Erwin Schrödinger's Dog

We've all heard about Erwin Schrödinger and his famously indeterminate cat, right? If not, go check out the wiki link. I'll wait.

OK, you're back. (This is great! I'm talking to myself and imagining that someone is actually reading this.) Now the interesting thing about this is not the thought experiment itself. That was interesting back in the 40's and 50's. What's interesting about this is the man's dog.

What was the dog doing while the cat was in the box either dying or not dying? Stupid question, right? Maybe. Maybe not. Dogs are pack animals who become acclimated to humans as their pack. Cats, on the other hand, while they do belong in prides in the wild, are not as well integrated into the human circumstance--or at least that's how it appears to me. Go with me on this, OK?

Schrödinger also wrote about how consciousness was a function of learning. The things that were already "learned" did not have to be conscious, because they became less so through having been learned and therefore regularized. He points to so-called autonomic functions as a good example (breathing, heartbeats, etc). Having "learned" these physical actions in utero, we now did them without conscious thought.

But dogs have a dog consciousness, right (Question: Does a dog have a Buddha nature? Mu)?

So are dogs only conscious when they are learning?

And what about the autonomic functions taking place at the cellular level? Are these learned?

There's another meta explanation to all this. The meaning of life, (which is also the title of one of Schrödinger's simpler works) is anti-entropic. That's right, you heard me. That's the meaning of life. To be anti-entropic. Consciousness is a subset of anti-entropy, whether it is dog consciousness, or human.

Hello out there!