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Articles
Talking to the Animals
Patrick Phillips asks: Is It Incredible?
“A dog cannot relate its autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest though poor.”
Bertrand Russell
Human Knowledge: Its Scope And Limits
“A dog believes his master is at the door. But can he also believe that his master will come the day after tomorrow?…How am I supposed to answer this?”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophical Investigations
Can we talk with the animals? I am assuming in this article that ‘talking to the animals’ would require, at least, that the animals in question possessed a language capacity, however basic. Otherwise any conversation one undertook would be one-sided.
In any search for non-human conversational partners, perhaps the most likely choice would be the apes.
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