Should We Ignore or Celebrate the "Wolfiness" in Our Dogs?

Lee Charles Kelley

word energy, but Behan actually spends a great deal of time clearly defining his use of the term. To say that he doesn't is outrageous.

 

 

I missed this quote.  I cannot tell you how many times I tried to read that very post of Kevin's core explanation of energy and NDT. 

 Lee would, in my opinion, be far more accurate saying, "Behan actually spends a great deal of time ... defining his use of the term. To say that he does it clearly is outrageous."

 Lee, if you can put Kevin's post into your own clear writing, I, for one, would be very interested in reading such a post.  Since you seem to clearly understand and totally agree with it, it should be a simple task for one as gifted with writing skills as you clearly are.

 I am certain everyone here and and even NDT fans would love to read such a post by you.  How about it?

 

spiritdogs

I think you are struggling to support a line of reasoning that is every bit as unscientific as that which you think we support.  Energy state - energetic changes???  Oh for crying out loud, how is that any less of a stretch than species-specific altruism?   Why are you so opposed to the idea that another species, especially a social one, could have an awareness of need in a group member?

 

Hi SpiritDogs,

I'm not at all opposed to the idea that members of a social species can have an awareness of the needs of a group member. In fact, I'm fully and completely on board with that idea. The only question is, at what level of consciousness does that awareness form itself? If you were to simply switch the word "energy" with "emotion" my position would remain the same. 

I'm not sure why you're opposed to the idea of dogs having energy states. If it's getting near meal time, and your dogs are sleeping, and you go into the kitchen and start filling their bowls (or whatever the usual procedure is), no matter how you interpret the cause of the dogs' behaviors, at the simplest level you'd have to agree that there's a substantial change in their energy states. They would go from an inert, sleeping state, to wagging their tails with happy excitement. Same thing if you go to the door and pick up their leashes, or if they hear a familiar car coming up the driveway.

When a dog with a specific energetic signature appears at the dog run, it can often have a domino effect, depending on how interested the other dogs are in the newbie. If the newbie is all about, "Let's play!" it can be quite infectious. If the he's all about being pushy and getting in everyone's face, it can have the opposite effect. From my observations, most people don't look at it from the perspective of the new dog's emotional energy, but frame it in terms of his personality. "Oh, he's very friendly!" or "That dog is too dominant!" or "too aggressive."

Those statements about the dog's personality may be quite true, from our human perspective. We like to label things.

All I'm saying is that for dogs this probably happens on an emotional rather than a mental level, and that there's a very distinct energetic signature to each type of emotion that a dog (or human) feels at any given moment. Anger feels very different from sadness, sadness feels different from joy. And those differences are directly related to the kinds of emotional energy affecting the physical body and certain parts of the brain at a given moment, and they could probably be measured quite specifically in terms of their wavelengths. In fact, they probably have been measured in this way.

LCK

Geez, Lee…are you ignoring what we are saying on purpose to be difficult, or are you just so locked into your idea that dogs have no mentality beyond our shared primitive emotions that you cannot hear us?  We are going in circles on this and gaining nothing in the effort.

You admit humans share the same categories of emotion as our dogs.  This is good, and it is Darwinian
 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expression_of_the_Emotions_in_Man_and_Animals

But there is no divorcing emotion from the entirety of mental activity in animals.  Darwin, like Hume, places creatures on a continuum, where higher order mammals share quite similar mental behaviors.
 
You insist emotion = energy and want to give the various emotions new labels based on their characteristic wavelengths.  This of course assumes that an individual emotion, like sadness or surprise, is IDENTICAL to an electromagnetic wave.  O.K., go ahead, tell us the frequency and amplitude of ‘surprise,’ as well as the waveforms of the other primary emotions,
Anger
Fear
Joy
Sadness
Disgust

Look at them; there IS NO waveform for these emotions!  No ‘energy states’!  But what if there were, what would it gain us.  You agree with Darwin that we have the same emotions as dogs, so what is to be gained by relabelling, say, ‘disgust’ as ‘amplitude 3 - wavelength 60’.  This’d really p*ss off professional psychologists including dog therapists.  

LCK said: “I'm not sure why you're opposed to the idea of dogs having energy states. If it's getting near meal time, and your dogs are sleeping, and you go into the kitchen and start filling their bowls (or whatever the usual procedure is), no matter how you interpret the cause of the dogs' behaviors, at the simplest level you'd have to agree that there's a substantial change in their energy states. They would go from an inert, sleeping state, to wagging their tails with happy excitement. Same thing if you go to the door and pick up their leashes, or if they hear a familiar car coming up the driveway.”

You have a blog at Psychology Today and cannot distinguish what is known as behavior from emotion?  And again, whatever new ‘energy state’ emotion concept you employ to describe the dog’s behaviors above are EQUALLY applicable to our similar behaviors.  Where would this take us?  How could it ever have helped us understand animal behavior any better?

LCK said: “From my observations, most people don't look at it from the perspective of the new dog's emotional energy, but frame it in terms of his personality. "Oh, he's very friendly!" or "That dog is too dominant!" or "too aggressive."

Those statements about the dog's personality may be quite true, from our human perspective. We like to label things.”

So?  That seems to be all you’re about here, too – relabelling.

LCK said: “All I'm saying is that for dogs this probably  happens on an emotional rather than a mental level, and that there's a very distinct energetic signature to each type of emotion that a dog (or human) feels at any given moment. Anger feels very different from sadness, sadness feels different from joy. And those differences are directly related to the kinds of emotional energy affecting the physical body and certain parts of the brain at a given moment, and they could probably be measured quite specifically in terms of their wavelengths. In fact, they probably have been measured in this way.”

Well, it would appear that the key word above is probably (emphasis mine).  And I think we can now see it is time to lay this whole misguided, vapid concept to rest.

Burl

CK said: “All I'm saying is that for dogs this probably  happens on an emotional rather than a mental level, and that there's a very distinct energetic signature to each type of emotion that a dog (or human) feels at any given moment. Anger feels very different from sadness, sadness feels different from joy. And those differences are directly related to the kinds of emotional energy affecting the physical body and certain parts of the brain at a given moment, and they could probably be measured quite specifically in terms of their wavelengths. In fact, they probably have been measured in this way.”

Well, it would appear that the key word above is probably (emphasis mine).  And I think we can now see it is time to lay this whole misguided, vapid concept to rest.

 

 

I definitely would be adding probably. There are strong suggestions that emotional states are related to certian brain cirucits. But they are also related to certain neurochemicals. The percieved waveform analysis measurement is really hard and tricky and to be quite frank right at the edge of the  science as we know it. As for the signal processing...... it is enormous.

Locally , a team has been using a kind of ear plug to  measure certain kinds of brian waves here to look at brain patterns as a response to certain kind of movements to diagnose mental illness. The signals given off are real complex and hard to process.

Old hat is the ability to detect certain nerve patterns to fire artifical limbs,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%E2%80%93computer_interface

Nothing near what has been suggested by LCK

 

 

 

Lee Charles Kelley

Going back to the difference between wild and captive wolves, captive wolves are much more liable to exhibit "dominant" behaviors -- i.e., forms of aggression toward one another -- and that's because they don't have a satisfying outlet for their aggressive energy: chasing and biting large prey.

 You can keep going back to it but you are still wrong.  Captivity in general increases aggression in all animals, rats, mice, cuy, all the way to humans.  Since this list includes herbivores, grazers who don't chase, bite, etc, any reasonable person must be suspect of yoru claims.

Like in other cases, you take an opinion and present it as it were an argument.   it's simple, you have opinions but no way to support them.  

Lee Charles Kelley

I'm sure you must have reasons for your opinions, but just saying that someone's ideas are laughable doesn't really shed any light on the discussion.

I consider an opinion laughable when it is so off base, and so intent in denying reality that it no longer evokes pity but ridicule. It is BECAUSE I am familiar with Behan's views that I can declare them laughable.  Though I realize that as Behan's agent and PR man you can't afford to be objective. 

In physics - and ideally in other sciences - there is a concept known as the External RealityHypothesis (ERH).  This describes the idea that there exists an external physical reality that is independent of humans.  i would describe LCK/Behan's ideas as subscribing to the Personal Reality Hypotheis.  In the PRH,

 Behan is a mystic who claims special knowledge and whose conclusions are based on those special insights, and these insights are, or course, immune to external validation.  Thus there is no objective way for a person to come to his side. Those that join the darkside do so because of him and the emotions he evokes. Like a charsimatic proselytizing preacher, he does not appeal to reason. 

The mystic and his acolytes are left with a problem.  In order to legitimize their claims they must employ external arguments; an impossible task given the internal, personal nature of their mystical 'truths'.

 

LCK presents his and Behans ideas as new, when in fact they are old - anthropocentric, wishful thinking, quasi religius - and like 'new' creationism, even the 'newness' is old time double-speak.  Much of it can be traced to Hobbesian beliefs about movement, with reworked language for the modern audience..

 

While I applaud well crafted analogies that aid in the understanding of a phenomena, Behan's approach does the opposite.  His deninitions are nonsensical. His 'explanations' are used to obscure his lack of knowledge. The 'explanations' are steeped in meaningless term-combinations and emotional baggage that only increases complexity and decrease understanding. In the end ND Trainers  present casual observations as facts and conflate opinion with argument and their earnest belief is offered up as evidence of the truth of their claims.

 MilkyWay

 

OMG, are you a twin sibling I never knew?  I am afraid the NDTers will try to say I am posting under your handle - not so, folks.

 

And I like what you say about a coherent analogical theory - if well done, they can be immensely useful for explaining complex things.  But, alas, such is not the case for NDT.

 

I am still waiting for LCK's thorough paraphrase of Kevin's summary of his energy-dog theory.  It is the least he can do for us, and for Kevin.

As I said before, and this was before LCK, et al, started crawdadding from it, a lot of this "energy consciousness" stuff came from a spin-off spiritual quest during the beginnings of Quantum Mechanics, particularly wave theory. The idea that, if, at some level, everything is just a wave in endless "sea" of energy, could we all share a consciousness at some level? Similar to that is the inaptly named effect called quantum teleportion, to describe even more colloquially, the EPR Event. Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen were working with the conservation of mass and energy in QM. When an electron microscope is used to detect the spin of an electron in orbit around an atom, it's em field effect will align the spin of the electron up or down. The observer affects the observed. Here's the crux. The electron on the other side of the orbit must always have the opposite spin for conservation to work. And this re-alignment happens instantaneously, since there is no spatial difference in QM. This violates Einstein's Special Theory that says that no effect an happen faster than the speed of light. But QM states this effect, regardless of the size of the atom. Well, that sub-energy transfer begs the invention of yet another layer of existence. Enter here, the quantum consciousness brouhaha. And it makes its way to dog behavior theory, especially, modernly, by way of Behan and Kelly. Who now crawdads from it when encountering people, such as myself, that have a basic understanding of statistical mechanics, AKA, particle physics. Nor am I a doctorate or any kind of recognized physicist. I am just a lowly electrician, pushing electrons around, most every day. I try to stay out of the way of electricity and most times, I am successful in that.

The problem with the NDT is that it is not based on science, by means of observable results that are repeated. Instead, it is based on semantics and loosely hinged fringe theories of yet even more experimental science theories that, themselves, have yet to be proven. And don't get me started on the disingenuous use of hyperbolic trig in a topology statement used as prove of Einstein's use of the lorentzian transforms. Lorentz, for goodness sake, believed in an aether and his equations were constructed to reflect that belief, without any evidence to back it up. In fact, Einstein said there was no aether, based on the inconclusive results of the Michelson-Morley Experiment.

Sorry to go a little deep there but it wasn't my idea to try and fit particle physics into dog behavior.