ABSTRACT
A long tradition of philosophical skeptics has sought to establish on conceptual grounds that the minds of non-human animals (and possibly even of very young humans) are separated from our minds by an unbridgeable gap. This, it is thought, undermines the possibility of an intelligible philosophical explanation of the natural emergence of mind, and it renders futile any search for natural precursors of our own minds in the mental capacities of ‘simpler minds’. My aim here is to engage this continuity skepticism. After briefly outlining a radical version of continuity skepticism (as defended by Davidson), I present a form of nonreflective communication that we share with non-linguistic and prelinguistic creatures: expressive communication. I argue that proper appreciation of the role expressive capacities play in the lives of creatures possessing them points to a sensible intermediate stage in (what Wittgenstein would describe as) a natural history that could connect us with our pre-human ancestors (as well as connecting adult language users with their younger pre-verbal selves). I conclude with some reflections on the implications of the existence of such a natural history for a philosophical understanding of the relationship between human and non-human mindedness.
