Reductionist silliness

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Quoted at The Imaginative Conservative:

"My old friend Ray Coppinger, a dog evolutionist and breeder (he found the Jack Russell terrier that inhabits the Assistant Dean’s office at St. John’s College in Annapolis), whose expertise figures in this book, thinks otherwise. He once said to me that attributing friendly feelings rather than self-serving instincts to dogs is pure 'anthropomorphizing.'"

As though the two were contradictory! What would be the best way to make dogs' "self-serving instinct" to appear friendly to humans effective? If they actually felt friendly towards humans, of course!

It's as though someone told you, "No, you don't actually feel pleasure during sex: it is just your instinctual drive to reproduce."

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