Desdemona's going to have a sweet year
Greg Swann
From: Collins, Cathleen - BSC
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 1:43 PM
To: Buntrock, Tamra - BSC; Hill, Randy (CHSB)
Subject: Desdemona's going to have a sweet year
Because our coon hound, Desdemona, runs away so easily and so
tenaciously, we let her stay in the house when we aren't home.
This acknowledges that Desdemona has won the war. Well, of
course she has... she won every battle. You'll recall, she
escapes over our 6' block fence, even after we added an electric
wire to the top; even when we strapped her into a full body
harness and tethered her; even when we tethered her at both her
collar and her harness and attached the two together; even when
we put her into a kennel and tethered her at both her harness and
collar and ran the two cables out of separate sides of the
kennel; even when we drugged her. The only thing she couldn't
escape from was a $200 solid plastic shell of a kennel, but after
a few times in that box she learned how to splay herself so that
anyone who tried to stuff her into the kennel came out of the box
bloody and Desi, of course, never came close to going in. So,
after spending about $600 on gadgets guaranteed to keep dogs
where they're supposed to be, Desdemona won the war and now gets
to stay in the house when we're not at home. The spoils of war
include more than the simple luxury of staying indoors. They
include staying indoors unsupervised! Which means we've had to
make changes in how and where we store garbage. And we're sure
she terrorizes the cats, and we're sure she bounds from one piece
of out-of-bounds furniture to another. Now Desdemona no longer
becomes anxious when she sees us prepare to leave. Now, when we
put the other three dogs outside and we're wearing clothes that
she recognizes as "going out" clothes, she gets into position
where she can watch the door, but not close enough to try to run
out of it, and smiles. Desdemona never smiled before she won the
war. In fact, we didn't believe she could smile. Now, Desdemona
is a very happy dog. Yesterday got even better. Yesterday at
lunch, Tamra and I went to a Jewish deli and we each bought a
honey cake for Rosh Hashanah. We eat honey cakes this season to
start our year out right, sweetly. When I brought the wrapped
cake home last night I put it away where we always store our
bread, which has always been a safe place. Of course, you know
how the story ends. When we got home last night, we learned that
the safe place is not really all that safe... and Desdemona was
smiling.
Happy New Year!
Cathleen Collins
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From: Greg Swann <gsw...@primenet.com>
Organization: http://presenceofmind.net/
Newsgroups: humanities.philosophy.objectivism
Date: Fri, 02 Feb 2001 23:22:21 -0700
To: gsw...@primenet.com
Subject: Apprehending willful Desdemona
We have four dogs, all big, all beautiful, all very smart,
all very willful. The smartest and most willful of the four
is Desdemona, a big white English Coon Hound, 65 pounds, all
very willful muscle.
There are two ways out of our house. One way leads to the
back yard, where the dogs can run, play, snooze, urinate and
defecate. The yard is circumvallated by a six-foot block
wall. The other way leads the vast, unwalled, scent-rich
great big world outside. Most significantly to all of the
dogs, it leads to the cars.
Desdemona hates the back yard.
Desdemona loves to ride in the car.
Even people who have dogs do not at first understand the
depth and vigor and undiluted purity of Desdemona's hating
and loving. Unless she has to pee very badly, Desdemona
almost always has to be dragged to the back door to get her
to go outside. And if we leave her there too long--where too
long can be less than a minute--she leaps over that six foot
block wall and sails forth to explore that vast, unwalled,
scent-rich great big world outside.
On the other hand, before I have one leg all the way into a
pair of trousers, Desdemona will have figured out that I am
going out, and she will be leaping and scampering and
howling playfully, campaigning to be taken along. When I put
my wallet and keys in my pockets, her frenzy increases,
since she is that much more certain that I am going. If I
put the other dogs out, she leaps to the next level of
excitation, since whatever is the dog-analog of implication
is that she's going and they're staying. She becomes
uncontainable when I lay my hand on a lead, since that is
proof positive that she is going to get to go.
Desdemona _loves_ to ride in the car.
The epistemology of this is all pattern-matching, of course.
Desdemona does not reason in any sense that would apply to
human beings, she simply has a good memory of what happened
in the past subsequent to certain recalled events. For this
reason, even though we often desperately want for her to go
to the back yard--for example, to pee so that we can go to
bed without fearing for the carpets--we do not ever "trick"
her by presenting stimuli that will lead her to believe
she's going out the front door and not the back. Sometimes
this means that Desdemona gets to go for a ride at ten
o'clock at night; she hides from us until she knows which
door she'll be going out.
Interestingly, she can distinguish between these two
very similar exhortations:
Desdemona, do you want to go outside?
Desdemona, do you want to go for a ride?
Say the first and she will squirrel herself all the way back
into the corner under my son's bed. Say the second and
she'll scoot her way out in an instant and leap and yelp
until she gets to go for a ride.
The point is not her epistemology. The point is her will. I
have zero doubt that Desdemona has will, which reflects her
desires, which reflects her values and disvalues. She cannot
conceptualize, and thus her will is not free in the way we
speak of free will among human beings (and _that_ freedom of
will is not biological in origin but is nurtured into being
only by human upbringing). Free will is an attribute of the
human brain, but will itself--desire, value, disvalue,
emotional expression--is a mammal-brain phenomenon. This is
why pre-conceptual children and genetic homo sapiens raised
by animals are able to express will even when they are
unable to express any concepts.
Now that we understand Desdemona, I must ask you to excuse
me. I have to run out and retrieve my dog.
Greg Swann
PS: There are photos of Desdemona and all our brood at: