Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit on NDT philosophy

Kevin Behan

My position has never predicated on brain as source of the dog's conscious awareness.

Proving your point is simple, remove the brain of a dog and seen how much awareness it possesses without a brain.

 Or, remove the body of a dog and see how much "self" awareness it has with only its brain.

TheMilkyWay

Proving your point is simple, remove the brain of a dog and seen how much awareness it possesses without a brain.

He might be on to something.  I thought Rags lost some self awareness when I had him neutered.  Must have been his center of conscious awareness.

How did this get to 50 pages. I don't follow some of the arguments,  but I recognize the style.  Self contained logic.  He makes up the rules and the language as he goes.  Ignores scientific data that disagrees with his belief. Makes unverifiable pronouncements of facts and presents them as if they were written on stone tablets.  It's possible this is the start of a new religion. Argument won't work.  He refuses to accept any authority but his own. You know this.  Why argue with KB, unless it's just plain fun.

*removed by moderator* I thought the style of data presentation was similar-truths handed down to the select few from on high, and to be accepted. Arguments ignored or steamrolled over.

spiritdogs

 So, does that mean this exercise in futility is finally over before we get to 50 pages? 

Trouble maker ;)

DougB

He might be on to something.  I thought Rags lost some self awareness when I had him neutered.  Must have been his center of conscious awareness.

 I never doubt where my entire male poodle's thought center is. :) Then again, hand on heart where is most Male human beings thought center for at least a fair bit of the time?  (Yes i know it is mediated by our brain.....).

 If there were an award for the best post of this thread, Doug should get it!

I'm thinking 49-50 pages is enough of this, don't you?  About 20 pages back I asked what was the point in continuing to argue, and someone said they were holding out "hope".  Call me a cynic, but I don't see much hope for any minds being changed in this debate.  It's run its course.

I've benefited from all the links and full-throat arguments so do not consider this to have been a waste of time. I now know more precisely how other folks think about these subjects and there are few matters more worthy of one's consideration. Whether or not minds are changed, even heating things up can be part of evolution. 

Kevin, you stated some posts earlier that the police dog sees the felon as a big hunk of meat. That's wrong. A little familiarity with police dog work and training would let the casual reader know that the K-9 does not chase the felon as a prey item to eat. He chases because he is commanded to, and then releases because he is commanded to, because listening to his handler is the most rewarding thing. Might the herding behavior of a dog be linked to prey drive, such as a wolf pack running and cutting the herd of ungulates? Maybe so. But there are dynamics in police dog work that I think were glossed over or neglected when you made that statement. Police dog work is about a relationship between the dog and handler, not the dog and prey. And when the dog does latch onto the suspect, he does not proceed to eat the suspect. He bites only enough to hold and any punctures are accidental, usually caused by the suspect struggling. And the only reason the dog bites the suspect is because he has been trained to do so in specific pursuit circumstances, and then releases upon the handler's command.

I think this is markedly different from viewing the suspect as dinner. Dog has evolved. And no one has prove that dogs do not think, just as they have not proven the humans do think, Descarte notwithstanding. Without a common language, how would we know what each other is thinking. Many moons ago, I detailed the precise cues my dog would give when he wanted to go outside. It was a repeated set, in a precise order. Sign language, if you will. And we had an understanding. Underneath is the need to go potty. Over that is the knowledge that peeing in the house is not preferred. In addition, get the human to let me outside. Granted, I used human phrasing to describe that, but it does not take away from the physical reality of the exchange. My dog let me know what he was thinking.

In addition, it was mentioned earlier about dogs that can perform at trials in spite of the presence of other dogs in heat. Why? Because the dog is concentrating on work. The dog has prioritized. Work now, procreate later. If a dog was not able to think and process, we couldn't train them and we certainly couldn't see them engaging in free shaping.

First of all I never said that the prey drive has anything to do with the intention to eat, bringing an object-of-attraction to ground is the germ of the prey-making impulse. However, since the yellow warning light seems to be blinking, I won't go to any further depth on your points other than pointing out, and leaving it to the reader to decide for themselves the logical merit of my position relative to yours, if what you say is true, then one wouldn't have to select for temperament with police or working dogs. All dogs can bite, all dogs can be conditioned, and so the so called "desire-to-please" would thus be able to turn most any dog into a serviceable protection dog.

  I should have added that "hunk of meat" is an expression in that it in my model of sexuality and then fighting drive as higher elaborations of the prey-making urge, it thus references the hunger circuitry (grounding) being subordinated to this higher platform of elaboration, as in a woman might characterize George Clooney as a "hunk." Hunk of what? And what does this have to do with eating? So I've known high drive police dogs that have literally drooled copiously when confronted by helper with stick, or a really big felon.They can feel the preyful aspect of the person even despite the intensity.

 Once again, I will point out how weak Behan's arguments turn out to be.  Previously I described how the metaphors he uses in defense of his religion don't translate across cultures.  It should also be noted that his examples also do not translate across other languages.

This doesn't happen when we deal with reality.  Scientists don't have this problem because they deal with reality.  Young's modulus, Hardy-Weinberg, pvnRT are universally applicable.  Engineers don't have this trouble either, an XOR gate is universally translatable,

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