Abstract
Abstract The paper is a critical investigation of the linguist James Hurford's bold proposal that animal cognition conforms to basic logical structure – particularly striking in the ventral-dorsal split of visual perception. The overall argument is that dorsal processing of visual information isolates the subject of a simple, perceptual proposition, while ventral processing addresses the corresponding predicate aspect – the two indicating and categorizing the object of perception, respectively. The paper investigates some of the problems in Hurford's interpretation – particularly his refusal of animal proto-language to have anything corresponding to constants or proper names and his idea that all such propositions must be monovalent only (and thus not addressing relations). As an alternative to Hurford's psychological interpretation of Frege for his logical basis, Peirce's theory of propositions – so-called “Dicisigns” – is proposed.
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