Mark Rowlands from Daniela SpŠder on Vimeo.

And the second is here:

Mark Rowlands - Les enfants et le chien from Daniela SpŠder on Vimeo.

My favourite part is undoubtedly the bit where Hugo performs a little impromptu herding of my older son.

http://www.tvi24.iol.pt/galeria_nova.html?mul_id=13286069

http://www.leprogres.fr/fr/vos-loisirs/cinema/article/3289983/Mon-loup-reste-mon-modele-encore-aujourd-hui.html

Curiously, the Le Monde piece doesn't seem to be online.

Monday is a debate with Shaun Gallagher on representation and action - more or less.

Tuesday, I'll be giving a paper entitled 'Intentionality and the amalgamated mind'.

Both talks are 2-4 p.m. at CREA, 32 Boulevard Victor, Paris 75015. Monday's talk is in Room 28 156. Tuesday's talk is in room Colbert.

Then I go to the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon for Wednesday's talk entitled '4e cognition: just how anti-Cartesian is it? 

ENS Lyon, Site Desartes, 15 Parvis Descartes, Lyon 7 in Room F 005

I'll also be doing various publicity things for WOLF, or rather LOUP, which was published in France last month.

Last week I was fortunate enough to spend a very enjoyable day in the Languedoc region of France filming a documentary on dogs: how to live with them, how to treat them, and how to get them to refrain from biting you. Our family dog, Hugo, featured prominently in the documentary; ideally, not biting anyone. Here is a photograph of him taken on that day, in full flight, on the beach at Portiragnes Plage. That's my eldest son in the background.

The photographer is the multi-talented Daniela Spader, founder of the Univers-Cite du Chien:

http://www.univers-cite-du-chien.com/accueil.html

Daniela and I co-wrote the documentary, which was directed by Antoine Elizabé, and presented by Daniela, the journalist Laurence Lefèvre, and myself.

Daniela's breathtaking portfolio of dog photographs can be found at:

http://www.photo-chien.com/portfolio/daniela_spader.html

Thanks also to Geneviève Paillé and Jean-marc Zuiliani.

7.30 a.m. until 1.30 a.m. - that's a full day's work lad and don't you forget it!

http://www.dilemata.net/revista/index.php/dilemata/article/viewFile/40/41

Next week we're all off to France, to, among other things, shoot a documentary on how to persuade your dog not to bite people. Details to follow.

http://www.tvo.org/TVOsites/WebObjects/TvoMicrosite.woa?bigideas

Congratulations to Steve! It's easy to see why he's got this far. Also, there is a profile piece that can be found at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmnmUowiwbc

Please vote for Steve!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7069808.ece

Environmental problems are sometimes portrayed as stemming from human irrationality. But this sort of case is revealing of what is really going on. Fundamentally, there is no such thing as humanity. Instead, there are just various interested parties. Some of those parties have already been born, others have not. Some of those parties (Japan, Canada, France, Spain, Italy, among others) have large tuna fleets and will not support a ban; others have no such fleets and will. It's all perfectly rational. It would be irrational only if the people making the decisions today are the same ones to suffer later. But, of course, they're not. It is not irrationality that drives human devastation of the environment. It is selfishness - the selfishness of those who have already been born to those who have not. And that's not even taking the fish into account.

First, there will be no personal attacks. Second, there will be no stunningly unintelligent comments.

Speculating on the behavior of a blog member in a concentration camp scenario based on extrapolation of current eating habits satisfies both criteria, and I leave the comment in situ solely as an example of what not to do.

Vigorous, impassioned, and serious argument is, always has been, and will continue to be welcome at all times.

I know I am being despotic about this. But I am armed with God-like access to this blog's delete function, and I'm not afraid to use it. Life can be unpleasant enough. The last thing I want is to find this unpleasantness seeping into this site.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article7047926.ece

And, on that cryptic note I shall now return to officially not talking about the meaning of life. 

Why does anyone care? Why does anyone think it is any of their business? Hanging on every word of his show trial confession: was his contrition sincere, or wasn't it. How many of Joe and Jane Q Public had a camera stuck in their face and asked precisely this. And they all had any opinion. They all cared. Was his confession 'staged"? Well, of course it bloody was: there were cameras for God's sake. Contrary to what he said, Woods let no one down except his wife. She's the only one to whom he promised, presumably, to forsake all others. Consequently, it's the business of nobody except Woods and his wife. This fascination, this faux moral outrage, is really all about power. For a little while at least, we can look down on, and feel superior to, someone who is, so I'm told, a rather good golfer, and consequently, in this world gone mad, extraordinarily rich. The ape in us likes seeing the powerful suffer since it makes us feel better about our own little lives. Is he sincere? Let's decide he's not and make him suffer some more.

This brings me to what really puzzles me. Why does Woods cooperate? Why not simply tell everyone to f**k off and mind their own business? I can understand when some sleazy politician feels the need to confess his numerous extra-marital sins and beg for forgiveness. His livelihood rests on getting people to like him. Or at least vote for him. That's why the wronged better half usually plays ball too. But Tiger doesn't need anyone to like him - he just needs to be better at golf than they are. The sponsors won't touch Tiger now, I hear. And Elin will take vast swathes of his fortune in the divorce settlement, I'm told. But even after all of this, he'll still be rich beyond the wildest dreams of most of us (and I can have some pretty wild dreams). How much money do you actually need in a single lifetime? And, if short of a little pocket money, he can always go back to beating everyone on the golf circuit and pocketing the prize money (or at least a portion thereof established in the divorce courts). I always thought the best thing about having money - once you get above a certain threshold practically the only good reason really - is so that you don't have to give a crap what people think about you; and don't have to indulge their petty jealousies and desire to seek revenge on you for whatever is wrong in their lives. Tiger has lost the plot in more ways than one.

But I will say one final thing about this issue: specifically, about the question. That was the hard part - I was sweating blood trying to work out what the question is. In fact, I actually had to work out the answer before I could work out the question. Sometimes that's how things go.

When someone says: "What is the meaning of life?' What do they mean?

Words and sentences have meaning. Life is not a word or sentence. Therefore, life doesn't have meaning. I learned that growing up in the merry old hey-day of linguistic analysis. This shows that ‘meaning' as deployed in ‘the meaning of life' does not mean the same as ‘meaning' when used for words and sentences. So what does it mean?

It could mean ‘purpose'? Could, but doesn't. Defence of this postponed until late 2011.

It might mean ‘value'. What is the value of life? But, if so, then if a life had no meaning it would have no value. For various obvious reasons, I don't want to say this. If someone's life is meaningless, it does not mean their life has no value.

This gets us a bit closer to what the question is: ‘How should I live?' Or, then same thing: ‘What should I value?'

But ‘should' is a funny word, and has at least three different meaning: logical, prudential and moral. Forgot the logical sense; it's not relevant here. The moral and prudential sense of should are basically, restrictions on how I should act. ‘How should I live?' interpreted morally, means: ‘What moral requirements should I recognize and act upon?' These requirements would be moral exigencies.

The thing about exigencies is that we have to act on them, whether we want to or not. Prudentially, I should work. This is unfortunate. Morally, I should try and alleviate suffering when I can. This is unfortunate in another way. It is unfortunate that there is so much suffering. Exigencies don't reveal the meaning of life, they distract us from it.

Suppose there were no prudential or moral exigencies in your life. You live in a world where you can get whatever you need or want at the push of a button, a world where there was no suffering that you should try to alleviate. Morally and prudentially, you're off the hook. Then ask yourself: in this situation, how should I live? This is another sense of should - neither a moral nor a prudential sense. If we can answer this question, we have answered to the question of the meaning of life.

There: clear as mud. 

http://castroller.com/podcasts/CbcRadioThe2/1324112

Imagine being put in a cage no bigger than you are. You can turn your head, in order to access food and water, but that is the limit of your movement. Now imagine being there for fifteen or twenty years. In fact, if you get out after fifteen or twenty years, you're one of the lucky ones - you got out early. Chances are, you'll be there until you die. There is a catheter inserted into your liver, and from it drips the bile that is the reason you find yourself in this cage.

If you find yourself in this position, you are a bear, harvested for your bile, which is highly prized in Chinese medicine.

I know I've been bashing China a lot this week. Just celebrating the Year of the Tiger that starts on Feb 14th. I'm sure I'll find some other country to knock soon.

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/chinese-legal-experts-propose-ban-on-eating-cats-and-dogs/

Although some are tempted by the compromise position of merely not cooking them while still alive:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1246454/Cat-dog-meat-soon-menu-China-animal-abuse-law-edges-closer.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/canada/6933888/Canadian-familys-dog-saves-11-year-old-boy-from-cougar.html

(I should point out however: wolves hardly ever do this sort of thing).

We humans hate to be inconvenienced. Actually doing something to counter global warming, or, in my opinion, the even more worrying (given its irreversibility) acidification of the sea:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6781789/Copenhagen-climate-summit-Britain-will-suffer-as-seas-become-more-acidic.html

Well, that's just a lot of bother really - let's not believe in it instead.

But what we forget in all the inconvenience what these animals, particularly the dangerous ones, add to the world. Because of the rather Draconian leash laws of Miami-Dade County, I go running with my dog Hugo on some waste ground that MDC hasn't got around to properly policing. Neither of us like running with him leashed - it messes up our rhythm. There are lots of snakes. We follow certain protocols - he stays at my heels unless I say its OK, etc. I'm not a big fan of snakes - they make me distinctly twitchy to say the least. The snakes are inconvenient. But at the same time they add something undeniably valuable to the run. I can't quite put my finger on what. But it certainly makes the run a lot more interesting and challenging. It's actually a privilege to be out there with these slithery, fanged little bastards.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6960592.ece

For those of you mystified by the Chinese interest, I suspect it has a lot to do with the couple of gazilliion copies sold of the book Wolf Totem (which, unfortunately, I didn't write).