Telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth

Nov 1, 2011 by

A couple of articles in the latest edition of The Economist warn us about new technology currently researched that will be able to read what people are thinking (see here and here). One of the main implication of such technology that...

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Six things we have and they don’t — part 2

Jan 26, 2011 by

In the previous posting, I talked about three of the six design features that separate human language from other communication systems, including those in the animal kingdom. These three features are: arbitrariness, reflexivity and...

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Six things we have and they don’t — part 1

Jan 26, 2011 by

In the last couple of postings I argued that animals — dogs, apes etc. — do not have language. Of course, animals of various species have communication systems but these communication systems do not count as language....

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