animals in M&D

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Are the LED and the Duck examples of conditioning? Where do
you find support for this in M&D? It seems to me, that they
are examples of the traditional use of Animals in Satire.
The birds watching TV in VL, the dogs in GR, are examples of
Pynchon's barb in the eye of Psychology. Now that Pavlov has
been ridiculed, Freud and Jung are next, as we will see in
Part II. Pynchon makes various use of animals, besides the
birds that watch TV, we have birds that open VL from Zoyd's
bed and steal food from his dog, both conditioned, but we
also have those mysterious dream parrots. The Rat
congregation in V. are clearly more like the LED than those
TV birds. Remember Profane's talk with a gull about
God--this is very traditional satire.   
TF

Spencer Thiel wrote:
> 
> At 4:28 PM +0100 9/3/99, you wrote:
> 
> >Ok, maybe I got to this list too late and  you ahve alrady discussed
> >it but, any of you has a clue on the meaning of speaking animals in
> >Mason and Dixon?  Like the Learned Dog and the Loving Duck?
> 
> Me thinks it's Pynchon's having fun with Pavlovian conditioning.
> When animals perform 'human feats', it's often felt by psych's that
> the animal isn't doing anything voluntary, if you will, rather it is
> responding to conditioning.  This is proven with the horse Clever
> Hans, and is felt by skeptics to be the case with Koko the talking
> ape (http://www.koko.org/).  I don't ever think that Pynch takes a
> definitive side on this issue, but he likes to raise the question of
> conditioning vs. free will throughout his books.  The animals are
> just another example.
> 
> -
> st.
> -