Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

Here we have a really transparent case of synonymy created by definition; would that all species of synonymy were as intelligible.

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

Furthermore, several species are capable of prelinguistic thought processes.

Imagine that there was a species like us, having a full range of prelinguistic conscious experiences, voluntary actions, and prelinguistic thought processes, but no language.

We have a language in a sense that other species do not.

I am emphatically not arguing for the superiority of our species.

Subtract language from a species like us: What do you have?

There are apparently intermediate cases between humans and species that communicate but do not have language in a human sense.

Think of warning cries of birds, mating calls of all sorts of species, and even some dogs’ barks.

The issue of what is special to language The most fundamental question in the study of the human language faculty is its place in the natural world: what kind of biological system it is, and how it relates to other systems in our own species and others.