Thursday, October 1, 2020

Dependent Rational Animals #2

Some key points from Chapter 2 of Dependent Rational Animals follow.

Aristotle made the distinction between the living and the inanimate, putting humans with other animals except for humans being the only rational ones. Both perceive. Later philosophers tied language use with rationality. It has been commonly argued that nonhuman animals do not possess the requisite kind of language for other capacities. That is, nonhuman animals cannot have thoughts, must lack beliefs, cannot act for reasons and in their encounters with the objects of their experience must be innocent of concepts.

The title of Chapter 3 is The intelligence of dolphins.

The title of  Chapter 4 is Can animals without language have beliefs?

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