[BRIEF NOTE] An Addendum re: Grandin

[rfmcdonald]

One interesting suggestion of Grandin, in Animals in Transition, is that language skills are incompatible with the very details-oriented consciousness of animals. This inability derives logically enough from the innate ability of language to generalize, to draw connections between related objects. Grandin argues that animals just can't be so general. Conversely, she suggests that the complex neural architecture--in humans and other species--that allows for language also allows for errors, for mistakes and dysfunctions of all kinds. Complex minds break down all the easier.