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Full Idea
I think that if a lion could talk, that lion would have a mind so different from the general run of lion minds, that although we could understand him just fine, we would learn little about ordinary lions from him.
Gist of Idea
If a lion could talk, it would be nothing like other lions
Source
comment on Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations [1952], II.xi) by Daniel C. Dennett - Consciousness Explained 14.2
Book Ref
Dennett,Daniel C.: 'Consciousness Explained' [Penguin 1993], p.447
A Reaction
This is rather more sensible than Wittgenstein's famous enigmatic utterance.
| 2109 | Increase a conscious machine to the size of a mill - you still won't see perceptions in it [Leibniz] |
| 7392 | If a lion could talk, it would be nothing like other lions [Dennett on Wittgenstein] |
| 4161 | If a lion could talk, we could not understand him [Wittgenstein] |
| 7391 | We can know a lot of what it is like to be a bat, and nothing important is unknown [Dennett] |
| 7522 | A full neural account of qualia will give new epistemic access to them, beyond private experience [Churchlands] |
| 3148 | Dualist privacy is seen as too deep for even telepathy to reach [Rey] |
| 5341 | Only you can have your subjective experiences because only you are hooked up to your nervous system [Flanagan] |
| 2403 | Nothing in physics even suggests consciousness [Chalmers] |
| 5210 | We could know what a lion thinks by mapping both its brain patterns and its experiences [Douglas,A] |