Moral law in Humans and other animals

[The Reality Salesman01]

then why is my dog so goddamned moral?

Well if you were to ask Socrates, the conversation might go something like this:

It's something else you see in dogs, and it makes you wonder at the animal.

What?

When a dog sees someone it doesn't know, it gets angry before anything bad happens to it. But when it knows someone, it welcomes him, even if it has never received anything good from him. Haven't you ever wondered about that?

I've never paid any attention to it, but obviously that is the way a dog behaves.

Surely this is a refined quality in its nature and one that is truly philosophical.

In what way philosophical?

Because it judges anything it sees to be either a friend or an enemy, on no other basis than that it knows the one and doesn't know the other. And how could it be anything besides a lover of learning, if it defines what is its own and what is alien to it in terms of knowledge and ignorance?

At least that's what Plato thought.

Here here! (In my best guess of what Socrates may have sounded like) My dear Nestor, please do not think me a slow learner and give to me that which you alone clearly hold and what I desperately seek!


Much kudos to you and a rep on the way[edit: I've been reduced to updating my reason for your rep as it seems I've already bestowed all that I can]. I think you'd be hard up to find a room in my home (bathrooms included) in which a Socratic dialogue cannot be found. Thanks for that.