Are you sure Blake is fighting ignorance on this particular topic?
Here’s some actual data on the subject:
Human and dog brains both have dedicated ‘voice areas’
Watch this video: Dogs being called individually to get their food
I can whisper my dog’s name, yell his name, or call him in my usual voice and he comes every time. Well, unless he is being an asshole. Squirrels also trump my calling him. But I do think he knows his name. He was called by two,other names before we gave him his forever home, so it’s impressive he has adapted so well to knowing his forever name.
But do dogs really grasp the concept of a name? Often a whistle or a clap will get the perked ears; only well trained dogs distinguish between their names and a command to come.
Question for the board: does you dog know other people’s names? If you tell her to go see Susie, will she go to Susie? Even if Susie is in another room? With no hand or head signal?
Very interesting thread.
But a dog cant immediately grasp ‘sit on the table’? Even if ‘jump on the table’ is a raised hand and ‘sit’ is snapped fingers?
I’m going to guess that you don’t have a dog. My dog was certainly capable of understanding a wide variety of words and abstract concepts, far beyond his own name. “Going for a walk” would get him into a state of great excitement no matter how it was said, and concepts like “after” meaning that something he wanted would happen at a later time were a routine part of our mutual language, sometimes causing him to retire to the back room for a nap. There’s certainly at least tentative formal evidence that dogs understand human language, and that they have a region in the anterior part of the temporal lobe that is activated by the sound of human voices in exactly the same way it is in humans, something that has never been seen in any other non-primate. Given the inherent ambiguity of what we are trying to define and the often surprising new evidence for dogs’ intelligence, I don’t see the justification for the kinds of blanket denials you’re making which seem to be contradicted by so much anecdotal evidence.
ETA: My apologies, I see that the Rico study was already posted, and an even more interesting one about the dog Chaser. Anyway, my point stands.
We have to spell out the word c-a-r in any conversations in front of the dogs. As in “Do you know where my wallet is?” “Oh I think I saw it in the C-A-R.” If anyone, even a guest totally unknown to them or someone on TV says the word car out loud in any context or tone the dogs will go berserk.
Feet slipping, barking, running in circles at the front door. Because when we really do let them ride in the car we ask “Do you want to go car? CAR?? Who wants to go CAR??” They quite obviously know the word car now and respond when they hear it under any circumstances.
I doubt there is anyone on Earth (with the possible exception of Blake) who has spent even a little time with dogs and isn’t aware that they possess this ability.
as crazyhorse said, my bulldogs cannot hear the words, car, out, go and others without an actions being caused and my wife’s bully I drive crazy by asking her “where"s vickie” or get vickie and she goes crazy looking all over the house for her.
Piling on:
Our previous Border Collie knew somewhere near 100 different words, and they all had to be spelled out, OR ELSE!
And, I kid you not, she figured out a few of the spelled-out words.
Border collie? She probably corrected your spelling.
lol… I’ve never had a border collie but I’ve heard great things about them. It’s true that some folks tend to attribute anthropomorphic attributes to their pets that seem irrational, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily always false. It’s also true that some dogs, like some people, are pretty stupid. But I’ve already posted several anecdotes about my Bernese Mountain Dog and I think it’s pretty clear that it’s true of a great population of dogs, and that those who have never had the privilege of cohabiting with our canine counterparts have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about with regard to their cognitive skills.
I was always somehow delighted in a perverted sort of way to see my dog outsmart humans. 
Probably? Understatement of the decade.
What I really love is when they play stupid and they know that you know they’re playing stupid: “What is this ‘off the bed’ you speak of? I know no phrase, ‘off the bed.’ I shall ignore it this time, but try to do better in the future.” Then rolls over to go back to sleep, leaving you no choice but to INVADE THEIR SPACE–climb onto the bed and bodily (no hands) crowd them off the bed, this nets you the SNORT OF DISGUST.
Dale Sams: But a dog can’t immediately grasp ‘sit on the table’? Even if ‘jump on the table’ is a raised hand and ‘sit’ is snapped fingers?
I would posit that “sit on the table,” would have to be a third, specific command (maybe accompanied by a Carol Burnett-style ear lobe tug) which Bowser could be trained to do (but, why?), but, being much more complex would take much, much longer to accomplish.
I could never get the aforementioned BC to specifically put away toys. “Pick up,” was no problem–point to the toy, say the phrase, done. Likewise, “Put away,” worked, too–if BC was walking around with toy in jaws, point to toy chest, “Put away,” filed. “Pick up, put away,” got me hollered at, and not by the wife. I’m sure if I spent the enormous time involved training the complex task, and assigned a different moniker to it (“clean up”?), it woulda worked. I’d almost bet there needs to be a specific time period between commands. I’d also bet that commands need to be a set amount of syllables, as opposed to number of words–“Pick up” is two syllables instead of two words.
Just thinking out loud.
And, BTW, Border Collies allow YOU to train THEM. Can I get an “Amen?” 
It depends on how they are trained. We have a service dog who we deliberately train to identify words and commands regardless of tone or inflection, or regardless of who gives the command. She does in fact pick recognizable words, and her name, out of casual conversations whether we intend them to be directed at her or not.
I’ve even given her commands over our phone answering machine speaker and had her follow them.
Neat video! We’ve done this with our own dogs, though only 3 of them at a time. We were able to get the 3 to separately come, stay, or sit individually by name. Surprisingly, it only took a couple of afternoons of dedicated practice to get pretty reliable performance from them. With a little reinforcement from time to time, they retained the skill and can still do separate tasks by their name individually.
Sorry for continuing the zombie, I didn’t notice the post date. Blake’s whole contention seems rooted in the classical reductionist view of “anything non-human operates on pure stimulus-response conditioning.” If, as he claims, the research world would beat a path to my door to win a Nobel from confirming the behaviors of my dog, I welcome them to do so, but I suspect that it was a purely conjectural claim stemming from stubborn reductionist denial.