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Jonathan_Graehl comments on Transhumanism and the denotation-connotation gap - Less Wrong
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Comments (29)
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.