I've had a few people tell me that although the dog and the person are both imagining the same thing - going for a walk, and all that that entails - the dog is merely associating the sound of the phrase with the activity.
But... isn't that... what language is? What's qualitatively different between the human and the dog here? The human is undoubtedly making connections and associations far more complex and expressive, but at bottom it's all just "sound = thing", no? 🤔
I don't speak Spanish, but I know that when I hear someone say something that sounds like "andallay!", it means "hurry up". I don't know what the word literally means, or how to actually spell it (well, I do now that I looked it up: ándale), or its etymology or whether or not it's a loan word from Chinese, but I know from experience (and cartoons) that it means "go faster". Am I a dog to a Mexican in this scenario? My understanding is as perfunctory as my dog's understanding of "go for a walk" is. But we wouldn't say that I'm not using language when I react appropriately to the "ándale!" instruction.
What am I not getting?
Cheers!
The moon, or just into space where I can float around and see Earth from a good distance.
Do you remember being a very young kid, of maybe 4 or 5-years-old, and riding your bike without stabilisers for the first time? Riding around your neighbourhood with that feeling of limitless time and seemingly bottomless reservoirs of pure joy? Or the first time you played a video game? Or the first time you went to the cinema? Basically any fun and novel experience. You could almost physically feel the birthing neurons branching through your brain in real-time like orgasmic, electrified roots. The joy of simply having your consciousness come 'online' more and more.
Well, I'm in my early 40s now, and I haven't felt that way since I was that very young child. But I don't think it's because I'm too jaded to enjoy things anymore, it's that I've experienced almost everything there is to experience in a normal everyday life, and there's not much left that is so new and shocking to my consciousness that it will trigger that magical experience again. And so there is no further branching of neurons and no further giddy joy at simply doing something hitherto completely foreign to my brain.
I think visiting space, and especially landing on the moon, would give me that feeling again. It would be the last truly novel experience I definitely have not felt before, and it's not one that I can sorta kinda experience vicariously. I mean, I've never killed anyone, but I know what an abyss of unquenchable guilt feels like, I know what the terror of being caught after doing something bad feels like, I know what it feels like to be so haunted by trauma that I have nightmares about it for years after. So I can just extrapolate from that and get a general idea of what it must be like to have done something that awful. My imagination can conjure up those sorts of ideas if I want it to, and while I won't get 100% of the way there, I can create a ballpark estimation of it. But going into space - leaving everything and everyone who has ever existed behind - and being somewhere so literally alien to my evolved senses, that's not something I can get a handle on just using my imagination.
I could be wrong of course, and going into space might simply be like visiting another country in the shittiest, most cramped Ryanair flight imaginable, but it's the only thing I think has the most chance of giving me one last brain-bukkake before I clock out.
Shame it'll never happen 🤷 Maybe I'll start a twitter account sucking Elon's fetid little dick and he'll invite me to use one of his rockets one day. Then while I'm in space, I'll take out a trans flag and play a shitty cover of Nazi Punks Fuck Off à la Chris Hadfield 🫡