Anastasia Giannakidou & Alda Mari - The Human and the Mechanical; logos, truthfulness, and ChatGPT

Logos

Most language theorists and those working on language acquisition accept the existence of language as an argument of dualism, and the existence of the mind as a non-physical entity that, in humans but not in animals, encompasses language. Animals have a mind too, but not one with Logos, argues Aristotle in a series of works. Logos is the feature of the human mind responsible for both language and rational thought— but also for the nature of humans as political animals, as well as their ability to form moral judgments and distinguish right from wrong. Logos is, in other words, the conceptual causal prerequisite for human thinking, and moral and social flourishing, as can be seen very clearly in the passage below; we retain the Greek word Logos which refers to both the ability to speak and the ability to think rationally:

"And why the human [Greek: anthropos] is a political animal in a greater measure than any bee or any gregarious animal is clear. For nature, as we declare, does nothing without purpose; and man alone of the animals possesses Logos. The mere voice, it is true, can indicate pain and pleasure, and therefore is possessed by the other animals as well, for their nature has been developed so far as to have sensations of what is painful and pleasant and to indicate those sensations to one another, but Logos is designed to indicate the advantageous and the harmful, and therefore also the right and the wrong; for it is the special property of the human in distinction from the other animals that he alone has perception of good and bad and right and wrong and the other moral qualities, and it is partnership in these things that makes a household and a city-state." (Aristotle, Politics, Book I: 1253a).

Logos is the underlying principle of rationality that characterizes the thought of beings with language, i.e., human beings— and it is this ability, according to Aristotle, that enables humans to form moral judgments of good and bad, and subsequently also able to apply these judgments to their societies (poleis) in a way that serves the common good. Logos thus encompasses language, the ability to calculate and draw logical conclusions, as well as the ability to form moral judgment. In Plato, likewise, Logos is the prerequisite for knowledge and wisdom (Greek: phronesis which is best understood as instrumental and moral rationality, (Josiah Ober, 2022)) is the “only unqualified good” (Meno 66-68). The human mind, therefore, because of logos, is both a calculating and a judgment forming moral engine, and in addition it also has the capacity— exclusive to animate beings— to perceive, be aware, and self-reflect as we read in Aristotle’s extensive discussion of perception in De Anima.

[Source: Anastasia Giannakidou & Alda Mari - The Human and the Mechanical; logos, truthfulness, and ChatGPT]