Anthropomorphism goes beyond providing purely behavioral or dispositional descriptions of observable actions ([...]); it involves attributing characteristics that people intuitively perceive to be uniquely human to nonhuman agents or events.Make up your mind. Do we perceive these things as uniquely human or do we ascribe them to most everything?
New mysterianism is a philosophical position proposing that the hard problem of consciousness cannot be resolved by humans. The unresolvable problem is how to explain the existence of qualia...posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 8:43 AM on February 7 [2 favorites]
In the view of the New mysterians, their contention that the hard problem of consciousness is unsolvable is not a presupposition, but rather a philosophical conclusion reached by thinking carefully about the issue. The standard argument is as follows:
Subjective experiences by their very nature cannot be shared or compared side-by-side. Therefore it is impossible to know what subjective experiences another person is having.
Noam Chomsky distinguishes between problems, which seem solvable, at least in principle, through scientific methods, and mysteries, which do not seem solvable, even in principle. He notes that the cognitive capabilities of all organisms are limited by biology, e.g. a mouse will never speak like a human. In the same way, certain problems may be beyond our understanding.
Once upon a time the cat did not live in the houses of men. She lived only in the bush or in the jungle.posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 9:49 AM on February 7 [12 favorites]
One cat became friendly with a rabbit. She went everywhere with the rabbit and was astonished at the craftiness of her friend. One day a duiker (duiker or duyker: small african antelope), fought with the rabbit and killed it with its horns. As her friend was dead the cat lived with the duiker. Then the duiker was killed by a leopard, so the cat decided to live with the leopard. A few days later they met with a lion. The lion fought the leopard and killed it. The poor cat then made friends with the lion and lived with him until one day they met a herd of elephant. A huge bull fought with the lion and killed it.
The cat thought to herself, "I must make friends with an animal as large and strong as this elephant - surely nothing can defeat it!"
But her troubles were not yet over, for one day a hunter shot the elephant with a poisoned arrow and the elephant died.
Now the cat did not know what to do, for she had never seen a two-legged animal such as this. She thought hard and said to herself, "if this man can kill a huge animal like an elephant, I had better make friends with him so that I can live in safety."
She followed the hunter back to his home, and when the hunter entered his hut the cat crept up on to the verandah. She heard sounds of quarrelling in the hut and saw the man in flight from a woman who was beating him with a stick for stirring porridge.
The cat said to herself, "Now I have seen the strongest of all creatures - a woman!"
Ever after this the cat has lived in the huts with the women, because it is they who are all-powerful.
In the 2008 California state election, citizens voted to pass Proposition 2, which required farm animals to be kept in less restricting confines, and also Proposition 8, which denied to homosexual couples marriage privileges that had already been granted within the state.Here's my cat Torgo, high on catnip.
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posted by angrycat at 7:18 AM on February 7 [19 favorites]