Dogs Don’t Talk

If man is just a meat machine, there is no reason to get angry with him for cheating on his wife. There is no reason to be indignant with him for being a member of a political party you disagree with. Indeed, if he is a machine, there is no reason to argue with him at all: send him to a re-education camp to be reprogrammed. Human life might be sacred, but meat machines are not sacred, they are merely objects. Fix the ones worth fixing, the ones useful to you, and throw away the broken ones.

If man is just a programmed mass of reflexes, again, there is no reason to treat him as a human being, no reason to criticize or judge his actions, no reason to allow him his liberty. There is no freedom of conscience in a behaviorist world, because there is no conscience.

If man’s ideas are just an ideological superstructure or a false consciousness impress on his brain by the material dialectic of means of production, he is a cog. There is no reason to judge or condemn him, no reason not to treat him like a cog in a machine.

If man’s ideas are nothing but the products of sub-conscious drives and buried forces, the intellectuals know his thoughts, and he does not. There is no reason to punish or condemn, no reason to treat him as a free and equal moral agent; he is a patient, a thing, an object.

If man is not better than a beast, no different than a dog, no reason not to breed him like a dog. And inferior breeds like the Homos and Jews can be gassed.  No one objects to killing a dog, or spaying a cat, right?

And those dark-skinned peoples, if man is no different than a dog, there is nothing wrong with aborting all those little black babies, right? Planned Parenthood can help slaughter the Sambo’s pickaninnies. We don’t want them to breed beyond their grazing area. It’s scientific!

(If the Church teaches that all men are created in the image of God and that human life is sacred, we can dismiss that as unscientific. Good thing that superstitious nonsense is behind us, and a brave, new world is before us! I love big brother!)

Do you see the pattern? Not one of these modern, allegedly scientific, nonsensical non-theories calls on a man to do anything high or noble or moral or romantic or just or temperate or manly or good.

None of them demands the Faithful to pray to Mecca five times a day and give to charity: that would require self-discipline.

None of them swears by his life and his love for it never to never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for him. That would require an independence of spirit, a sense of pride.

None of them demands respect for the ashes of one’s fathers or the temples of one’s gods: that would require selflessness and love.

None of them says a man must die with a weapon in fist to see the joyful feasting of Valhalla, the Hall of the Slain. That would require courage.

All of them excuse and encourage tyranny and contempt for one’s fellow human beings, who are not human beings after all, but madmen or hairless apes, breeding stock or machines.

These moderns, in the grand scale of things, are less morally developed than Objectivists and Jihadists, Paynims and Pagans.

Here is a typical utterance, uttered by one Axiem. If he is actually a dog with a keyboard, my argument fails of its point. 

“In terms of sheer processing capability, it would seem as though humans have more than dogs. My computer now has more processing capability than the first calculators, and it can handle more data types (high-precision floats and the like). Fundamentally, there’s not really anything different, just the power.”

Axiem’s claim is that the man’s brain has more processing power than a dog’s brain. This may be true, but his claim is more astonishing than that: his claim is that there is no difference “fundamental” to human thinking: a difference of degree, so to speak, not a difference of kind.

Suppose I mentioned that I am taller than my son. I can reach the cookie jar atop the refrigerator, and he cannot, no matter what he does. Height-wise, I differ only in degree (I am taller). But in terms of cookie-eating, I differ in nature (I have them, and he does not). The first difference is a matter of degree. If his height were doubled, he would have height equal to mine. The second is a matter of kind. If he had twice zero cookies, he would still have zero cookies. I can simply do something he cannot do; I have something he does not have. 

Dogs do not play music. As far as we can tell, no animals, even close relatives like apes, have any conception of beautiful or ugly music. Birds have bird-calls but not bird-composers. They do not seek it out, they do prefer jazz to pop, opera to symphonies.  That is something (one of countless things) humans do and animals do not. Composing music is a deliberate mental act, an act of the free will, because it is not automatic, not a habit, not a frozen & stereotyped instinctive behavior, like nest-building.

Again, Axiem is not making a rational argument. He is not making an argument at all, rational or irrational. He is expressing a preference. He prefers to think of humans as dogs, or as machines. He emphasizes those things that man has in common with animals, or as machines, and simply pretends that there is no way in which humans are exceptions from animals, or different from inanimate objects.

It is not an argument, it is a pretense, an act of play-pretend. No dog talked him into this belief or this idea: it is an idea unique to humans. Dogs do not debate the similarities and differences of human and animal thought. Dogs don’t talk.

It is beyond pathetic that, in the modern world, it is necessary to remind people during a serious discussion that dogs don’t talk. It is beyond satire, beyond exaggeration, and well into the domain of total psychotic break with reality. As Picasso is to painting, so is modern philosophy to philosophy: just a distorted and disproportionate blur of lines and shapes, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I am not saying Axiem is psychotic. I am saying he has been hypnotized by a meaningless Picasso painting of modern thought, and as staring at it like a wee bird staring at the eyes of a snake.

===========================================================

“You are claiming, if I understand you correctly, that there is also some fundamental aspect of human thought–free will–that exists that dogs don’t have. The onus of proof is on you to demonstrate that it does exist.”

(He asks for proof! But what will the court of law between his ears accept as allowable evidence? Perhaps the testimony of a witness?)

I call as my first witness Axiem. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so Help you God?

Please answer each and every question honestly. I remind you that you are under oath.

1. Mr. Axiem, could you please tell the jury if you have ever had a mental experience, that is, performed an action or uttered a statement without forethought, such as, for example, exclaiming when you stub your toe, or blurting out a word before you caught yourself, or when you were drunk or distracted, or otherwise not paying attention to what you were saying?

2. Have you ever, for example, played a sport or a musical instrument where the practice of the sport or instrument allowed you to play without concentrating deliberately on the actions of your hands? Have you ever done something “on autopilot” so to speak?

3. Do you acknowledge that you wrote this sentence: “You are claiming, if I understand you correctly, that there is also some fundamental aspect of human thought–free will–that exists that dogs don’t have. The onus of proof is on you to demonstrate that it does exist.” ? You are the author of these words, and no one else? Please tell the jury.

4. When you wrote those words, what was your state of mind?

5. Specifically, did you write them in an automatic fashion, without forethought, without being aware of what your fingers were doing, as a habit, or did you pick and chose and ponder the words you needed to express your thought? Were you or were you not paying attention to what you were saying?

6. Have you ever had a word on the tip of your tongue? Have you ever written a poem, or groped for a way to express, perhaps to a loved one, or perhaps to someone in grief, how to express your emotions of love or sympathy in fitting fashion? Did you pay attention, close attention, to what you were saying at that time?

7. Have you ever been in a philosophical argument? Is this a philosophical argument? Are you pondering the meaning of the words you read, thinking them over, promising to reflect on them, and, in a word, performing a deliberate cognitive act? Are you paying attention?

8. As a man who has been in a philosophical argument, I would like to call you as an expert witness on the state of mind that accompanies such acts. In your expert opinion, is the cognitive act that accompanies your own deliberations and thinking an automatic, thoughtless, ingrained habit, or is it a deliberate act? Are speaking with forethought or without forethought? Are you paying attention or not paying attention?

9. When you deliberate, think, or perform an act of cognition, do you assent to certain conclusions, accepting them, and reject other conclusions, setting them aside? Do you make a judgment of true and false? Do you make a judgment that some things are convincing and some things are unconvincing?

10. What do you call the fundamental aspect of human thought involved in making decisions of this kind, making judgments, assenting to or setting aside conclusions?

11. Is thinking with forethought the same as the aspect of human thought involved in an automatic, thoughtless action?

12. If thinking with forethought is the same as automatic and thoughtless actions, is it exactly the same in every respect, entirely and completely indistinguishable?

13. If it is not indistinguishable, what, please tell the jury, is the distinction?

Closing statement:

I submit to your candid judgment, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that this distinction is the faculty of reason, the faculty of free will, and it is precisely the faculty humans have and dogs lack.

I will only respond to any counter-arguments or abstract reasonings written by a dog, and then only if the dog quotes only dog philosophers and writers, not using any abstract ideas borrowed from human philosophers and writers. Thank you.

Your honor, defense rests.