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 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 :)