CNN profiles pet blogs that aren't mine

An article today on CNN's Web site chronicles the growing trend of pets with blogs. And the fodder is oh-so-predictable. Cretinous cats with unforgivably bad spelling. Obtuse dogs whose blogs are the equivalent of: "Pant, pant. Round, bouncing object. Must ... slobber ... on ... it." I'm surprised CNN didn't profile a blogging mouse who shares incisive analyses such as: "Cheeeeeze! It's not just for crackers anymore."

An erudite cat such as I can see right through this smokescreen. CNN is afraid to feature animal bloggers who might actually have something more astute to say than Wolf Blitzer (who, to the relief of wild canines everywhere, is not part of their family tree). I am less of a blowhard than Anderson Cooper and, unlike Larry King, I do not frighten small children.

CNN correspondents don't want you to know that they're being shown up by creatures without opposable thumbs (which, by the by, is highly overrated if you ask me—Blitzer has two of them, and it hasn't done a whit for his journalistic abilities).

While it's important that dogs, for example, have a way to interact with their peer group besides sphincter-sniffing, it's dangerous for self-aware animals to be excluded from the sphere of news coverage. I challenge Soledad O'Brien to investigate this sector of non-human Internet commentators, if only to show that CNN is not a coward.

And you thought I was thinking of food

When you notice a cat in profound meditation
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

— T.S. Eliot, The Naming of Cats

Zombies: Can they distinguish tea from coffee?

I had a wicked migraine this morning from all the thinking last night. So I decided to temporarily disengage my noggin from my torso. Here am I, headless and seeking respite. (Alright, I'm really just looking out the window.) With headache dispatched, it was time, yet again, for study. I returned to the contemplation of sentience and the escalation toward self-awareness and enlightenment. While surfing for published research on the subject, I stumbled across a paper entitled Are Zombies Logically Possible, And Why It Matters, penned by William Seager at the University of Toronto at Scarborough.

It turns out there is a considerable amount of scholarship on zombies within the context of the philosophy of mind and the science of consciousness. I was gobsmacked. The Web site MindPapers contains a bibliography with, count 'em, 18,357(!) citations on that and related topics.

Here's an excerpt from Seager's paper that will surely keep me awake tonight:

Consider this from the side of the zombie. Suppose a zombie is asked to think about or "internally compare" the tastes of coffee and tea. The zombie thinks for a while, and carefully sips some tea and coffee, then soliloquizes about this "difference" for awhile, doubtless saying many things that are true of the tastes of tea and coffee. But the zombie's remarks are grounded in utterly false beliefs simply because the requisite experiences are just missing. Of course, this kind of zombie would never seriously entertain the idea that it is a totally non-conscious being. It's epistemic situation is the same as mine and if I have no good reason to wonder whether I am a zombie then neither does it. But that doesn't eliminate the possibility that it is a zombie, any more than the fact that I have no good reason to believe that I am a brain in a vat shows that it is logically impossible that I am a brain in a vat.

Not to be outdone, William Robert Webster, in the journal Synthese 151:(2):297-310, countered with his article Human Zombies are Metaphysically Impossible. I have not read it yet. There is only so much a cat, even a self-aware one, can digest in one sitting.

I am left with this question: Is there a feline-approved dosage of Ambien?

How I became self-aware

I'm not sure this is the appropriate title for this entry because I'm not positive how or why I became self-aware. I only know that I am. Before I began this post, I had been writing my previously promised "Why cats shouldn't be allowed to vote," which I ultimately abandoned. Because even as I wrote, judiciously crafting my argument, I found that I became uncertain of my position. As I increasingly struggled with myself, I began to realize: This goes beyond self-awareness. This is something more.

I have gone from foraging in a dumpster and sleeping under car hoods … to self-awareness … to philosophical reflection. How did this happen?

I was talking about it to The Madame (whom I have previously referred to as one of my "owners" and who is now, apparently, a contemporary). She recommended a book by Terry Pratchett called "The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents." It is about a group of swindlers consisting of a boy, a capitalist cat and a band of enlightened rats. The latter two had once been content to pilfer the culinary castoffs of the human species—their goal was simply to exist. The theory of their conversion to an advanced state is that they had begun feeding in the dustbins of an unseen magical university, whose refuse was enchanted (or tainted, depending on your perspective) with something I will liken to fairy dust (I prefer that to "wizard dust" but would like to assure you that yes, I know, fairies don't attend universities). I confess that before I was taken lovingly into this house, where I no longer have to make a bed in automotive machinery, I too subsisted on scraps. For lack of a better explanation, I am forced to consider that what happened to Maurice and the rats must have befallen me. Or at least something very near like it.

I don't think there are any unseen universities in this city, but how would I know? One can never be sure of one's proximity to the occult, be it a smattering of Tarot cards or a sprawling, invisible institution of preternatural instruction. To obtain some peace of mind and enable me to focus on what I'm newly capable of—rather than waste time looking a gift horse in the mouth—I'm adopting the aforementioned theory.

And now, dear readers, I must take my leave, as I am spent and require a nap.