After a summer of fun and hard work, it is time to start using my brain for school soon, but not quite yet.
During the summer, I worked with a guy who is much more scientifically inclined than I am and one day we were talking about the way animals communicate with each other. Wolves, for instance, howl to each other to talk about where food is or where they are, since they are social animals and want to hang out (if wolves ever learn how to text message, their prey will never be able to hide because they will be so much more quiet).
I then brought up the idea of other animal species having their own philosophers. What if instead of howling something like "Hey Steve, do you want to hunt down an elk with me?" they were saying "Hey Steve, do you think it is possible to know anything about anything?" The dialogue would then continue with "Well Frank, Rene Descartes refuted skepticism by saying that it was possible for him to know that he is a thing that thinks, and therefore it is possible to know something." And Frank might howl back "Yeah but you need to take Descartes with a grain of salt because he also tried to use this sequence of logic to also prove that God must exist which really put his preexisting religious convictions before clear headed rational thought. He is also even harder to believe when he tries to come up with answers to the mind-body problem." and Steve would howl "You bring up an excellent point, but we do have him to thank for getting us out of the philosophical rut that is universal skepticism. Let's go hunt an elk now. I'm hungry."
If other animals thought about those things, they would probably be referencing someone other than Descartes now that I think about it, but it is something to think about. Maybe they already have the problems of the universe figured out already and we're the stupid ones that are still skeptical and in the dark. At any rate, I need to learn to speak wolf.
