Where is the dog?

Christmas time! That time of year again. And it's great for most of us Dogs - there's so much food around. And it's actually been snowing today - hooray!!! S ome Dogs have a bit of a tough time of it though over Christmas, so I'm pleased to see that my pals at Pedigree Chum have an adopt a puppy project. Have a look. 'tis the season Us Dogs don't take this time of year too seriously; we sometimes even take a short break from philosophy. Maybe have a sniff at what's on the table, check no one's looking - and pinch a sausage or two. Or a bit of cake. Then maybe do a bit of philosophizing about will, responsibility and accountability. Dog chaos avoidance On a serious note, throughout the festive period, it's crucial that Dog chaos avoidance is observed at all times. Above left, I've put on a photo of an evening spent with my fellow Dogs, Masie and Mike, at their house last New Year. Masie is wearing the hat. It was very, very goo...

Ice cream Dave and I have been immersing ourselves recently in the philosophy of language . There's a lot of stuff in it like: Smith says "A" to Jones; what does Smith mean by "A"? Can Smith successfully communicate "A" to Jones? And what does "meaning" itself mean? Tricky. Although Dave and I were both delighted to discover that philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine bases one of his theories on a thought experiment involving rabbits . Worry Anyway, in doing all our readings, Dave and I managed to get ourselves quite worried about whether we were actually understanding each other at all . I mentioned to Dave one afternoon that I was "particularly fond of vanilla ice cream, on a cone". But could we be confident that we really knew what each other meant? A worry indeed. Incidentally, that's Bernard above, demonstrating the Dog's preferred ice cream eating technique. Getting it all over your face and nos...

Being nice Some moral philosophers talk about words having "thick" and "thin" moral meanings. Bernard Williams (guest starring in Dog blog 6 - multi-dimensional morality ) used to talk about that sort of thing. The thin (and thick) of it Thin words are words like "good", "right" or "ought" . They can very slippery. Like one of the Dog's squeaky toys (see Dog blog 10 - plugging in ) if the Dog left it outside in the rain. And maybe on the grass too - very slippery indeed. Not a lot sticks to a toy like that, and different Dogs can mean different things when they get one of those in their mouths. Ought Take "ought" for example. That can mean a lot of different things. Here's an interesting talk by Judith Thomson on some of them: Judith also talks about toasters. And, importantly, Dogs get a mention too. Thick words Thick words are much much stickier. Just like m...

Nooks The Dog is on his holidays this week. Hooray! And, as a treat after chasing some rabbits, the Dog took himself for a special holiday walk this morning to his favourite local cafe. Coffee The Dog decided, since the cafe is Dog friendly, to stop there for a while. And have a tip top coffee; thankfully and mercifully, not burned. (A lot of coffee making places seem to be doing that nowadays with worrying and increasing regularity.) With scrambled eggs, toast, sausages, tomato and - controversially - spinach. Spinach Now I like spinach. Either wilted slightly in a pan, or raw. Tail waggingly yummy yum. But, I wasn't altogether convinced by the Spinach's wentingness (a completely and entirely made up Dog word) with the rest of its breakfast companions. To give you an idea, let's calibrate the lower end of a continuum of convincingness (a real word, dating in print back to at least 1647) of the spinach's wentingnes s. That is, the spinach's...

Work Until he gets that sponsorship deal from Pedigree Chum , the Dog, like most Dogs, has to leave his squeaky toys behind every weekday morning (see Dog blog 10 - plugging in ). And get out of his cosy dog bed. And go to work. Now the Dog mostly enjoys his work. And that is a lucky thing: lots of Dogs would rather be doing something else, like chasing rabbits or chewing one of those chewy bone things that Pedigree Chum make . Jostling But there can be frustrations with it. These stem, I think, from the effort of the politics of work. T rying to make yourself heard; trying to influence and increase your influence; trying to curb others' influence over you: there's always a certain amount of jostling for position. That got me to wondering: what exactly is being jostled when we're doing all that jostling? Which then got me to thinking about memetics . Memetics Memetics is a fairly recent way of thinking about the evolution of culture. It'...

Blue mice Professor Hugh McLachlan wrote a very interesting article in the New Scientist earlier this week about miracles . Have a look. Professor Hugh said: "People might accept a scientific account of why a particular event occurred, yet ask similar sorts of questions about why there are particular juxtapositions of occurrences. Much of this speculation and theorising will be baseless, but there seems no justification for saying all such thinking is nonsensical. By analogy: most conspiracy theories are groundless, but not all of them are. So some people might think of "miracles" as particular juxtapositions of events, each of which has a correct and acceptable scientific explanation. This might be nonsensical, but it would be interesting to discover wherein the nonsense lies. We should be open not only to possible observations and experiences that might dislodge some of our accepted theories but to thoughts and ways of thinking that may challenge our n...