[Buddha-l] Fw: ask mollie about this

[Gad Horowitz]

yo, buddha guys, the "mollie" mentioned below is a poodle.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <horowitz at yorku.ca>
To: "Gad Horowitz" <horowitz at chass.utoronto.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2011 2:42 PM
Subject: Re: ask mollie about this


I've asked Mollie about all of this, and all she's done is peed on a bush. 
Which
I found singularly unenlightening...

I would like to know how our namesake, A. Horowitz, knows that dogs know 
what
has gone on "a week ago"? Some smells are stronger than others. Does this 
make
them more recent? Wouldn't the dog need at least another independent set of
referential standards in order to evaluate the recentness of the emission of 
a
scent? (This is a strong scent, but it's likely emitter is nowhere to be 
seen
-- THEREFORE, it was emitted in past time) (assuming I, dog, already know 
what
visual,auditory, etc... stuff goes along with this scent) Wouldn't the dog 
need
a sense of time that is somehow at least relatively autonomous from any one 
of
its senses? Why do we have to give them more or less "credit" than they
"deserve"? But I do like the word "enolfactorated", though it does come 
across
more awkward than enlightened.


Quoting Gad Horowitz <horowitz at chass.utoronto.ca>:

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Richard Hayes" <rhayes at unm.edu>
> To: "Buddhist discussion forum" <buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2011 10:54 PM
> Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] How Khushwant Singh does
>
>
> > On Aug 9, 2011, at 19:32 , JKirkpatrick wrote:
> >
> >> Often I've
> >> wondered why the idea of "light" has become such a popular and
> >> accepted symbol for being wised-up about things.
> >
> > I suppose it's because for most human beings, sight is the principal
> > source of sensory information. When people understand, they say "I see."
> > (Oddly enough, when people learn of news by reading a letter or a
> > newspaper, they say "I heard some news." I attribute that silly verbal
> > habit to fundamental delusion on the part of speakers of English.)
> >
> > Alexandra Horowitz says in her wonderful book "Inside of a dog" (and in
> > interviews on the Ideas program on CBC radio) that dogs gather as much 
> > or
> > more information through their noses as human beings do through their
> > vision. When a dog enters a room, she can tell everyone who has been in
> > the room for the past week, the state of their health, their moods, how
> > recently they have been sexually active and what they have eaten. When a
> > dog takes a walk, she has no sense at all of the present or the passage 
> > of
> > time, because so much of the past still lingers in odors. The past is
> > always present to a dog. Primates, on the other hand, are pretty much
> > trapped in the immediate present, since what is present is the only
> > information that light and sound can deliver. Primates live in an
> > impoverished sensory world. Dogs feel sorry for us, I should imagine.
> > That's why dogs never say they've become enlightened. What's light to an
> > animal with relatively poor vision and a great sense of smell? N!
> > o, when dogs gain liberative understanding they always say they've 
> > become
> > enolfactorated. Well, they don't actually SAY it. That is, they don't
> > actually use that word. Rather than communicating by making a sound, 
> > they
> > pee on a bush, and everyone else gets the gospel that way.
> >
> > Dogs, I reckon, spend a great deal of their time wondering whether human
> > beings have gandharva nature.
> >
> >
> > Richard Hayes
> > Department of Philosophy (Cynical Division)
> > University of New Mexico
> > Albuquerque, NM
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
>
>