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2 ideas
23300 | Aristotle and the Stoics denied rationality to animals, while Platonists affirmed it [Aristotle, by Sorabji] |
Full Idea: Aristotle, and also the Stoics, denied rationality to animals. …The Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and some more independent Aristotelians, did grant reason and intellect to animals. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Denial' | |
A reaction: This is not the same as affirming or denying their consciousness. The debate depends on how rationality is conceived. |
7715 | Mentalese isn't a language, because it isn't conventional, or a means of public communication [Lowe] |
Full Idea: 'Mentalese' would be neither conventional nor a means of public communication so that even to call it a language is seriously misleading. | |
From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.7) | |
A reaction: It is, however, supposed to contain symbolic representations which are then used as tokens for computation, so it seems close to a language, if (for example) symbolic logic or mathematics were accepted as languages. But who understands it? |