[Buddha-l] Re: on eating meat

[Joy Vriens]

Andrew Skilton wrote:

> You are a paragon. Very lucky kids! Admitting one doesn't know is very
> productive for all parties, don't you think?

Yes, especially since it's true. And again it's part of my "guidline 
dogma", if you know you don't know you keep searching, it keeps you on 
your toes. Not to forget that whatever we think is all built on silence 
as Hugo says.

>>That's interesting, I expect that means they recognise a vocabulary of 
>>several hundreds human words, many of which probably concern "things" 
>>that are objects for humans, but not necessarily for them? Didn't 
>>Wittgenstein say that if a lion could speak our language we wouldn't 
>>understand him?

>By the way, I wrote that comment on dog vocabulary 'tongue in cheek'.  I hope it
> will not  disappoint you but I do not actually talk to my dogs. Well, that's not
> quite true - I occasionally address them rhetorically.  I guess there is a
> rudimentary 'body language' that we have taught each other, and which they
> understand better than I.

When I had a dog I did talk to him, not always verbally though. And I 
imagine he talked to me.

It's very possible that dogs don't pick up on whatever form the 
"vocabulary" of the test is expressed in, but on totally different 
things, body language as you say, or perhaps the tester produces a 
certain smell etc. when thinking and expressing a word he wants the dog 
to understand. We never know what they do pick up on.

Joy