Friends tell this story: A group of folks were gathered around the dinner table at the Restak home. They were trying to coax Toby [a grey parrot] to speak.
"Can you talk?" they goaded the bird again and again. "Can you talk?"
On this particular night, Toby was uncharacteristically quiet -- until his owner, Restak, left the room for a moment.
"Can you talk?" a guest asked once more.
Toby cocked his head and looked the guest square in the eye.
"I can talk," Toby said. "Can you fly?"
This anecdote is from an article in today's Washington Post. Richard Restak is a neurologist who studies brain function and sometimes testifies in criminal trials. He gave up on Freudian analysis in disgust and prefers to work with modern pharmaceuticals. He takes a pragmatic nuts-and-bolts organic approach to mental illness.
He's also a great advocate of keeping the brain active and limber, and maintains that continuing to stretch the mind and learn new skills as one ages can prevent many of the declines in mental acuity that people expect to experience.
Restak is a practicing Catholic, persuaded by Pascal's Wager (If there's a God, and you believe, things work out great; if there's no God, and you believe, no harm done; if there's a God and you don't believe... well, it could get ugly; if there's no God, and you don't believe, no problem. Basically you only "lose" if there's a God and you don't believe, you so might as well believe.). Of course the problem with Pascal's Wager is that it doesn't really tell you what kind of God to believe in -- but I suppose if you're Catholic that's supposed to have pretty much been solved for you.
Restak believes that his parrot is actually communicating, not just "parroting," and that Toby has more of a temperament than a cat or dog. Many claim that the symbolic use of language is the hallmark of consciousness, and the key distinction between the human mind and that of other animals. If Restak believes that Toby and he can communicate with language, does that have any other implications?
Can Restak legitimately think of himself as Toby's owner?
Does Toby have a soul?
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