To get a bit deeper (just a bit), I will say that there is an amazing consequence to training yer pooch. It seems the more you train them, the smarter a they seem to get, and in due time they don’t just react by rote, but they instigate communication. Just as with the old Lassie shows, Jilli will come to me and gently ‘woof’, meaning there’s something I’d like to tell you. It might be potty, water, food, need to have access to another room etc. I will suggest these and other things till we get to the subject she has in mind, then she barks louder and spins in place. When I say train, I mean a little bit each day, not long laborious regimnes. I wrote and sing a song at seminars and such called “5 Minutes a Day”, (for new stuff) as opposed to an hour once a week. We are about to put out another basketball video on YouTube, but this time, Spidey has mastered ‘passing’ to Jilli, then she makes the shot. In the current one, it’s occasionaly, but now, he consistantly gets the ball, runs up and rolls it to Jilli, who shoots! He doesn’t learn as fast as or think as well as Jilli, but he has come a long way, just in a few minutes of fun a day. And they both LOVE to learn and practice. Sure, they like the treats, but they love the activity and especially the interation and communication with their ‘people’, who they live for… happy New Year All! rick

1. Your hypo isn’t a good analogy because training a dog isn’t just about the tasks and tricks dogs are trained to do; it’s about human-dog interaction. Dog training is about creating a common vocabulary with your dog. “Sit” means butt on the ground to the human and praise and/or treat to the dog.

2. Meaning is determined by the person seeking meaning for their lives. Someone only interested in physical pleasure might find the life you described rewarding, we never know because we don’t determine other people’s meaning for life. They do.

3. “Free-range” is a marketing term. Farm animals raised as “free-range” likely only have a slightly larger space and possibly some access to the sunlight. The term “free-range” as defined by our government does not mean they get to range freely. It often means they have small concrete patios to their tiny cages.

4. You said “A dog has no such capacities, hence a dog’s life isn’t inauthentic.”
I respond: prove it. Doesn’t it make more sense to be agnostic about nonhuman animals’ capacities for understanding and reasoning? We’re learning more and more about animal intelligence everyday. And isn’t it just a little presumptuous to think that we humans are absolutely the most intelligent beings in existence? And that because we coined the term ‘intelligence’ and decided what it means that it’s somehow an objective term that can be applied to all beings?

Sorry, Ed, for semi-hijacking your site. Won’t happen again.

I used to randomly load the dishwasher, and then I slowly noticed everytime my wife came home and noticed, I was rewarded. Arf Arf

Soon I was grabbing dishes away from her while she was still eating from them and throwing them in the dishwasher. This was too much, I’m not as quick as Jilli Dog. After being married a few years I was trained to do all sorts of other random things, run a vacuum, pick stuff up off the bedroom floor,clean up spilled beer, not look like a slob when we go out, etc. and duly rewarded for these activities.

But you are right, Vegas, I could care less which of these random events I do since I have been trained and they are equally meaningless to me.

I don’t know if I’m authentic or not, but like smart little Jilli, I’m a happy dawg. arf arf ! Keep those treats coming.

Well, I probably had something specific in mind. (if you don’t like pothead philosophy, then stop reading :])

Suppose you’re living in a mansion owned by a rich person. You depend on him for food, etc, and he can easily afford any living expenses you might need (forget about family and friends, to make it easier). The condition for his paying for your living is, every day for about 8 hours, he wants you to make a series of pre-established movements, all logically unconnected to each other. Maybe one day you’ll climb a ladder and take apart a chandelier piece by piece only to reconstruct it on the floor in the form of a Beatles album cover. It doesn’t matter what specifically, but every day it’s different, sometimes challenging. And he watches your preset actions every day, but he reactions seem completely unconnected to what you’re doing. He laughs, cries, gets angry, screams in terror, talks to random objects and shows all sorts of other emotions for what, to you, are seemingly incomprehensible reasons. Then, every day, he goes into his room, you to yours.

Now, I would argue that someone that intentionally chose to live the life described would be living inauthentically, in the specific sense that there’s almost no possible way that this life could give someone meaning (I couldn’t really find a better word, so it will have to do). “I’ve surveyed the options available to me, and I choose this life.” How could anyone concerned with trying to live a meaningful life come to a conclusion like this? (I’m talking of meaning in this sense: suppose you donate all the money you made in this scenario to charity; you’re still spending your life doing something *worthless*, even if for a worthwhile cause.)

So, that there was nothing inauthentic about that dog’s life at that moment is because a dog’s life cannot be authentic or inauthentic (in this specific sense). She can’t step back and reflect on the life she’s leading and decide, “Yes, after review, I’ll continue living this life.”

Here’s an example of what I mean. A lot of animal rights activists are opposed to commercial chicken farms that squeeze the chickens together in pens so tightly that each individual chicken only about four square inches of living space. This makes it virtually impossible for them to engage in normal chicken activities, including personal (basic grooming) and social (hierarchies are destroyed with extreme proximity). But, I argue that it might be a stretch to say that such confinement is wrong because it denies the chickens the right to live their lives authentically. Yes, they are denied the opportunity to do the things that chickens normally do, but chickens don’t choose to do those activities (in the sense of a second-order choice, a choice about a choice). The pens are wrong, one could argue, not because it denies the chickens an authentic life, but because needless suffering (so, perhaps, free-range farms would be acceptable).

Basically, all of this is a long-winded way of saying that I don’t necessarily agree with you that someone working on a factory line is living an inauthentic life. He *could* be living an inauthentic life, but it’s not mainly because his job is repetitious. If a person doesn’t ever really consider his life, his actions, why he does them and whether he should keep doing them or perhaps do something different, he’s living inauthentically (it might even be the case that no human life is authentic, though that’s not necessarily a point against my idea). A dog has no such capacities, hence a dog’s life isn’t inauthentic.

In other news, all emeralds are grue.

Well whadduya know!

I apologise for calling your poor doggie a cheat. Obviously it was uncalled for.

I think training is a positive activity for dogs. They really seem to enjoy learning… they like the social interaction, they like exercising their brains and bodies, and the process usually involves lots of treats, so that’s another bonus.

I think you’re right that it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference to them whether they are learning to hunt or sit for a minute or pull cards off a deck. They seem to like the process.

But I’m not sure I’m with you when you say that having a person do “irrational motions” for treats is abhorrent… not to get too into pothead philosophy, but that is basically what people do albeit on a slightly more complex level. How “inauthentic” is it for a person to fasten part A to part B 8,000 times a day on an assembly line for a paycheck? Seems pretty similar to me, honestly.

I think most people enjoy learning, and most people enjoy producing things. Where the enjoyment ends for people is when they are bottled into doing the same thing over and over again, and when they don’t get to share fairly in the fruits of their effort.

Basically, I think dogs and people have a lot in common. I think dog training done right is a positive thing, and I think humans are often treated in ways that are similar, but ultimately a lot less positive.