Dog Cognition

 I'll address two points for the sake of brevity. You make the same point I made previously in regards to dogs. Those that claim dogs cannot think are falling back on the Scotman Fallacy.  To them 'thinking" is 'human thinking" and therefore non-human animals cannot think. If the mods ever get the threat back, we'd see Behan often write "by definition" in order to justify his claims.

Secondly; hats off to you for mentioning that sci-fi crotchety great Heinlein.

TheMilkyWay

 Secondly; hats off to you for mentioning that sci-fi crotchety great Heinlein.

 Gracias. I have read everything he ever wrote, including the stuff under pseudonyms. The man was plagued with common sense, romanticism, and way too much smarts.

 Cooperation is no longer confined to primates.  Humans do it.  And chimps can do it too.  Cooperation.  

 Looks like there is one more animal that has the ability of intentional cooperation.  Dogs, don't seem to be able to make this leap.

Cooperating elephants win food prize

I thought wolf packs were examples of co-operation in nature.

 The devised elephant tests seemed un-natural for their 'umvelt' - their setting in the wild.  So, the tests seem to say at least as much about their ability to learn novelty as to co-operate.

 One thing I get from my process studies in philosophy is that societies of interrelating entities are literally all that reality is.  We know about a world of enduring things.  Rocks, cars, & trees, on the one hand, and higher organisms with nervous systems like worms, dogs and us, on the other. The former are merely aggregate things – each a society of various minerals or simple living cells clustered into subsocieties that are processing independently (in parallel) of one another (though there is some serial order of the subsocieties  of vegetative processes).

The latter enduring things, the animals, are compound individuals – each a structurally organized society of millions of subsocieties all functionally  ordered (teleologically*) to support a reigning dominant society that we call the brain/mind/psyche/personality of the overall individual worm, dog, human, elephant...


* Science is loathe to see this term indicating 'natural purposes', though it unofficially speaks of such 'reasons why' w/r this or that. In evolution theory, it is what is usually referred to as survival of the fittest within an ecosystem.  But what is more fit and likely to endure (survive), a rock, or a flower?  Survival is epitomized by rocks - why would happily long-surviving molecular societies forming rocks ever bother with becoming far less survivable, more fragile) living entities?    

 The Dynamic Quality or creative advance of Pirsig and Whitehead, respectively, is acknowledgment that the cosmos is directed at becoming better/more important.

I always like to remember that "fittest" is not in terms of strength and speed, unless those are the conditions of survival. Fittest means most able to survive in an environment. Man is among the weakest and slowest of the mammals, certainly slower and weaker than our fellow primates. However, we survive as a species because we are "fit." We adapt well to the environment. Relatively hairless, we can survive warm times better than other mammals. And put on layers of clothing and survive cold times. And the tool use we have to accomplish that. Which is why Man, a relatively unfinished evolutionary product, can last as he has and be so successful at procreation. We live long enough to produce another generation.

 'Survival of the fittest' reflects a prevalent paradigm of seeing nature as either inorganic or organic substances that are vacuous of any quality save that proscribed by 'invioable laws' of nature.

Rather, when these vacuous substances are observed as interrelating events of some form of experience whose  'laws' are better understood as  the 'habits of nature's experiential continuum' at any period in evolution,  we see a different goal in nature:

Optimal experience.  For those organic forms now evolved to dogs and us, 'optimal' is 'freeer/better'.

miranadobe

The thread requires Admin technical intervention and will go back up once I.T. fixes the software problem. 

FYI, You can find the thread in our new Educational Archives section: http://forum.dog.com/forums/t/110899.aspx

Gracia por la informacion.

 I always knew our species differed in degree only... 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVwlMVYqMu4&feature=player_embedded#at=216

Quite true. They tuck their napkins in like a bib. I keep mine in my lap. But differences can be just that subtle.

 As many here may recall, I have taken it as a matter of honor to insist to theistic philosophers/theologians, priests, or other leaders that if they want to give us immortal souls, they must also include our fur-babies.  This is the reason I am taken with Whitehead's philosophy (he says any consciously experiencing subject is a person).  This is in opposition to most religious leaders who follow Aquinas/Aristotle who said only man is rational, and only a rational mind can know God: therefore, only man has an immortal soul.

I have argued with such fascist thinkers on religious blogs till I intentionally got myself kicked off from one (twice, as it happens!).  It is hard to find open-minded philosophy in the dogmatic sphere of religious apologists, but I am so excited to have come across Bill Vallicella who actually appears to be a serious, respected, conservative theistic philosopher and is open to animal souls, that I wanted to post this.

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2009/12/are-the-souls-of-brute-animals-subsistent.html

You may want to share it with friends who discuss this matter w/ church people who do not know how to counter the no-dog-soul fiats of church officials.

Red and Peanut say "hi".

Burl

This is in opposition to most religious leaders who follow Aquinas/Aristotle who said only man is rational, and only a rational mind can know God: therefore, only man has an immortal soul.

What a surprise they must all get when they have to go thru the Meadow to **GET** to the "Gates" of Heaven.  Hmmmm??? 

It's not a war I worry about here on earth because I just figger they're either going to the hot place or they're gonna find out how wrong they were. 

 Yes Callie, and I love your signature 

 Many Franciscan churches have the yearly ritual of The Blessing of The Pets

“Blessed are you, Lord God, maker of all living creatures. You called forth fish in the sea, birds in the air and animals on the land. You inspired St. Francis to call all of them his brothers and sisters. We ask you to bless this pet. By the power of your love, enable it to live according to your plan. May we always praise you for all your beauty in creation. Blessed are you, Lord our God, in all your creatures! Amen.”

 I'm assuming if St. Francis called them brothers and sisters it was more than a passing association and they shared the same relationship with the Father.

 Actually John Paul II called them our brothers, also, but his words (like any shrewd philosopher) were enough to make his audience think he was saying they had souls like humans, but church leaders later said he was merely referring to the teachings of Aristotle/Aquinas wherein there is a nutritive soul, a sentient soul, and a rational soul.  Plants have the 1st, non-human animals have 1 and 2, and only we have all 3.

Deception rules. 

Where I think the Catholic dogma is vulnerable to having the tables turned w/r animal souls is in their 'Theology of the Person" which focuses on a detailed analysis of the depth of interpersonal relationships among subjects.  Well we know how closely dogs relate to humans, and there are biblical references to animals as persons.

A careful study of Genesis wording is much more positive in putting all creatures on a par.  Sytephen H Webb wrote a great theological book On God and Dogs that traces the roles of creatures in scripture and the eschatology of the Peaceable Kingdom in which the lamb and lion and us will have evolved to peaceful coexistence.  .

Honestly, I have more agnostic leanings these years after reading philosophy and theology, but by God, if church people want to claim human rationality as the sole requisite for a creature to have immortality, I say bull****; as Whitehead says, subjective sentient experience is the stuff of persons, and all higher-order mammals have it.