Having just returned to this blog in order to post on Kierkegaard, I've been re-reading the Can Dogs Hope mini-project to see if it can be moved forward.
The central issue seems to be this: if we are entirely unable to show that dogs display what we might term hope behaviour then we have no right to say that they can hope.
A further question arises: if we are unable to show that dogs display hope behaviour, do we have a right to say they can't hope?
Is this the right kind of question to ask? What would we be saying if we claimed an ant couldn't hope, or even that a rock couldn't hope? But we can imagine a situation where such terms have sense - for example where someone is pursuing an argument by analogy or metaphor, and we wish to disprove it or show its inappropriateness.
What would we make of someone who, when we remarked on watching a dog gazing up at a person with food that the dog was hopeful, remarked "dogs can't hope." Would it be different if we were in a pet shop and had said "my dog's hoping I bring him back a toy" or "I think my dog hopes I'll bring him back something tasty"? I think it would; and yet surely we can make sense of the dog believing either of these things.
I feel no closer to an answer, and I have to get to bed.
7 Sept 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment