Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

["Parlin, Steven" <PARLINS AT culver.org>]

They don't study themselves. Humans do. I don't want to be too simplistic,
but I think the answer is startlingly simple. It's clear that animals don't
know that they "know" because they aren't studying themselves, constructing
theories about themselves, or about their knowledge, or about their origins,
or about their fate. (Although, we can't really say animals "know" anything
at all for knowing is depending upon whether the knower knows it is knowing)






 -----Original Message-----
From:   James Piat [mailto:piat1 AT bellsouth.net] 
Sent:   Thursday, December 12, 2002 3:26 PM
To:     percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject:        Re: [percy-l] animal communication and consciousness

>> Human beings don't just know; they know that they know. This is a huge
> difference between us and animals.

Dear Ken--

Neat way to put the matter --  How might one demonstrate that one knows
something and in particular that one knows that he knows it?  Or that an non
human knows something but not that he knows he knows it?

I'm not trying to be a smart alec  -- I think you've got to the crux of what
may be the big distinction between human and non human language or
communication (be it qualitative or merely a matter of degree and I'm
wondering how we might pin this down a bit more objectively or
operationally.

Jim Piat

 We take delight in knowing and speaking
> and we  know that we do that. Walter Ong points out that baby human beings
> don't exactly have to be taught language (tho most parents encourage that
> process); rather, it takes a concerted effort to prevent a (healthy) human
> child from learning language, which is symbolic in nature, not a system of
> signs (despite the confusion our printed words visit on us).  Percy
> understood the significance of our symbolic language. Those who want to
> equate animal communication with human speech haven't made that discovery,
> i.e. it is not just animal communication that they don't grasp.
>
> Ken Armstrong
>
>
> --
>
> An archive of all list discussion is available at
http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail
>
> Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy

--

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