ABSTRACT
My aim in this paper is to use the later Wittgenstein to argue against what I call the continuity-view of human and animal expression. Further, I will show that skepticism about animal expression is not the only alternative to the continuity-view. The paper has three sections. In the first section, I articulate the central commitments of the continuity-view: 1) There is a significant overlap in expressive behavior between humans and animals 2) Adding new expressive repertoire to include linguistic expression does not fundamentally alter the entire spectrum of expressive behavior. In the second section, I develop some passages in Wittgenstein into an argument against those commitments. Reflections on the temporal dimension of expressions and the interplay between non-verbal and verbal expression are central to this argument. In the third and more tentative section, I turn to how to avoid skepticism about animal expression, specifically in the form of claiming that the word “expression” is ambiguous. I discuss two ways of preserving conceptual unity while avoiding the continuity-view: categorial generality (which I find in John McDowell's view on the human-animal relation) and family resemblance (which I associate with Wittgenstein).
