Thursday, November 05, 2009

Words vs. Thinking

I haven't posted for a while; part of the reason was the flu, the other part is that I've gotten bogged down in other people's words while trying to research new articles. I'll try to break free by limiting my own words in this new post.

Bog 1: Tom Regan spends a lot of time philosophizing in his The Case for Animal Rights, but too many words can serve to hide the truth more than examine it. And if he can say that humans have a higher life quality than any other animal, he must not realize that such a statement is only a little bit different than Descartes' "biological machines" view of animals.

Bog 2: Some scientists do recognize that animals have societies and cultures of their own. But they're afraid of going all the way with this idea. That leads to a lot of roundabout language. Still, this article is interesting, about male dolphins bringing a bouquet to a prospective mate: Dolphins Use Weeds to Get Girls.

And here's an earlier article about whale culture: Culture Shock

There. I hope that ends my writer's block.

1 comment:

  1. It's good to see the ways the dolphins are thinking.

    Someone was wondering: do dolphins tell stories orally and pass things on that way?

    And there was also a quote about how no human has learnt dolphin language, whereas dolphins have learnt 50 human words.

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