Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

Given perceptions and actions, animals have the capacity to develop memories and prior intentions, as well as beliefs and desires and other forms of intentionality, such as expectation and fear, anger and aggression.

Many species of animals have perceptions, perform actions and are capable of acquiring beliefs, desires and intentions, though they have no language.

Features Common to Prelinguistic Intentionality and Language I have already said that the hominids have conscious perceptions and intentional actions together with conscious thought processes, all of these in a prelinguistic form.

Specifically, because perceptions, intentions, beliefs, desires, and so on, are forms of intentionality, they carry within them the determination of conditions of success or failure.

I, on the contrary, think that it is obvious that many animals, my dog Gilbert for example, have perceptions, intentions, beliefs and desires, and yet they have nothing like a language with freely manipulatable syntactical structure.

He can then quite effortlessly make use of an intricate structure of specific rules and guiding principles to convey his thoughts and feelings to others, arousing in them novel ideas and subtle perceptions and judgments (Chomsky, 1975, p.

EVERY one will readily allow, that there is a considerable difference between the perceptions of the mind, when a man feels the pain of excessive heat, or the pleasure of moderate warmth, and when he afterwards recalls to his memory this sensation, or anticipates it by his imagination.

These faculties may mimic or copy the perceptions of the senses; but they never can entirely reach the force and vivacity of the original sentiment.

The utmost we say of them, even when they operate with greatest vigour, is, that they represent their object in so lively a manner, that we could almost say we feel or see it: But, except the mind be disordered by disease or madness, they never can arrive at such a pitch of vivacity, as to render these perceptions altogether undistinguishable.

We may observe a like distinction to run through all the other perceptions of the mind.