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    Only human beings proffer meaningful utterances — Carmelics
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    Home/Philosophy of Language
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    Only human beings proffer meaningful utterances

    Philosophy of Language
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Articulate vocal sound (uox articulata) uttered by humans is tied together (copulata) with a sensus mentis or intellectus in the mind of the speaker
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    • 2.Only beings that have minds can produce significative utterances
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Wittgenstein's later work shows meaning arises from rule-governed participation in shared practices, not from an inner mental act accompanying an utterance.
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    • 2.If sensus mentis is not the ground of meaning but public use is, then any creature capable of consistent, correctable symbolic behavior in a community can proffer meaningful utterances.
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    • 3.Vervet monkeys produce functionally distinct alarm calls with specific referents that other vervets act on differentially, satisfying a use-based criterion of meaning.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Great apes trained in ASL or lexigram systems demonstrably use symbols to refer to absent objects and novel combinations, satisfying core semantic criteria.
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    • 2.If intentional reference and compositional symbol use constitute meaningful utterance, then the criterion excludes non-humans arbitrarily rather than principally.
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    Topics

    Philosophy of Language

    Connections

    1 topic

    Consciousness & Mind2 linked

    Related

    Articulate vocal sound (uox articulata) uttered by humans is tied together (copu...Great apes trained in ASL or lexigram systems demonstrably use symbols to refer ...If intentional reference and compositional symbol use constitute meaningful utte...If sensus mentis is not the ground of meaning but public use is, then any creatu...
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    Only beings that have minds can produce significative utterancesVervet monkeys produce functionally distinct alarm calls with specific referents...Wittgenstein's later work shows meaning arises from rule-governed participation ...

    Similar

    Only beings that have minds can produce significative utterances80%Only humans have language.77%Only humans possess linguistic competence77%Searle holds that speech is sufficient for attributing understanding t...77%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: robert-kilwardby
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    Kilwardby argues that only human beings proffer meaningful utterances because, as Priscian points out, the articulate vocal sound (uox articulata) uttered by humans is tied together (copulata) with a sensus mentis or intellectus in the mind of the speaker; thus only beings that have minds can produce significative utterances.[26] Moreover, the production of the vox litterata requires the control of the modulation of sounds—what Kilwardby calls the figure in the air (through which the utterance
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit