> While some animals could deal with concepts closely associated with real phenomena, and therefore they can use words to name things or maybe even actions, the

> While some animals could deal with concepts closely associated with real phenomena, and therefore they can use words to name things or maybe even actions, they cannot go further and use abstractions over abstractions. As the result they cannot deal with a recursive grammar. I prefer to think that animals simply haven’t been lucky enough to invent a suitable naming system that could serve as the foundation of their civilization. If they were fortunate, they might bootstrap their own form of civilization through recursive or iterative divisive naming-—naming the act of naming itself. Naming is the foundation, and everything else naturally follows from there. As Laozi said over 2,500 years ago in the Dao De Jing: “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; The named is the mother of all things.” (Just days ago, AnthropicAI even mentioned Laozi in a tweet: https://x.com/AnthropicAI/status/1925926102725202163 https://x.com/AnthropicAI/status/1925926102725202163 ) P.S. By the way, the entire Dao De Jing advocates thinking beyond symbols, transcending naming—not being constrained by it—and thus connect the reality and following the Tao, which embodies the will of love, frugality, and humility. Yet, few truly understand it fairly, as Laozi emphasized in his book. Perhaps we humans can transcend naming altogether eventually, with advancements like Musk’s brain-communication chip, we might soon discover how human wills are encoded and potentially move beyond the limitations of naming.