For the record, the Grunebaum quotation (below) I was making reference to. The
way it comprares to Popper's view is open to debate!
Cheers,
Speranza
Homo sapiens
A few Kantotelian reflections on the supremacy of Homo sapiens.
Besides Popper’s emphasis on the HUMAN quality of W3, there’s Grunebaum and
Kantotle on the supremacy of 'Man'. Grunebaum notes that it would be nice if
his account should "allow for the possibility that non-linguistic and indeed
non-conventional 'utterances', perhaps even manifesting some degree of
structure, might be WITHIN THE POWER OF CREATURES who lack any linguistic or
otherwise conventional apparatus for communication, but which are NOT thereby
deprived of the capacity to *MEAN* this or that by things they do. To provide
for THIS POSSIBILITY, it is plainly necessary that the key ingredient in any
representation of meaning, namely _intending_, should be a _STATE_ the
capacity for which does NOT require the possession of a language. Now, some
might be unwilling to allow the possibility of such pre-linguistic intending.
Against them, I THINK I ****WOULD***** have good prospects of winning the day;
but, unfortunately a victory on this front would NOT BE ENOUGH. For, in a
succession of increasingly elaborated moves designed to thwart a sequence of
Schifferian counterexamples, I have been led to restrict the intentions which
are to constitute utterer's meaning to *M-intentions* and whatever might be the
case in general with regard to intending, M-intending is PLAINLY too
sophisticated a state to be
found in a language-destitute creature. So the unavoidable rearguard actions
seem to have undermined the raison-d'etre of my campaign."
Grunebaum, in Grandy/Warner.
