LANGUAGE
Animals exist in the ‘now!’. But there are no symbols in the now. Any symbol, by definition, must stand for an abstract idea. And an abstract idea requires going beyond the ‘now!’, into the past or the future. But the past and the future, again by definition, cannot exist in the now. Therefore no animal can have access to symbols. No symbols? No language.
Human language is a system of symbols by which an idea is transferred from one person (or location) to another, by word of mouth or written text. This is the process of displaced reference, i.e. communicating ‘about things outside immediate temporal and spatial contiguity’ (Encyclopedia Britannica).
Moving ideas from person to person, or from book to reader, involves the symbols of language, which as we have seen, are abstractions. It is the order in which these abstractions follow each other that conveys meaning. C, when followed by a, and then t, means ‘cat’. The symbols ‘jhngvbfv’ on the other hand, make no sense at all – but only after the sequence has been scanned to see if it possesses order.
No non-human animal is capable of scanning, because it receives the sequence all at once, now. It is thus incapable of perceiving any significance in the way the letters or sounds are arranged. It seems that humans alone have achieved the displaced reference of abstract ideas by means of language.
Animals may give out signals, which may be received by other animals nearby. A barking or snarling animal may seem to be giving off a ‘message’ that it would be unwise to approach too close. Its hackles may be rising too, but it is not doing these things on purpose. There is no intentionality in such signals; they are simply responses to stimuli.
The effects of such signals are interpreted by humans as a narrative, for example about animal A expressing aggressiveness towards animal B. Such a narrative is the human ‘take’ on the situation; but the animals are just organisms stimulated on various wavelengths – auditory, visual, olfactory – and responding with the movements that such stimuli evoke.
However, the human speaker, or writer, sets out to communicate a specific idea, expressed in language, an attribute which elevates HS above all other living things. This enhanced status might be likened to the dimensional advantage that all fauna have over all flora – animals can move about the place, whereas plants, having no muscles or brain, must remain where they are.
Being aware of the passing of time, and thereby communicating through language, is another perhaps an even greater dimensional change. It takes humans out of the confines of the present and gives them access to the past and the future. Animals remain limited to the world of the here-and-now, whereas humans have entered a universe of discourse.
Displaced reference, the core fact of language, requires that the response to a stimulus shall resonate with stimuli responded to previously, or subsequently. But for animals to survive, they have to respond immediately to the whole array of stimuli impinging on their senses. Their survival imperative is not consciously to compare the ‘now’ with the ‘then’ or the ‘later’, but to react directly, in the real present.
From the human perspective there is no way of relating to animals other than through language, which almost by definition must be anthropomorphic. The language is in a narrative form, in which animals are identified as subjects, as agents. But they are not ‘doers’, they are ‘done to-ers’. They are passive responders rather than activators. As the section on agency makes clear, they should be termed ‘pliants’ [Fr. plier to bend], not agents.
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