Overcoming Bias in the Comparison of Human Language and Animal Communication
You can consider the sentence and grasp its meaning whether it’s true right now or not. Other animals show no signs of being able to do anything of this sort.
Geoffrey K. Pullum • Linguistics: Why It Matters
our mainstream culture’s self-congratulatory obsession with humaniqueness blinds us to the vast amount of animate intelligence we share with our fellow creatures.
Jeremy Lent • The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find our Place in the Universe
The rule of attribution must be then, if the competence observed can be explained without appeal to comprehension, don’t indulge in extravagant anthropomorphism. Attributing comprehension must be supported by demonstrations of much more intelligent behavior. Since stotting is not (apparently) an element in a more elaborate system of interspecies or
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