacking the capacities of universalization and object-manipulation. Like Descartes and Kant, Mead minimized brute experience, thereby maintaining a wide gulf between humans and brutes despite his Darwinian naturalism. (shrink)

A review of *The Social Origins of Language* by Robert M. Seyfarth and Dorothy L. Cheney; edited and introduced by Michael L. Platt.

Since Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, many philosophers have addressed the ethics of our relations with other animals with skill and insight. By and large, they have argued that something is badly wrong and therefore in need of radical reform, though there have been dissenters, like Peter Carruthers, in The Animals Issue. One feature many such works have had in common is the reliance of their authors upon contentious theoretical stances. There have been utilitarian, Kantian, and contractarian arguments, with theses (...) and arguments in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science called upon for supporting evidence. -/- Such an approach is hazardous to the extent that it makes it appear that persons interested in the issue must first be convinced of one or more complicated and controversial philosophical theories, and must also follow and agree with a further abstruse line of argument supposed to lead from the theories to practical conclusions. Especially in applied ethics, where the aim is, in part, to improve our practice, the heavily theoretical strategy runs the risk of making the discussion academic in the worst sense of the term, something of interest only to specialists. It would be an important gain if the theory-intensive approach to animal ethics could be avoided, without compromising rigor or substantive argument. (shrink)

The present comment concerns a recent AI & Ethics article which purports to report evidence of speciesist bias in various popular computer vision (CV) and natural language processing (NLP) machine learning models described in the literature. I examine the authors' analysis and show it, ironically, to be prejudicial, often being founded on poorly conceived assumptions and suffering from fallacious and insufficiently rigorous reasoning, its superficial appeal in large part relying on the sequacity of the article's target readership.

Ernst Cassirer’s focus on the expressive function of language should be read, not in the context of Carnap’s debate with Heidegger, but in the context of the earlier work of Chajim (Heymann) Steinthal. Steinthal distinguishes the expressive form of language, when language is studied as a natural phenomenon, from language as a logical, inferential system. Steinthal argues that language always can be expressed in terms of logical inference. Thus, he would disagree with Heidegger, just as (...) Carnap does. But, Steinthal insists, that is not to say that language, as a natural phenomenon, is exhausted by logic or by the place of terms or relations in inferential structures. Steinthal’s “form” of linguistic “expression” is an early version of Cassirer’s “expressive function” for language. The expressive function, then, should not be seen to place a barrier between Carnap and Cassirer. Rather, Steinthal and Cassirer deal with a question that, as far as I know, Carnap does not address directly: how should philosophers analyze human language as a natural phenomenon, as a part of our expression as animals? And how does that expression determine the semantic categories, kind terms, and other structures that develop within, and characterize, human language itself? (shrink)

This chapter is an examination of the way aporiai are employed in Aristotle’s scientific account of animal reproduction, and how they are resolved. I argue that – surprising as it may be, given what Aristotle says in Metaphysics B about the importance of going through aporiai – there seems to be nothing of much significance about his use of them, at least if we assume that genuine cases of aporiai are being tracked by use of aporia-language. I demonstrate (...) this negative thesis by systematically going through the examples. There seems to be no common purpose for which they are raised, they have no single type of structure, and they are not caused by any one sort of difficulty. (shrink)

Tracking technology has been heralded as transformative for animal ecology. In this paper I examine what changes are taking place, showing how current animal movement research is a field ripe for philosophical investigation. I focus first on how the devices alter the limitations and biases of traditional field observation, making observation of animal movement and behaviour possible in more detail, for more varied species, and under a broader variety of conditions, as well as restricting the influence of (...) human presence and observer bias. I reconstruct these as shifts in scope, objectivity, accuracy and fruitfulness. The second transformation is slightly less obvious but equally significant for animal ecology. Tracking devices generate complex data that demands both statistical and biological expertise, which has led to increasingly frequent and intensive collaborations between statisticians and biologists. Based on interviews, I examine how researchers in these interdisciplinary collaborations negotiate the collection, analysis and interpretation of movement data, integrating research interests, methodological constraints, previous field observations, and background theory. Tracking technology is therefore also shifting which disciplinary considerations are brought to bear on research into animal movement and behaviour and how this research is conducted. (shrink)

The work described in this report is motivated by the desire to test the expressive possibilities of action language C+. The Causal Calculator (CCalc) is a system that answers queries about action domains described in a fragment of that language. The Zoo World and the Traffic World have been proposed by Erik Sandewall in his Logic Modelling Workshop—an environment for communicating axiomatizations of action domains of nontrivial size. -/- The Zoo World consists of several cages and the exterior, (...) gates between them, and animals of several species, including humans. Actions in this domain include moving within and between cages, opening and closing gates, and mounting and riding animals. The Traffic World includes vehicles moving continuously between road crossings subject to a number of restrictions, such as speed limits and keeping a fixed safety distance away from other vehicles on the road. We show how to represent the two domains in the input language of CCalc, and how to use CCalc to test these representations. (shrink)

A growing body of work within the animal ethical discourse is taking a ‘Political Turn’. It is primarily characterised by efforts to propose transformation of our legal and political institutions to account for a just human-animal-relationship in society. In this article, I examine the underrated potential of a virtue ethical approach, as this perspective is currently lacking in the turn’s literature. For instance, we get a clearer idea of who ought to represent animals according to many of the (...) turn’s institutional reform proposals in terms of relevant political character traits. Likewise, what virtuous role modelling for politicians entails in creating ‘animal friendly’ moral norms, and how citizens can navigate their own correct political decision-making. Furthermore, we can better discuss the role of individuals in societal justice issues if we reframe our personal virtues as public political virtues. I conclude that including virtue ethical accounts would result in a more comprehensive political turn, not in spite of lacking a ‘language of rights’, but precisely because of its rich and diverse ‘language of virtues’. (shrink)

Michel de Montaigne famously argued in “Man is No Better Than the Animals” that humans and non-human animals cannot be dichotomized based on language or reasoning abilities, among other characteristics. This article examines a selection of writing features at play in the text and discusses how successfully they convey Montaigne’s claims. Throughout, I argue that Montaigne presents a superficially convincing case for doubting a categorical distinction between humans and animals on linguistic and rational grounds through the use of rhetorical (...) questions, listing, appeals to authority, point of view, imagery, and narrative anecdotes. However, Montaigne’s rejection of a human/animal distinction appears self-refuting since the form and content of his text both suggest that humans typically possess some degree of unique language and reasoning capacities. (shrink)