@ Meno.
“Can dogs think phenomenally?”
A note on language:
The question is not only whether dogs know and use a vocabulary, beacuse the question is also whether they furthermore use a grammar and thus a language, a dog language.
It’s not only a vocabulary, it’s even a grammar, albeit a very primitive grammar. Moreover, even a vocabulary is of no use at all without meaning and the grammatical linking of these meanings. All this must have a sense. All creatures have to do with a meaning. Life differs from death by sense.
Inorganic systems have no sense (besides a possible metaphysical one), but organic systems (systems of life) would not exist at all without sense, so they need a sense.
This implies that at least the higher creatures have a more complex grammar than the lower creatures. But all these grammars are of course as good as nothing if one compares them with the grammar of the human language.
The word “vocabulary” here must not be understood humanly; also the word “word” must not be understood according to human language.
The dog, which is to be talked about here in this thread, does not understand the human language as a “human language”. For example: “Words” - regardless which one of them - are not understandable for the dog as “words”, but as something that the phonetic sequence means to the dog. The dog hears sounds that mean something, and relates - i.e. interprets - them in/to “dog language”, which in turn is based on what the dog has experienced; e.g.: “ball” means then approximately: “my master and I go outside and play there with the ball” or “I will fetch the ball, because I should/want to fetch the ball” etc… The phonetic series “ball” means all this and much more to the dog. And in any case it means a good thing/situation.
So indeed, a creature’s language is just a very, very, very simple language, but a simple language - regardless how simple it is - is a language. Needed for a language are signs, consisting of the signifier and the signified, as well as their meanings (semantics) and relations as rules (grammar).