MDMD2: The Learned English Dog

[Dave Monroe]

On 4/12/08, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> "All at once, out of the Murk, a dozen mirror'd Lanthorns have leapt
> alight together, as into their Glare now strolls a somewhat dishevel'd
> Norfolk Terrier, with a raffish Gleam in its eye,--" (M&D, Ch. 3, p. 18)
>
> http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0109&msg=60179
>
> ACCOUNT OF A LETTER FROM MR LEIBNIZ TO THE ABBÉ DE ST. PIERRE, ON A TALKING DOG
>
> [D II, p180]
>
>     Without a guarantor like Mr Leibniz, who is an eyewitness, we
> would not have the audacity to report that near Zeitz, in Misnie,
> there is a dog that speaks. It is a countryman's dog of normal shape
> and size. A young child heard it emit some sounds that he thought
> resembled German words, whereupon he got it into his head to teach it
> to speak. The master, who had nothing better to do, spared no time or
> trouble with this, and happily the disciple had an aptitude that was
> hard to find in another dog. Finally, after a number of years, the dog
> was able to pronounce around 30 words or so, among them Thé, Caffé,
> Chocolat and Assemblée, French words which have passed into German, as
> they do. It is notable that the dog was at least 3 years old when it
> was put in school. It only speaks by echoing, that is, after its
> master has pronounced a word, and it seems that it only repeats when
> forced, and despite itself, although it has not been maltreated. Once
> again, Mr Leibniz has seen it and heard it.
>
> http://www.leibniz-translations.com/dog.htm
> http://www.leibniz-translations.com/pdf/dog.pdf


6.4 Apperception, Memory, and Reason

The hierarchy of monads mentioned above has a corollary in Leibniz's
epistemology. Monads are more or less perfect depending upon the
clarity of their perceptions, and a monad is dominant over another
when the one contains reasons for what happens in the other. But some
monads can also rise to the level of souls when, for example, they
experience sensations, that is, when their perceptions are very
distinct and accompanied by memory. This is a position occupied by
animals. Furthermore, some souls are sometimes also in a position to
engage in apperception, that is, to reflect on their inner states or
perceptions. As Leibniz tells us in the Principles of Nature and
Grace, "it is good to distinguish between perception, which is the
internal state of the monad representing external things, and
apperception, which is consciousness, or the reflective knowledge of
this internal state, something not given to all souls, nor at all
times to a given soul." (G VI 600/AG 208) The point that Leibniz wants
to make is clearly an anti-Cartesian one: it is not the case that
animals lack souls and are mere machines. There is a continuum here
from God, angels, and human beings through animals to stones and the
dull monads which underlie the muck and grime of the world; and this
continuum is not solely to be understood in terms of the comparative
clarity of the mind's perceptions but also in terms of the kinds of
mental activity possible for a particular being. Indeed, according to
Leibniz, animals operate not as mere automata as they do in the
Cartesian philosophy, but rather have fairly sophisticated mental
faculties. Even a dog, for example, is capable, by virtue of its
memory, of having a perception of a prior perception: "[t]hat is why a
dog runs away from the stick with which he was beaten, because his
memory represents to him the pain which the stick caused him." (G VI
600/AG 208) While this resembles reasoning, it is not the kind of
reasoning that human beings are capable of; for the mental processes
of the dog are "only founded in the memory of facts or effects, and
not at all in the knowledge of causes." (ibid) At the same time,
Leibniz is quick to add that the mental activity of the dog is the
same as the mental activity of human beings in three fourths of their
actions, for most of us most of the time are not actually reasoning
from causes to effects. And yet we are different from the beasts,
Leibniz believes. Some creatures are capable of knowing the necessary
and eternal truths of logic and mathematics and a priori truths (from
cause to effect), and they "are properly called rational animals, and
their souls are called minds." (G VI 601/AG 209) As Leibniz says,
"These souls are capable of performing reflective acts, and capable of
considering what is called "I", substance, soul, mind – in brief,
immaterial things and immaterial truths. And that is what makes us
capable of the sciences of demonstrative knowledge." (ibid.) Thus,
what makes human beings (and higher minds) special is the capacity,
via apperception, to formulate a conception of the self. Indeed, as we
see in this passage, Leibniz suggests that rationality itself follows
from the capacity for reflection: we begin with a conception of the
self; we move from this point to thinking of being, of substance, of
God; and we become aware as well of eternal and necessary truths.
Rationality, however, is really only the ability to form "indubitable
connection[s] of ideas" and to follow them to their "infallible
consequences." (ibid.) In other words, animals and most human beings
most of the time are purely empiricists; a rational person, however,
is one who can engage in genuine a priori reasoning, moving from
knowledge of a true cause via deduction to necessary effects.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz/#AppMemRea

Cf. ...

With a face on ev'ry mountainside,
And a Soul in ev'ry stone ... (GR, Pt. IV, p. 760)