Connotation isn’t a bad thing—it’s part of what makes us vertebrate, after all.
Can you explain this? You’re not saying that it makes us metaphorically vertebrate (i.e. we have “backbone”), are you?
I liked this post, and agree that it’s important to remember that we can’t deny (even in ourselves) emotional/associative thinking.
I don’t agree that people who never perform denotationally strict reasoning are in any way more correct or consistent than those who choose to (presumably in high-impact situations only, since it’s impossible to only and always think in that mode), except in the surface sense that they’re consistent in never exercising any formal discipline of thought.
Can you explain this? You’re not saying that it makes us metaphorically vertebrate (i.e. we have “backbone”), are you?
I figured it was just a joke playing on the common assertion that something is what “makes us human”, something discussed (and, to a certain extent, deconstructed) in the post.
A joke, and an example of using a more-precise word instead of the most-accessible word. Other mammals don’t speak, but I’d bet they have concepts and contexts activated by those concepts. Invertebrates seem to have less-flexible, less context-sensitive categories; so my guess as to what having connotations distinguishes us from, is invertebrates.
I don’t agree that people who never perform denotationally strict reasoning are in any way more correct or consistent than those who choose to (presumably in high-impact situations only, since it’s impossible to only and always think in that mode), except in the surface sense that they’re consistent in never exercising any formal discipline of thought.
I don’t have any evidence for that idea. It’s just a theory I decided to throw out there.
Can you explain this? You’re not saying that it makes us metaphorically vertebrate (i.e. we have “backbone”), are you?
I liked this post, and agree that it’s important to remember that we can’t deny (even in ourselves) emotional/associative thinking.
I don’t agree that people who never perform denotationally strict reasoning are in any way more correct or consistent than those who choose to (presumably in high-impact situations only, since it’s impossible to only and always think in that mode), except in the surface sense that they’re consistent in never exercising any formal discipline of thought.
I figured it was just a joke playing on the common assertion that something is what “makes us human”, something discussed (and, to a certain extent, deconstructed) in the post.
A joke, and an example of using a more-precise word instead of the most-accessible word. Other mammals don’t speak, but I’d bet they have concepts and contexts activated by those concepts. Invertebrates seem to have less-flexible, less context-sensitive categories; so my guess as to what having connotations distinguishes us from, is invertebrates.
That does seem far more likely :)
I don’t have any evidence for that idea. It’s just a theory I decided to throw out there.