You're actually proving Wittgenstein's point. We share the same physical world, but we don't encounter the same problems. A lion's concerns - territory, hunting, pride hierarchy - are fundamentally different from ours: mortgages, meaning, relationships.

And here's the kicker: you don't even fully understand me, and I'm human. What makes you think you'd understand a lion?

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beeflet 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Humans also have territory, hunting and hierarchy. Everything that a lion does, humans also do but more complicated. So I think we would be able to understand the new creature.

But the problem is really that the lion that speaks is not the same creature as the lion we know. Everything the lion we know wants to say can already be said through its body language or current faculties. The goldfish grows to the size of its container.

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adamzwasserman 3 days ago | parent [-]

You've completely missed Wittgenstein's point. It's not about whether lions and humans share some behaviors - it's about whether they share the form of life that grounds linguistic meaning.

	▲	zeroonetwothree 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I think humans would be intelligent enough to understand the lion's linguistic meaning (after some training). Probably not the other way around. But it's a speculative argument, there's no real evidence one way or another.

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andoando 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Thats only a minor subset of our thoughts. If you were going hiking what kind of thoughts would you have? "There are trees there", "Its raining I should get cover", "I can hide in the bushes", "Im not sure if I cna climb over this or not". "There is x on the left and y on the right", "the wind went away" etc etc etc etc.

The origins of human language were no doubt communicating such simple thoughts and not about your deep inner psyche and the complexities of the 21st century.

There's actually quite a bit of evidence that all language, even complex words, are rooted in spatial relationships.

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adamzwasserman 2 days ago | parent [-]

You're describing perception, not the lived experience that gives those perceptions meaning. Yes, a lion sees trees and rain. But a lion doesn't have 'hiking', it has territory patrol. It doesn't 'hide in bushes', it stalks prey. These aren't just different words for the same thing; they're fundamentally different frameworks for interpreting raw sensory data. That's Wittgenstein's point about form of life.

	▲	andoando 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Why do you assume they're fundamentally different frameworks? Just because wittgenstein said it?