81–90 of 194 posts
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Engaging in play is not unique to humans, so assuming an animal is just fooling around is not anthropomorphizing anything.
It makes me wonder if they engage in "play" does it evoke some "emotion" in them such as joy etc? some reward maybe? and if it does does other scenarios evoke other emotions we consider to be human centric. Anyone have a link to a good paper regarding it?
May I suggest a book to anybody that finds cephalopods interesting, especially given the connection with consciousness which is a recurring topic in these circles: Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness My only critique is that the plural spelling is octopuses and not octopi , just like the article. Octopuses just looks wrong and sounds funny, I stand my ground. Yes yes I know that i…
He spends very little time drawing connections to consciousness or speaking about what octopus life can tell us about consciousness. There is a whole chapter where he talks about the influence of language in human action (like self-talk), and then ends the chapter by with something like "and octopuses don't have this ability". What was the point of that whole chapter then?
Maybe my expectations were miscalibrated, and I thought he would spend more time drawing connections between octopuses and humans, and what those similarities could tell us about consciousness. Instead of that, the writing about consciousness in this book is quite shallow.
May I suggest a book to anybody that finds cephalopods interesting, especially given the connection with consciousness which is a recurring topic in these circles: Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness My only critique is that the plural spelling is octopuses and not octopi , just like the article. Octopuses just looks wrong and sounds funny, I stand my ground. Yes yes I know that i…
No, the plural is octopodes, just like cactus->cactodes, virus->virodes and surplus-surplodes (my favorite)
nautilus->nautilodes
anus->anodes
?!
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> the correct plural would have been "virora", like tempus => tempora This would be true if virus were a third declension noun. It it is second declension noun. Its genitive is viri , not viroris .
It is true that there are a few cases of a word "viri", which might have been the genitive of "virus". Nevertheless, the meaning of the word is not certain, at least in the examples that I have seen. Even if the word "viri" was really intended as the genitive of "virus", that is just another example of many cases when even the native speakers of Latin were not certain about the gender and declination class of certain…
May I suggest a book to anybody that finds cephalopods interesting, especially given the connection with consciousness which is a recurring topic in these circles: Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness My only critique is that the plural spelling is octopuses and not octopi , just like the article. Octopuses just looks wrong and sounds funny, I stand my ground. Yes yes I know that i…
For others who may find them interesting check out "My Octopus Teacher"
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It may be a word like "fishes". I once saw "fishes" on an interpretive sign at an aquarium and some folks were mocking such and obvious grammatical error. Turns out, "fish" is the correct way to refer to multiple individual fish as a group, whereas "fishes" is the correct way to refer to multiple species of fish. I wonder if "octopi" might refer to multiple octopus without making any indication as to weather they are…
octopi arises because people have learned Latin 2nd declension masculine nouns, by accident or repetition, where pluralizing (nominative case) turns the -us to -i. It's a pattern matching phenomenon. It would be less weird if there were not spelling irregularities, since the -pus is meant to be foot (like pes, pedes...in Latin, or pos, podes,... in Greek). Basically, the spelling irregularity triggers a sensible patt…
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There’s no right way. Octopus is a word created in modern scientific latin by nonnative (scientific) speakers out of greek parts brought into English. There are no real rules there. It is not a loanword from Greek, it was meant to be a scientific latin origin word, but not native latin like other Latin words that have -us as endings for nouns. It’s a mess, there’s no answer, pluralize as you like but don’t go telling…
> Octopus is a word created in modern scientific latin by nonnative (scientific) speakers out of greek parts brought into English. There are no real rules there. I recall reading that back in the day, there were criticisms that the neologism "television" would never catch on ... because it combined Greek and Latin roots.
Romances in a nutshell.
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All the attested uses of the word virus in Latin are only in the singular number. Nevertheless, the correct plural would have been "virora", like tempus => tempora (time => times) or corpus => corpora (body => bodies), or perhaps "virera", like pondus => pondera (weight => weights) or genus => genera (kind => kinds), depending on the original quality of the final vowel in the stem. (Originally it would have been viso…
> the correct plural would have been "virora", like tempus => tempora This would be true if virus were a third declension noun. It it is second declension noun. Its genitive is viri , not viroris .
May I suggest a book to anybody that finds cephalopods interesting, especially given the connection with consciousness which is a recurring topic in these circles: Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness My only critique is that the plural spelling is octopuses and not octopi , just like the article. Octopuses just looks wrong and sounds funny, I stand my ground. Yes yes I know that i…
I'd have to give an anti-recommendation to this book. The author never explains his thesis and the book reads like his thesis was "Octopuses are cool" and spends the entire time listing fun facts and interesting stories about his interactions with cephalopods. He spends very little time drawing connections to consciousness or speaking about what octopus life can tell us about consciousness. There is a whole chapter w…