{"id":15845,"date":"2012-04-10T09:15:46","date_gmt":"2012-04-10T16:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=15845"},"modified":"2012-04-10T09:16:08","modified_gmt":"2012-04-10T16:16:08","slug":"from-man-alive-speaking-in-tongues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15845\/from-man-alive-speaking-in-tongues\/","title":{"rendered":"From Man Alive! – “Speaking in tongues.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind.<\/em><\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Extract from Chapter 3. Speaking in tongues.<\/a><\/h3>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the things that protects humanity from all of the philosophers and academics who insist that we are nothing special is the power of speech. Not speech deployed to argue against them; for the most part we are intimidated by their pedigrees and their supercilious posturing. But the power of speech itself defends us, because each one of us can easily see that this is a power that human beings alone possess. Lab-coated academics never stop trying to convince us that chimpanzees or dolphins share the power of speech with us, but regardless of what we say – or don’t dare say – in rebuttal, most of us recognize that these claims are absurd.<\/p>\n

That’s just more of the Dancing Bear Fallacy, of course, but it is worth listening to the people who make these arguments – and to the people who chortle their support for them. A laboratory dolphin possessed of rationally-conceptual volitionality would immediately file a lawsuit seeking manumission from the clipboard-wielding sadists holding it captive. Ten thousand chimpanzees sitting at computer keyboards cannot produce the works of Shakespeare, nor even one line of intelligible verse. Not ten thousand, not ten million, not ten billion. The purpose of making these nonsensical claims about the specious verbal abilities of trained animals is not to confer an unearned status on those animals, but to rob you of the status you earned by mastering your mind. Animals cannot make informed choices by reasoning about concepts – nor do they need to. They are perfect the way they are – and so are you.<\/p>\n

The goal of modern philosophy – in all probability unknown to you and to the scientific researchers who make these breathless claims about the imaginary conceptual abilities of animals – is to undermine the mind. Slavishly following those knowing philosophers of mindlessness, there are vast cadres of very well paid professional butterfly collectors whose job it is to make tautologically obvious observations about animal behavior in the most exaggerated ways they can. And slavishly following Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 3. Speaking in tongues. One of the things that protects humanity from all of the philosophers and academics who insist that we are nothing special is the power of speech. Not speech deployed to argue against them; for the most part we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,212,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-egoism-in-action","7":"category-flourishing","8":"category-group-therapy","10":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2470,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2470\/speaking-in-tongues-a-step-by-step-guide-to-speaking-in-web-sites\/","url_meta":{"origin":15845,"position":0},"title":"Speaking in tongues: A step-by-step guide to speaking in web sites","author":"Greg Swann","date":"January 4, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I never know what other people don't see. Cathleen didn't know that BloodhoundBlog and DistinctivePhoenix.com are based on the same WordPress template. Likewise for Real Estate Weblogging 101 and The Phoenix Real Estate Technology Exchange. She could see the differences, but not the similarities, not until I noodged her to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2631,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2631\/speaking-in-tongues-geek-humor-idiomatic-expressions-in-code\/","url_meta":{"origin":15845,"position":1},"title":"Speaking in tongues: Geek humor — idiomatic expressions in code","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 21, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"From Google Blogoscoped, for geekFun: A series of conversational idioms expressed humorously in PHP and C code. My favorite? if ( ape.inLineOfSight(it.x, it.y) ) ape.do(it);What is it? Teri was talking about it last night: Monkey see, monkey do. Technorati Tags: blogging, technology","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2433,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2433\/speaking-in-tongues-presentable-php-in-wordpress\/","url_meta":{"origin":15845,"position":2},"title":"Speaking in tongues: Presentable PHP in WordPress","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 27, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"In the coming days, I plan to take up the idea of PHP for non-programmers, helping you tap the power of PHP's dynamic text processing without learning (much) actual coding. The problem is that illustrating HTML or PHP in WordPress is always a problem. Why? Because WordPress eats code for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5780,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/5780\/speaking-in-tongues-using-the-power-of-a-robust-text-editor-to-code-html-pages-with-dispatch\/","url_meta":{"origin":15845,"position":3},"title":"Speaking in tongues: Using the power of a robust text editor to code HTML pages with dispatch","author":"Greg Swann","date":"November 23, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Linked below is a short screencast on how I use the text editor known as TextWrangler to wrangle text into usable formats. This particular episode illustrates how I create coded HTML from my weekly Arizona Republic column. In future screencasts, I'll want to illustrate more arcane ideas about deploying robust\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flourishing"","block_context":{"text":"Flourishing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/flourishing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1224,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1224\/how-to-make-google-your-weblogs-best-friend\/","url_meta":{"origin":15845,"position":4},"title":"Project Bloodhound: How to make Google your weblog’s best friend","author":"Greg Swann","date":"June 27, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"[This is one of the all-time most popular posts on BloodhoundBlog. I'm reprising it for Project Bloodhound, first because it's a nice leveraged SEO solution, and second because it's a painless introduction to customizing the PHP in WordPress. --GSS] \u00a0Who can probe all the mysteries of Google? Not me, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2462,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2462\/speaking-in-tongues-just-for-cheryl-johnson-building-content-rich-custom-web-sites-in-php\/","url_meta":{"origin":15845,"position":5},"title":"Speaking in tongues just for Cheryl Johnson: Building content-rich custom web sites in PHP","author":"Greg Swann","date":"January 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The deafening clamor in my mailbox suggests that almost nobody is interested in what I have to say about using PHP to automate weblog and web site content creation. 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