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Personal Identity

Language of Thought

(Text as at 20/09/2022 11:24:00)

Plug Note¹

• I’ve been in two minds as to whether to make this Note cover both Language per se or Language of Thought in particular, and whether to include lots of references to the philosophy of Language in my Reading Lists.
• In the end – while I have an interest in Language and Languages – I’ve decided that this would take me too far out of the way as far as my Thesis on Personal Identity is concerned.
• There may be occasional references to Language, but in general this note will focus on Language of Thought, for the reasons below.
• Thesis Text:
  1. According to "Dennett (Daniel) - Conditions of Personhood", Linguistic competence is one of the six essential features of personhood. It seems there are two reasons for this:-
     1. One is communication, as the formation of and participation in societies are essential to the flourishing of persons².
     2. The other is that the sort of self-reflection needed for personhood allegedly requires language.
        
  2. In response:-
     1. I believe there can be non-verbal communication between higher animals – especially those that are candidates for personhood (maybe of reduced degree³) – indeed, this must be the case for social beings.
     2. Also, cogitation doesn’t require the ability to verbalise if there’s such a thing as a language of Thought. Our conscious thoughts do seem to involve internalised spoken language, but maybe our unconscious ones don’t.
        
  3. So, the relevance of Jerry Fodor’s Language of Thought (LOT) hypothesis within the sphere of personal identity arises because of the alleged essentiality of language for personhood. As such, all non-human animals⁴ would be ruled out because even if certain Great Apes can be taught sign-language, this is not natural to them in the way language is to human beings.
  4. It is also often alleged (eg. by Donald Davidson) that animals cannot even think in the absence of language, because thinking requires concepts⁵, and concepts are only expressed in language.
  5. These (to me) unwanted conclusions might disappear if all animals whose minds appear to have intensional states should have a language of thought.
  6. I don’t know whether Fodor cares about animals in this context, or whether his theory was designed strictly with human beings⁶ in mind.
  7. I like the idea that a LOT – which initially only helps an individual – might explain how spoken language arose amongst human beings – given that a spoken language requires a pair of speakers before it becomes useful (even if grunts and other vocalisations don’t). If a language of thought spilled out into vocalisation, even though individual vocalisations might be initially mutually-unintelligible, a conventional speech (constrained only by universal grammar) might naturally arise with the co-operative behaviour germane to social animals.
  8. See "Rescorla (Michael) - The Language of Thought Hypothesis" for an overview.
• A few connections to be followed up:-
  1. Baker - The Human Animal: Big-Tent Metaphysics⁷
  2. Brandom - Toward a Normative Pragmatics (Introduction)⁸
  3. Daniel Dennett – Conditions of Personhood⁹
  4. Implicit knowledge and language learning¹⁰
  5. Jen_071022 (Dennett)¹¹
  6. Jen_080204 (Brandom, Chisholm, Baillie)¹²
  7. Daniel Dennett has some interesting things to say about the LOT in "Dennett (Daniel) - Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking", Chapter 23 (“Trapped In the Robot Control Room”).
• Jerry Fodor’s Language of Thought (LOT) hypothesis features heavily in debates in the philosophy of mind – particularly in the debates between connectionists and computationalists – but cannot be followed up here.
• For a Page of Links¹³ to this Note, Click here.
• Currently, items I’ve read include some fairly random items that have missed the cut. I’ve not yet included any general items in the Philosophy of Language or Linguistics, but may do so in due course.
• Works on this topic that I’ve actually read¹⁴, include the following:-
  • General:
    1. "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - When Do Persons Begin and End?", 2005, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link
    2. "Dennett (Daniel) - Conditions of Personhood", 1997, Write-Up Note¹⁵, Annotations
    3. "Fodor (Jerry) - Psychosemantics", 1987, Book, Footnote₁₆
  • Innateness:
    1. "Evans (Vyvyan) - Aeon - Video - Real talk", 2014, External Link
    2. "Everett (Daniel) - Chomsky, Wolfe and me", 2017, No Abstract, External Link, Internal PDF Link
    3. "Pinker (Steven) - The Language Instinct - How the Mind Creates Language", 1994, Book
  • LOT:
    1. "Fodor (Jerry) - Why There Still Has to be a Language of Thought", 1987, No Abstract
• A further reading list might start with:-
  • General:
    1. "Dennett (Daniel) - Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking", 2014, Book, Read = 4%
    2. "Pinker (Steven) - Words and Rules - The Ingredients of Language", 1999, Book
  • Innateness:
    1. "Viger (Christopher) - Learning to Think: A Response to the Language of Thought Argument for Innateness", 2005, Internal PDF Link
  • LOT:
    1. "Aydede (Murat) - The Language of Thought Hypothesis", 2010, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 7%
    2. "Camp (Elisabeth) - A language of baboon thought?", 2009, Internal PDF Link, Read = 6%
    3. "Carruthers (Peter) - Language, Thought and Consciousness", 1996, Book, Internal PDF Link
    4. "Carruthers (Peter) & Boucher (Jill) - Language and Thought", 1998, Book
    5. "Clark (Andy) - Language of Thought", 1994, Read = 33%
    6. "Davies (Martin) - Concepts, Connectionism, and the Language of Thought", 1991, Internal PDF Link
    7. "Davies (Martin) - Language, thought, and the language of thought: Aunty's own argument revisited", 1998, Internal PDF Link
    8. "DeWitt (Richard) - Vagueness, Semantics, and the Language of Thought (Review of Jerry Fodor, George Miller, & D. Terence Langendoen - Language of Thought )", 1993, Internal PDF Link
    9. "Fodor (Jerry) - The Language of Thought", 1976, Book, Read = 2%
    10. "Hills (David) - Mental Representations and Language of Thought", 1981, No Abstract
    11. "Horgan (Terence) & Tienson (John) - Why There Still Has to be a Language of Thought, and What That Means", 1996, No Abstract, Read = 19%
    12. "Laurence (Stephen) & Margolis (Eric) - Regress Arguments Against the Language of Thought", 1997, Internal PDF Link
    13. "Lycan (William) - The 'Language of Thought' Hypothesis - Introduction", 1999, No Abstract
    14. "Maloney (J. Christopher) - Language of Thought", 1994, No Abstract
    15. "Pollock (John L.) - The Language of Thought", 1989
    16. "Pollock (John L.) - Understanding the Language of Thought", 1990, Internal PDF Link
    17. "Rescorla (Michael) - The Language of Thought Hypothesis", 2019, External Link, Read = 7%
    18. "Rey (Georges) - Sensations in a Language of Thought", 1991, No Abstract, Internal PDF Link
    19. "Rowlands (Mark) - Connectionism and the Language of Thought", 1994, Internal PDF Link, Read = 11%
    20. "Smolensky (Paul) - Connectionism, Constituency and the Language of Thought", 1995, No Abstract
    21. "Swinburne (Richard) - Language of Thought, Connectionism, and Folk Psychology", 1997, No Abstract
  • Protolanguage:
    1. "Bickerton (Derek) - How Protolanguage Became Language", 2009, Internal PDF Link
    2. "Cangelosi (Angelo) & Parisi (Domenico), Eds. - Simulating the Evolution of Language", 2002, No Abstract, Internal PDF Link, Read = 2%
    3. "Chomsky (Noam) - Biolinguistic Explorations: Design, Development, Evolution", 2007, Internal PDF Link
    4. "Davidson (Donald) - The Emergence of Thought", 1999, Internal PDF Link, Read = 17%
    5. "Wray (Alison) - Holistic Utterances in Protolanguage: The Link from Primates to Humans", 2009, Internal PDF Link

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• For a list of Works that have been considered, but have missed the cut for inclusion in my Thesis, see the following lists of Works Read / Further items:-
  1. Read:-
     • Aeon:
       1. "Garcia-Amaya (Lorenzo) - Video - Why do we, like, hesitate when we, um, speak?", 2021, External Link
       2. "Huenemann (Charlie) - Who needs a perfect language? It’s already perfectly imperfect", 2017, External Link, Internal PDF Link
     • General:
       1. "Kahn-Harris (Keith) - The Babel Message: A Love Letter to Language", 2021, Book
       2. "Kahn-Harris (Keith) - The pleasure in not understanding a language can be awesome", 2022, External Link
  2. Further Reading:-
• This is mostly a place-holder¹⁷.

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In-Page Footnotes:

Footnote 16:

• Especially "Fodor (Jerry) - Why There Still Has to be a Language of Thought".

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Table of the Previous 5 Versions of this Note:

Date	Length	Title
04/05/2022 11:19:41	4312	Language of Thought
14/02/2021 12:51:50	3801	Language of Thought
28/09/2020 13:06:14	2932	Language of Thought
06/03/2018 21:21:36	4085	Language of Thought
04/07/2014 22:46:34	1705	Language of Thought

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Note last updated	Reading List for this Topic	Parent Topic
20/09/2022 11:24:00	Language of Thought	Person

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Summary of Notes Referenced by This Note

Animals	Awaiting Attention (Personal Identity)	Baker - The Human Animal: Big-Tent Metaphysics	Brandom - Toward a Normative Pragmatics (Introduction)	Concepts
Daniel Dennett – Conditions of Personhood	Degrees of Personhood	Human Beings	Implicit knowledge and language learning	Jen_071022 (Dennett)
Jen_080204 (Brandom, Chisholm, Baillie)	Note Links Explanation	Person	Plug Note Apologia	Works Read - Explanation

To access information, click on one of the links in the table above.

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Summary of Notes Citing This Note

Aeon Papers, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6	Baker - Persons in the Material World	Computers	Dennett - True Believers, 2	PID Note, Book & Paper Usage, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
Psychopathology	Thesis - Chapter 03 (What is a Person?), 2, 3, 4, 5	Thesis - Chapter 10 (Thought Experiments), 2	Website Generator Documentation - Functors, 2, 3, 4

To access information, click on one of the links in the table above.

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Authors, Books & Papers Citing this Note

Author	Title	Medium	Extra Links	Read?
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	Persons in the Material World	Paper		Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	When Do Persons Begin and End?	Paper		Yes
Dennett (Daniel)	True Believers: The Intentional Strategy and Why it Works	Paper	2	Yes
Evans (Vyvyan)	Aeon - Video - Real talk	Paper		Yes
Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul)	Aeon: 2019+	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5, 6	Yes
Moynihan (Thomas)	Thanks for all the fish	Paper		Yes
Pena-Guzman (David M.)	The dreams of animals	Paper		Yes
Petersen (Jennifer)	Can algorithms speak? And should their opinions be protected?	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 03 (What is a Person?)	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 10 (Thought Experiments)	Paper	2	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Computers	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Psychopathology	Paper		Yes

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References & Reading List

Author	Title	Medium	Source	Read?
Aydede (Murat)	The Language of Thought Hypothesis	Paper - Cited	Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, 2010	7%
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View	Book - Referencing (via Paper Referencing)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	Persons in the Material World	Paper - Referencing	Baker (Lynne) - Persons and Bodies, Chapter 1	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	When Do Persons Begin and End?	Paper - Cited	Distinguished Faculty Lecture, December 5, 2005	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	When Do Persons Begin and End?	Paper - Referencing	Distinguished Faculty Lecture, December 5, 2005	Yes
Bermudez (Jose Luis)	Thinking Without Words	Book - By Subtopic	Bermudez (Jose Luis) - Thinking Without Words	6%
Bermudez (Jose Luis)	Thinking Without Words: Preface	Paper - By Subtopic	Bermudez (Jose Luis) - Thinking Without Words	56%
Bickerton (Derek)	How Protolanguage Became Language	Paper - By Subtopic	Knight (Etc, Eds) - The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 24 November 2009	No
Block (Ned), Ed.	Readings in Philosophy of Psychology - Vol 2	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	No
Burling (Robbins)	The Talking Ape: How Language Evolved	Book - By Subtopic	Burling (Robbins) - The Talking Ape: How Language Evolved	0%
Camp (Elisabeth)	A language of baboon thought?	Paper - Cited	Robert W. Lurz (ed.), The Philosophy of Animal Minds. Cambridge University Press (2009), Chapter 6	6%
Cangelosi (Angelo) & Parisi (Domenico), Eds.	Simulating the Evolution of Language	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Cangelosi (Angelo) & Parisi (Domenico), Eds. - Simulating the Evolution of Language	1%
Cangelosi (Angelo) & Parisi (Domenico), Eds.	Simulating the Evolution of Language	Paper - By Subtopic	Cangelosi (Angelo) & Parisi (Domenico), Eds. - Simulating the Evolution of Language, 2002	2%
Carruthers (Peter)	Language, Thought and Consciousness	Book - Cited	Carruthers (Peter) - Language, Thought and Consciousness	No
Carruthers (Peter) & Boucher (Jill)	Language and Thought	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Carruthers (Peter) & Boucher (Jill) - Language and Thought	No
Carruthers (Peter) & Boucher (Jill)	Language and Thought	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	No
Chomsky (Noam)	Biolinguistic Explorations: Design, Development, Evolution	Paper - By Subtopic	International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Volume 15, Issue 1 March 2007 , pages 1 - 21	No
Clark (Andy)	Language of Thought	Paper - Cited	Guttenplan - A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind	33%
Clark (Andy)	Magic words: how language augments human computation	Paper - By Subtopic	Carruthers & Boucher - Language and Thought, 1998	No
Davies (Martin)	Concepts, Connectionism, and the Language of Thought	Paper - Cited	In W. Ramsey, S. Stich and D. Rumelhart (eds), Philosophy and Connectionist Theory (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991), 229-257	No
Davies (Martin)	Language, thought, and the language of thought: Aunty's own argument revisited	Paper - Cited	Carruthers & Boucher - Language and Thought, 1998	No
Dennett (Daniel)	Brainstorms - Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	43%
Dennett (Daniel)	Conditions of Personhood	Paper - Cited	Dennett - Brainstorms - Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology, Chapter 14, 1976	Yes
Dennett (Daniel)	Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking	Book - Cited	Dennett (Daniel) - Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking	4%
DeWitt (Richard)	Vagueness, Semantics, and the Language of Thought (Review of Jerry Fodor, George Miller, & D. Terence Langendoen - Language of Thought )	Paper - Cited	Psyche, 1(1), December 1993	No
Evans (Vyvyan)	Aeon - Video - Real talk	Paper - Cited	Aeon, 04 December 2014	Yes
Evans (Vyvyan)	Aeon - Video - Real talk	Paper - Referencing	Aeon, 04 December 2014	Yes
Everett (Daniel)	Chomsky, Wolfe and me	Paper - Cited	Aeon, 10 January, 2017	Yes
Fodor (Jerry)	Psychosemantics	Book - Cited	Fodor (Jerry) - Psychosemantics	Yes
Fodor (Jerry)	The Language of Thought	Book - By Subtopic	Fodor (Jerry) - The Language of Thought	2%
Fodor (Jerry)	The Language of Thought	Paper - By Subtopic	Fodor - The Language of Thought	4%
Fodor (Jerry)	Why There Still Has to be a Language of Thought	Paper - Cited	Fodor - Psychosemantics, Appendix	Yes
Garcia-Amaya (Lorenzo)	Video - Why do we, like, hesitate when we, um, speak?	Paper - Cited	Aeon, 10 May 2021	Yes
Guttenplan (Samuel), Ed.	A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	1%
Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul)	Aeon: 2019+	Paper - Referencing	Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul) - Aeon	Yes
Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul)	Aeon: A-B (& General)	Book - Referencing (via Paper Referencing)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	100%
Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul)	Aeon: C-F	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	51%
Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul)	Aeon: G-K	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	31%
Hills (David)	Mental Representations and Language of Thought	Paper - Cited	Block - Readings in Philosophy of Psychology - Vol 2	No
Horgan (Terence) & Tienson (John)	Connectionism and the Philosophy of Psychology	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	15%
Horgan (Terence) & Tienson (John)	Why There Still Has to be a Language of Thought, and What That Means	Paper - Cited	Horgan & Tienson - Connectionism and the Philosophy of Psychology, 1996, Chapter 5	19%
Huenemann (Charlie)	Who needs a perfect language? It’s already perfectly imperfect	Paper - Cited	Aeon, 30 May, 2017	Yes
Jackendoff (Ray)	What is a Concept, That a Person May Grasp It?	Paper - By Subtopic	Margolis & Laurence - Concepts - Core Readings	No
Kahn-Harris (Keith)	The Babel Message: A Love Letter to Language	Book - Cited	Kahn-Harris (Keith) - The Babel Message: A Love Letter to Language	Yes
Kahn-Harris (Keith)	The Babel Message: A Love Letter to Language	Paper - By Subtopic	Khan-Harris (Keith) - The Babel Message: A Love Letter to Language	Yes
Kahn-Harris (Keith)	The pleasure in not understanding a language can be awesome	Paper - By Subtopic	Aeon, 19 January 2022	Yes
Kaye (Larry)	The Language of Thought	Paper - By Subtopic	Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind	No
Kaye (Larry)	The Language of Thought - Annotated Bibliography	Paper - By Subtopic	Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind	No
Laurence (Stephen) & Margolis (Eric)	Regress Arguments Against the Language of Thought	Paper - Cited	Analysis 57.1, Jan 1997, p60, 7p	No
Lieberman (Philip)	Eve Spoke - Human Language and Human Evolution	Book - By Subtopic	Lieberman (Philip) - Eve Spoke - Human Language and Human Evolution	No
Lurz (Robert), Ed.	The Philosophy of Animal Minds	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	4%
Lycan (William)	Mind and Cognition - An Anthology	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	1%
Lycan (William)	The 'Language of Thought' Hypothesis - Introduction	Paper - Cited	Lycan - Mind and Cognition - An Anthology, 1999	No
MacDonald (Cynthia) & MacDonald (Graham), Eds.	Connectionism: Debates in Psychological Explanation - Vol. 2	Book - By Subtopic	MacDonald (Cynthia) & MacDonald (Graham), Eds. - Connectionism: Debates in Psychological Explanation - Vol. 2	3%
Maloney (J. Christopher)	Language of Thought	Paper - Cited	Guttenplan - A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind	No
Margolis (Eric) & Laurence (Stephen), Eds.	Concepts - Core Readings	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Margolis (Eric) & Laurence (Stephen), Eds. - Concepts - Core Readings	No
Moynihan (Thomas)	Thanks for all the fish	Paper - Referencing	Aeon, 18 March 2021	Yes
Noe (Alva)	Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Noe (Alva) - Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness	8%
Noe (Alva)	Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness	Paper - By Subtopic	Noe (Alva) - Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness	11%
Pena-Guzman (David M.)	The dreams of animals	Paper - Referencing	Aeon, 07 June 2022	Yes
Petersen (Jennifer)	Can algorithms speak? And should their opinions be protected?	Paper - Referencing	Aeon, 07 June 2022	Yes
Pinker (Steven)	The Language Instinct - How the Mind Creates Language	Book - Cited	Pinker (Steven) - The Language Instinct - How the Mind Creates Language	Yes
Pinker (Steven)	Words and Rules - The Ingredients of Language	Book - Cited	Pinker (Steven) - Words and Rules - The Ingredients of Language	No
Pollock (John L.)	How to Build a Person: A Prolegomenon	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	4%
Pollock (John L.)	Interest-Driven Reasoning	Paper - By Subtopic	Synthese, Vol. 74, No. 3, Internalism (Mar., 1988), pp. 369-390	No
Pollock (John L.)	The Language of Thought	Paper - Cited	Pollock - How to Build a Person, Chapter 5	No
Pollock (John L.)	Understanding the Language of Thought	Paper - By Subtopic	Philosophical Studies, Vol. 58, No. 1/2, Symposium on Thought and Reference (Jan. - Feb., 1990), pp. 95-120	No
Rescorla (Michael)	The Language of Thought Hypothesis	Paper - Cited	Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Tue May 28, 2019	7%
Rey (Georges)	Sensations in a Language of Thought	Paper - By Subtopic	Philosophical Issues, Vol. 1, Consciousness, 1991, pp. 73-112	No
Rowlands (Mark)	Connectionism and the Language of Thought	Paper - By Subtopic	British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 45, No. 2, Jun., 1994, pp. 485-503	11%
Searle (John)	The Rediscovery of the Mind	Book - By Subtopic	Searle (John) - The Rediscovery of the Mind	15%
Smolensky (Paul)	Connectionism, Constituency and the Language of Thought	Paper - By Subtopic	MacDonald (Cynthia) & MacDonald (Graham) - Connectionism: Debates in Psychological Explanation - Vol. 2	No
Todman (Theo)	Poverty of Stimulus Arguments	Paper - By Subtopic		25%
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Language of Thought	Paper - By Subtopic		Yes
Viger (Christopher)	Learning to Think: A Response to the Language of Thought Argument for Innateness	Paper - Cited	Mind and Language, Volume 20, Number 3, June 2005, pp. 313-325(13)	No
Wray (Alison)	Holistic Utterances in Protolanguage: The Link from Primates to Humans	Paper - By Subtopic	Knight (Etc, Eds) - The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form	No

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Text Colour Conventions

1. Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2022

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