Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit on NDT philosophy

Kevin Behan

For example, if a dog is conditioned that the ringing of a bell is coupled to the tasting of meat, then the bell rings and the taste of meat is rekindled on their tongue

 You said man created dog by way of trying to explain your position. The latest science says otherwise. Also, you are unable to specify what was being selected for in the domestication process as you at the same time claim that man selected for that which accounts for your view of the dog. 

 Yet you don't take issue with experiments purporting to show that dogs think about inequity.

HI Kevin;

I have to say that in all honesty that this presents as gobbledygook with a few key points that may or may not misuse jargon.

We have no idea how dogs process time, but we get some hints. The papers are out there, the evidence is in front of you and if you want to avoid these kind of terse one sided debates, it is good manners at least to check them out. 

We have no idea how a dog "feels". I would claim that a feeling is a cognitely processed idea of an emotion. We have an idea of what emotions a dog is undergoing by some of the behavours that the dog "emits".

You might be interested to know that many aspects of music appear to be learned and are different from culture to culture. That familiarity seems to be a feature. 

Moments don't have resitance ot anything much if you are talking about time based moments. The rest of your statements seem to be having a good old bash at reinventing the laws of physics. Yep, might pay to leave the physics AND time thingy alone.

There is an element of truth in the auto tuning thing. This concept has been around a long time and is shown diagrammatically in Panksepp's book. Good idea to read it and understand it.

We won't argue about the feeling good. That is something that emotions can do. We go on doing things that feel good,and stop doing things that feel bad.... Now isn't that a simplifiaction of the laws of behaviour?

We have no idea how a dog "feels". I would claim that a feeling is a cognitely processed idea of an emotion. We have an idea of what emotions a dog is undergoing by some of the behavours that the dog "emits".

 Damasio could have posted this.

Terse would be nice. At any rate, I'm going to try to sum up why I can't get my mind around the current theories and why we need to take in all this modern research but be prepared to keep on pushing.   

"We have no idea how a dog "feels". I would claim that a feeling is a cognitely processed idea of an emotion. We have an idea of what emotions a dog is undergoing by some of the behavours that the dog "emits".

KB: If emotional affects are universal, why then can't we know how an animal feels? If it's universal we must also feel it. And then by extending the logic to the other hand, if we have no idea what a dog thinks, how can one claim that a feeling is a cognitive process? Emotion and feelings are universal therefore we can know what an animal is feeling because we do the same. I believe the behavior that dogs emit support the argument that emotion is a universal medium by which they are able to align with their peers (and this could be any species) for the feeling of synchronization. Feeling in sync with its surroundings changes a dog's perceptual state so that it is able to perceive and exploit its resources.

Now if abstract cognition is universal and a feeling is a cognitively processed idea of an emotion, then again, why do we need the term feeling? Why not just emotion and thoughts as otherwise we're allowing an anachronism or sloppy and unnecessary term to invade our modern understandings? And if feelings are the result of cognitive processes, then the greater the cognition the greater the capacity to feel, so it follows that apes have more feeling (empathy) than dogs and apparently tool using crows. These cognitive processes are also held to moderate affective systems so that the individual can adapt when these prove to be self-limiting in certain circumstances, therefore the more mature the animal and developed its cognitive processes, the more it should be able to adapt. During the jungle wars in Uganda I believe, very young orangatuans fled to the cities where they were adopted by residents. They did great while they were young but the smarter they became, the sooner they were out the door and on the street causing a huge problem.  

"We won't argue about the feeling good. That is something that emotions can do. We go on doing things that feel good,and stop doing things that feel bad.... Now isn't that a simplifiaction of the laws of behaviour?"

KB: No because the question remains as to why a good feeling feels good? The reductionist, mechanical response is this or that hormone, neurochemical, etc.. This is saying that the animal is a machine and also doesn't address why a good feeling feels good, and why, as is evidenced in the behavior of dogs, unpleasant things can become incorporated into a good feeling (the function of Drive to overcome objects of resistance by synchronizing via feelings) so that the dog in fact works at difficult tasks rather than indulges in the simple pursuit of pleasure. Cat and dog both have prey instinct, flirt pole works on both. But dog will work at getting prey all day and with no material return on effort. The capacity to synchronize is its own reward. Without understanding any principles of learning, one can teach a dog to heel by their side, but not a cat. There are crazy homeless people walking down busy city streets with a dog calmly by their side and I don't think they went through puppy kindergarten.  

"There is an element of truth in the auto tuning thing. This concept has been around a long time and is shown diagrammatically in Panksepp's book. Good idea to read it and understand it."

KB: Most concepts of auto-tuning talk about maintaining optimal homeostasis. That's not what I'm referring to because if the system is in perfect stasis, then it is stagnant and dying. The auto-tuning has to be about adding energy to the system and my argument is that this renders a coherent definition of emotion/feeling/cognition and will simultaneously explain why tool making, problem solving crows along with language mastering parrots and signing apes and chimps are never going to evolve out of their environmental niche    

 Emotions are first expressed in the body instinctively before coming into consciousness where we are aware of its feeling.  Kevin, you are not paying attention to how affective/cognitive neuroscientists are describing things because you think you have it right while they have it wrong.

Anyway, you need to get clearer on what consciousness is - awareness of some thing.  The thing can be a sense perception, an emotional feeling, a memory of a swnsory perception, an idea or memory of one, or combinations of some or all of these.

The is no single entity that 'thought' points to - it is a process.

 Burl: "Emotions are first expressed in the body instinctively before coming into consciousness where we are aware of its feeling.  Kevin, you are not paying attention to how affective/cognitive neuroscientists are describing things because you think you have it right while they have it wrong."

KB: Jerome Kagan in his book “What Is Emotion?” writes that the three main tools by which science investigates emotion, verbal descriptions of emotional experience, observed behavior and brain research; each arrive at a different resolution of the question of emotion and that these various interpretations cannot be reconciled. When asked point blank on NPR what is emotion? Kagan said science doesn’t know.

If on the other hand they have it right then I have to be content with a lot of magical thinking because there is smooth logical progression from emotion to intellect. Damasio attempts to do so extending the concept of emotion as homeostasis all the way down to bacteria but when we get to the dog it all falls apart because by definition, an input that cannot be part of stasis is toxic. Thus, if emotion is instinctive, then it is maladaptive in novel situations for which its hardwiring is not prescripted. Therefore adaptability to artifical circumstances, i.e. human civilization, must by this view be a function of higher cognitive function, and yet we have the dog that is more adaptive and far less capable of higher cognitive function then other animals and birds according to these so called tests of intelligence and higher order abstraction.
When one proceeds from the premise that if something isn't thinking it must be mindless, whenever one sees complex intelligent behavior they must immediately insert a thought into the animal's mind and my point is that this is premature and a knee jerk reaction that abrogates a process of deeper inquiry. My premise is that these intelligence tests are actually revealing that "problem solving" is a social problem, i.e. reconciling physical memories with potential energy of the moment and according to the emotional capacity of the species, which is why food is invariably needed to test their intelligence. Because the emotional capacity of the dog is higher than any other species, it is able to align itself with human beings even when simple emotional grounds (food) aren't in play.
Saying that the dog is the way it is because humans selected for it, isn't saying anything. That's like saying someone made a lot of money because they needed to make a lot of money to survive and leave offspring. But the specifics of how they make the money (investing, writing, pro football) is the only answer to the question. So again, what did man select for given what we can observe about dogs in the here and now? If one offers a trait from the typical catalog that was supposedly selected for, submissiveness, docility, neotony, social hierarchy, it quickly leads into an intellectual dead end.

Burl: "Anyway, you need to get clearer on what consciousness is - awareness of some thing.  The thing can be a sense perception, an emotional feeling, a memory of a sensory perception, an idea or memory of one, or combinations of some or all of these."
KB: My model has a clear definition of consciousness, emotion, feelings, instinct, thinking, whereas you are saying such clear distinctions are not necessary and that one must accept feeling and thinking as one process. "Awareness of some thing" is imprecise because it immediately begs the question as to why an animal is aware of one thing in one context, and yet not the very same thing in another context. A dog loves to play with toy in back yard, but at park it's as if the ball doesn't exist. Another dog plays 100% with toy in back yard, and then 100% at park no matter what is going on. The distinction is Drive in service to Temperament and If you subtract thoughts from the incident, you can indeed find a formula that arrives at a clear defintion of consciousness, emotion, feelings, instinct and thinking. 

 As I understand intentionality, which may be what you call attraction, we fix some of our 5 senses onto something(s), gleaning its details while ignoring the vast majority of the backdrop.  I am not certain, but this could also be much the same manner by which we are introspective - reflecting on things.

You mention magic.  In a sense, all human intellectual endeavors - science, philosophy, literature, mathematics, law - is occult practice, as we are attempting in these many endeavors to draw meaning from the phenomenal reality (Plato's Receptacle, the Void).  We are mainly only equipped with words to encode our observations discovered thru prolonged conscious intent and the often breakthrough of subconscious insights.

I doubt dogs do much of this occult activity, but some perhaps.  What is very important in our endeavors is that we can express our observations in a common set of terms.  So much gets lost when we are not sharing a common definition for our words.

 Have you noticed any common denominator to that which captures a dog's senses and attention?

 All the poor animals killed by cars may exemplify a failure to take in all the data.  I assume many of these animals were focused on something at the time.

Kevin Behan

 You said man created dog by way of trying to explain your position. The latest science says otherwise. Also, you are unable to specify what was being selected for in the domestication process as you at the same time claim that man selected for that which accounts for your view of the dog. 

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 there isn't a consensus on this matter because the evidence is not there.  The debate is ongoing and the several camps have good arguments and evidence.  That's how adults do it, Kevin, it's a lesson you should learn. 

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 Why don't YOU tell give us some detailed mechanism with supporting evidence to ANY of your *removed by moderator - rude personal attack*

 ideas.  You give me mechanistic explanations about centers of emotional gravity or network consciousness and I will explain things to you about domestication.  With the proviso that I am not a liar, or an intellectual coward, so I can only offer plausible explanations extracted from objective facts.  Not being emotionally immature, I am comfortable with uncertainty.

Kevin Behan

 Yet you don't take issue with experiments purporting to show that dogs think about inequity.

Maybe you shouldn't even mention that, because as you admitted in your blog:

YOU DIDN'T READ THE STUDY!!!

 Your argument is also poorly thought out... not a surprise.  Light is also universal but I doubt you would claim that we all perceive light in the same way.   Of course not.  We have different biological systems.  Speaking of Light... some animals have eyes but no brains.

 As far as the "medium" that ideas belongs with discarded juju like Aether, Vitalism and the Phlogiston.  Come on Kevin, apply the same critical eye inwards... If this is a "medium" then you should be able to show it's there.

As far as orangutans, you poor poor fellow. I guess that the changes brought on by the onset of sexual maturity had nothing to do with it.

Kevin Behan

Thus, if emotion is instinctive, then it is maladaptive in novel situations for which its hardwiring is not prescripted. Therefore adaptability to artifical circumstances, i.e. human civilization, must by this view be a function of higher cognitive function, and yet we have the dog that is more adaptive and far less capable of higher cognitive function then other animals and birds according to these so called tests of intelligence and higher order abstraction.

Go take a college class in biology. Nothing you wrote here is correct. And once again I will note the attempt to compare domesticated animals to non domesticated ones. You also don't understand intelligence as you seem to view it as a monolithic singular trait - it also means you are far behind the times. Start by reading Gould's Mismeasure of Man. Gould's simple prose should be right about your speed.

Kevin Behan

My premise is that these intelligence tests are actually revealing that "problem solving" is a social problem

This doesn't even makes sense.

Kevin Behan

Saying that the dog is the way it is because humans selected for it, isn't saying anything.

It's saying a lot to those that understand evolution, artificial selection, genetic variability....

Kevin Behan

That's like saying someone made a lot of money because they needed to make a lot of money to survive and leave offspring.

Kevin Behan

If one offers a trait from the typical catalog that was supposedly selected for, submissiveness, docility, neotony, social hierarchy, it quickly leads into an intellectual dead end