Lionspeak: Communication, Expression, and Meaning (original) (raw)

2010, Self, Language, and World: Problems from Kant, Sellars, and Rosenberg: In Memory of Jay F. Rosenberg

A recurring, Sellarsian theme in Jay Rosenberg's work, from his first book, Linguistic Representation, to his last, Wilfrid Sellars: Fusing the Images, concerns the uniqueness of human linguistic and mental representation and its distinctness from all other forms of animal communication and mentation. Full-fledged human language and thought, so the theme goes, is compositionally structured, intentional, rational, and subject to social norms. It is not merely patterned behavior that is goal-or need-driven, world-directed, and subject to modification via behavioral control or manipulation by co-communicators. Human linguistic communication is different from any known form of non-human communication in being the province of rational agents who act and think within the space of reasons. Consequently, all application of our concepts of meaning, semantic content, propositional attitudes, etc. to non-human creatures is at best a matter of analogy or metaphorical extension.