When you look into the eyes of a dog, a fellow traveler on a voyage book-ended by eternities on both sides looks back. Its mind is not the same as yours, but it is related to your mind. Both dogs and people experience life. The idea that humans are special, that they are singled out by the gift of consciousness above all other creatures, stems from the deeply held Judeo-Christian belief that we occupy a privileged place in the order of things, a belief with a biblical but no empirical basis.
