Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit on NDT philosophy

 I think the correlation with a three year old child is a little arbitrary because they're squaring up the idea of 2000 word vocabulary, but speaking of my own personal experience with children, I think that it is the same for human babies up to around six months or so. Bearing in mind that there are some unique human capacities beginning to bud, but I'm comfortable with the infant stage of a child in that regards,

 To be clear, are you saying that at the stage (1.5 - 3 yrs or so) where a child could do what the collie does it is doing something totally different than the dog.  And that a non-talking 6 mo. infant mentality is what the collie is acting from?

 Don't hold me to specific timetables because my impressions of children are pretty limited having only raised three and then observed a smattering of others and not particularly at critical junctures since I don't work with kids. But from my experience, I distinctly recall that when they were able to hold their heads up on their own, and this was somewhere around four to six months, that they began to grasp a linear sort of connectedness between things, they didn't just caroom from one frame of reference to the next, each with its own fresh impression into which the child has to plug certain emotional values or it can't make sense of it. But as he starts to see things as interconnected by linear reason, as in the wall is connected to the ceiling is connected to the floor is connected to the next room, then I feel the child is also starting to construct a sense of its self as distinct and separate relative to its surroundings, and that a process of change transpires according to a linear, chronologically based cause and effect. I cry out and mommy brings me milk, as opposed to the state of internal stress that causes the crying magically produces milk, the child with no "idea" how that happens, it's simply associated with the intensity of the stress being experienced. The dog meanwhile in my theory (idea/hunch/supposition/fill in the blank) stays in this mode of apprehension and quickly develops the motor patterns to execute them. It perceives its self in others even as a mature individual and it senses its environment as if it is one vast biofeedback mechanism that conforms to whatever it is feeling. There was an art installation in Brooklyn last summer I believe with a series of poles that emitted musical notes depending on what people did when they walked through the gallery. So people learned to move their bodies in a way to make music. I think this is a wonderful way of explaining the animal mind. As my children matured and became intellectual verbal beings, you could still see the signature of a feeling as a magic button when they would endlessly repeat a description of something they wanted, the vestigal memory of putting energy into the feeling as a means of willing it to be. So I believe that we have to regress in our minds and get beneath all the acquired intellectual filters in order to recapitulate this animal/emotional state of mind. Meanwhile, the tuning part to the emotional dynamic would be the overarching mandate to always be adding energy to the system, so the best feelings aren't those of pleasure, but those that lead to synchronizing with complex objects of resistance, such as fellow dogs and the most complex object of resistance of them all, human beings. 

 When I see analogous (even identical) behavior in a dog that I see in a toddler, I have no reason to doubt similar mental activities are at work.  At a minimum, both are responding to vocal signs, and performing memory recall of learned associations to the signs.  There is even the further reasoning ability to associate memories (of things) with certain class groupings (toy ball, etc.). 

 

You say your belief that they are not doing the same things mentally is based on observation of infants.  How?  Any observer sees them doing exactly the same thing?

 What I see as identical is that the infant is not self-conscious, or self-aware, it perceives no barrier between itself and its mother (especially), and a baby certainly has no sense of time. (Interestingly research studying the startle reaction of infants reveal that a baby does have a fully formed apprehension of the laws of motion and gravity) So I feel it apprehends the world in terms of biofeedback system, what it feels it perceives as synonymous to making the world go round. There's no filter between what it wants and the expression of said want. Also, the denial of a want immediately leads to an abject state of terror, again no ability to position its self in terms of a larger context of time to mollify the internal need. Also, an infant baby can't wait to get back to sleep, drools copiously when attracted to things, and can't entertain anything outside of a want. So as expressions of pure temperament (an emotional dynamic) I see them as wholly analogous to dogs, whereas I don't see any intellectual parallels whatsoever as when the child's mind becomes more developed rationally. 

 These are speculations of a baby - I am asking what you observe when a child is first able to retrieve and double identify things (round, toy) just like the collie.  The following speculation from observation ALSO applies verbatim to a newborn --PUPPY:

Kevin Behan

 What I see as identical is that the infant is not self-conscious, or self-aware, it perceives no barrier between itself and its mother (especially), and a baby certainly has no sense of time. (Interestingly research studying the startle reaction of infants reveal that a baby does have a fully formed apprehension of the laws of motion and gravity) So I feel it apprehends the world in terms of biofeedback system, what it feels it perceives as synonymous to making the world go round. There's no filter between what it wants and the expression of said want. Also, the denial of a want immediately leads to an abject state of terror, again no ability to position its self in terms of a larger context of time to mollify the internal need. Also, an infant baby can't wait to get back to sleep, drools copiously when attracted to things, and can't entertain anything outside of a want.  So as expressions of pure temperament (an emotional dynamic) I see them as wholly analogous to dogs.

 Again, the above describes the puppy as well as an infant.  Mostly speculation  - but the same speculation holds for PUPPY.  They both are observed doing much the same stuff.

 

Your closing remark, "whereas I don't see any intellectual parallels whatsoever as when the child's mind becomes more developed rationally."

 

Here again you speculate rather than go with what is observed.  When the toddler and the collie are OBSERVED doing the same behaviors, there is ample reason to assume their minds are running in similar fashion.

 

Note: I Edited the above a lot, if you reply to it.

 

 

 

Burl

Again, the above describes the puppy as well as an infant.  Mostly speculation  - but the same speculation holds for PUPPY.  They both are observed doing much the same stuff.

 

Your closing remark, "whereas I don't see any intellectual parallels whatsoever as when the child's mind becomes more developed rationally."

 

Here again you speculate rather than go with what is observed.  When the toddler and the collie are OBSERVED doing the same behaviors, there is ample reason to assume their minds are running in similar fashion.

 

Note: I Edited the above a lot, if you reply to it.

 

 

Arguements for and against cognition in so called lower order species are often unprovable either way. There is a heap of data that supports the view most animals have evolved to do well in the environment that they live in, and that many western humans have a need to place animals in a hierachy. To feel superior most humans chuck in skills that frankly dogs don't have and don't need like human speech understandings. I can tell you that dogs can make very shophisticated decisions in their world (scent etc) that are multi layered and would be beyond many humans that i have had the dispeasure to know and have decision making powers.Dogs are capable of stacking commands, and many other things that show a degree of shopistication.

I think that "Clever Hans " did animals a whole lot of harm, and ever since is this idea that " the simplest " explantion is the best.

There are so many processes that disprove this, yet we trot it out like a well worn charm.

It is worthwhile looking at "The Alex Papers" and getting a view of the experimental method and conclusions.

I sometimes wish i had the brashness to state unprovable contentions and not have the intellectual training that such a process woud keep me awake at nights. Wouldn't life be so simple?

 

 Burl: "These are speculations of a baby - I am asking what you observe when a child is first able to retrieve and double identify things (round, toy) just like the collie.  The following speculation from observation ALSO applies verbatim to a newborn --PUPPY:"

KB: Everything is speculation, even the interpretation of experiments involving brain imaging cause researchers to speculate. The question is which speculation/interpretation is the most logical. I don't find it logical to say that infants have a sense of time, or even a sense of a self independent of what they want. For a child, anyone that makes a want comes true, becomes part of that feeling and the baby learns to trust the person because the essence of trust is the absence of a barrier.   
The difference between a dog and a child is that at some age the young child will ogle things and contemplate some facet or another of a things quality, entertaining this characteristic as an aspect independent of anything else. They will compare toys to other toys out of curiousity rather than to perform a task or to ingest and/or play with, so this is their intellectual cognition above a pure emotional apprehension. They will also pose toys as a self relative to another toy as another self and then fabricate each toy's point of view. When that deliniation of the intellect happens precisely I don't know, very young indeed. And emotionally speaking as manifestations of pure temperament, yes puppies and babies are closer than adult dogs and babies because instincts are more developed in the adult dog.
Also, if a toddler learns to pick up a round versus a square ball, they can soon carry such concepts around with them independent of the setting or the pursuit of a trained task and they can apply it to entirely new domains, as in round versus square rooms or tables. Roundness and squareness exist in their intellect as separate concepts detached from any given object. The dog cannot, which is why they need to be conditioned and why if the setting is changed, the trainer will have to do a lot to kick in the lesson which is always in the dog's mind as a function of a want and a feeling of attraction.
Again I'm not arguing against cognition in dogs, I'm arguing for a group mind as the cognition of dogs. While it may not be rational, I think it is a state of mind that we as rational human beings are well served to strive for.

 Kevin

 

Why don't you suprise us and rather than make us go through the exhausting process with you., italicise your posts when you speculate, put bold when you plainly don't know or just talking from what seems a very narrow perspective?

 Everything you say in the above post is debatable from main stream perspectives. If you want to be taken seriously when you talk this stuff, you need to address this perspectives and use the data that underly these perspectives to prove them wrong.

 It isn't a conspiracy out there. If you had something to say that was worthwhile and could add to my dog training i would be in like finn. I just keep on wondering what the waffle hides. Is it going to be more of the same? When push comes to shove things that i regard as rank aversives suddenly develop magic properties in your hands? Just what is it? Tell us and show us what all this talk leads to...

 

 

poodleOwned

It isn't a conspiracy out there. If you had something to say that was worthwhile and could add to my dog training i would be in like finn

 

I couldn't agree more. 

What I'm saying is that every animal works according to a universal emotional core, and then species specific, niche related adaptations are attached to this. This renders nature as an interconnected whole, not as separate entities in competition. I believe modern science is clearly moving in this direction. The practical benefit of this understanding is that if one works with this emotional core in their dog, they can get a level of rapport even in moments of extreme duress/conflict/excitement. I think every good trainer works with this core on an intuitive level, and often in contradiction of their stated philosophy or methodology, and as one tiny bit of evidence I cite the shift over the last thirty years to people motivating their dog through the prey drive which was verboten in the seventies and eighties according to the mainstream behavioral marketplace. I'm suggesting that we codify this emotional core which does not work by human reason and so that the average dog owner will focus on this emotional dynamic rather on what I see as incidental (dogs learn by reinforcement) or erroneous (dogs perceive through a dominance hierarchy) mechanics. I agree that it is exhausting to resist the impulse to say dogs think in order to explain complex behavior, which I see as the default reflex of the human intellect and therefore the path of least resistance. Perhaps the only reason one would forebear, is if they sense something elemental, fundamental and critical is missing in the current marketplace of ideas, i.e. we can study the brain all we want (which don't get me wrong we should do) and yet we still won't understand the animal mind because the brain is only part of the whole picture. What I'm trying to point out is that the current theories have no model for consciousness because they are reading thoughts into their observations of behavior. 

We may be getting somewhere, Kevin.


KB said: “The difference between a dog and a child is that at some age the young child will ogle things and contemplate some facet or another of a things quality, entertaining this characteristic as an aspect independent of anything else. “

I believe this is where epistemologists make a distinction between reasoning with percepts vs reasoning with concepts.  I will do my best to say something of what I have read on this. In the reasoning with percepts, cognition is deducing and inducing ideas (including some concepts) from physically observed sense impressions  that are experienced.  The mind reasoning with percepts is mapping out reality and its contents with a built-in framework of space and time (Kant's a priori categories – the colored spectacles thru which we perceive reality).  With reasoning with concepts, cognition starts with recollections of ideas  and stays in that internal mental realm forming new ideas relationships among ideas – abstract conceptualization.

Both dogs and humans have similar emotional makeup, but of the two, probably little abstract reasoning occurs in dogs.  This is, however also the case for young children up to age (??).  

***But, you MUST [edited correction] say both dogs and humans have rational thoughts and abilities to use them to get around in their environment.***   

 
KB said: “They will compare toys to other toys out of curiousity rather than to perform a task or to ingest and/or play with, so this is their intellectual cognition above a pure emotional apprehension.”

Dogs are always learning from their curisoty as well.  It is here that I think you need to re-evaluate your ideas.  You are saying that both dog and child are purely mentally emotional agents until at some point the child advances to intellectual agency.  Again, read what I said above about types of reasoning, BOTH of which require intelligence.


KB said: “They will also pose toys as a self relative to another toy as another self and then fabricate each toy's point of view. When that deliniation of the intellect happens precisely I don't know, very young indeed. “

I think you are trying to say that the only intelligent one (child, not dog, in your opinion) is able to form a theory of mind, which is the awareness that another creature is able to think like me.  I am with Panksepp in saying ToM is nothing big, and it is what emoyional expressions are largely for – to communicate what is in one subject to another.


KB said: “And emotionally speaking as manifestations of pure temperament, yes puppies and babies are closer than adult dogs and babies because instincts are more developed in the adult dog.”

Reasoning abilities are likewise growing in both.


KB said: “Roundness and squareness exist in their intellect as separate concepts detached from any given object. The dog cannot,”

I think we can roughly agree here – the dogs reasoning reaches a plateau shy of comples abstractions, but the human doesn’t.


KB said: “ which is why they need to be conditioned and why if the setting is changed, the trainer will have to do a lot to kick in the lesson which is always in the dog's mind as a function of a want and a feeling of attraction.”

I’ll leave it to any trainers to respond to this.


KB said: “Again I'm not arguing against cognition in dogs, I'm arguing for a group mind as the cognition of dogs. While it may not be rational, I think it is a state of mind that we as rational human beings are well served to strive for. “

I agree with the first sentence.  I have sympathies with why you think it is all about ‘group consciousness’:  If you refuse to give the dog basic reasoning ability, then all that is left to explain how the two species can interact is via our shared affects.  But I hope I have made the case that this is not so.

Anyway, this is the closest I think I have gotten to understanding where we meet.

Kevin Behan

What I'm saying is that every animal works according to a universal emotional core, and then species specific, niche related adaptations are attached to this.

 

This is very nearly Panksepp.

Kevin Behan

The practical benefit of this understanding is that if one works with this emotional core in their dog, they can get a level of rapport even in moments of extreme duress/conflict/excitement. I think every good trainer works with this core on an intuitive level, and often in contradiction of their stated philosophy or methodology, and as one tiny bit of evidence I cite the shift over the last thirty years to people motivating their dog through the prey drive which was verboten in the seventies and eighties according to the mainstream behavioral marketplace.

I have worked with the "emotional core " of dogs for some while. I have never had a problem with motivating dogs with Prey or Play modes and suggest that it is prefable to do so for many things. But i hate to tell you that for many out there it is a hell of a struggle moving away from a dominance model towads a reward model, and many will just walk out of classes if you talk to much or show to much what you actually mean . Grown men even seem to be frightened by my older girl who will jump and grab her favourite toy when allowed to do so. She doesn't work as happy as she does for no good reason

 

Kevin Behan

I'm suggesting that we codify this emotional core which does not work by human reason and so that the average dog owner will focus on this emotional dynamic rather on what I see as incidental (dogs learn by reinforcement) or erroneous (dogs perceive through a dominance hierarchy) mechanics.

This is exactly what Panksepp has done. It is quite good and certainly works better that most. It is coherent ,simple, and he even points out the pot holes.

The mainstream market place didn't hit here till the nineties. Even then i had to very quielty leave a club so that i could get on with training the way that i wanted. Yank and crank is still practiced by many handlers. Even within the past year i have seen handlers operating on the dominance myth. There are still clubs within my State that ban food and toys from training. CM certainly has his mates down here !!

 

Kevin Behan

I agree that it is exhausting to resist the impulse to say dogs think in order to explain complex behavior, which I see as the default reflex of the human intellect and therefore the path of least resistance. Perhaps the only reason one would forebear, is if they sense something elemental, fundamental and critical is missing in the current marketplace of ideas, i.e. we can study the brain all we want (which don't get me wrong we should do) and yet we still won't understand the animal mind because the brain is only part of the whole picture.

Right. Here is were i think things are.We don't actually know becuase we don't understand the cognitve processes of the brain much at all. So that is a sort of limit. To deny cognition of dogs is as much an error to believe that they rely very much on cognition. We just plain don't know. I have given examples of how so called group conciousness might work within this series of discussions and explained that quite complex group behaviours can happen with quie simple rules of behaviour that exist within the indidvidual. We can probably discount very sophisticated communication between indidviduals because it is slow complex and unneccessary.We can learn backwards from computing on this. I am personally sceptical of veyr high levels of congnition within dogs, and even more sceptical of high levels of group consciousness.

Kevin Behan

on what I see as incidental (dogs learn by reinforcement)

 

What i have learnt with teaching dogs to do things for crap environements is that the for very initial teaching reinforcement is a hugely wonderful tool. I certainly haven't thrown my clicker away. Reinforcement seems to work on another part of the brain to the emotional circuits.But i certainly wonder about the emotional reinforcement now. We know enough that for many dogs reinforcement with play/prey works very differently than reinforcement with food. My goal (and many others) is to create a situation where a particular affective state is atteached to a particular exercise. Quite frankly , i want my dog as high as a kite in play mode in heeling and that is what i get. The process is somewhat different than normal reinforcement, and works differently. There is some xover in techniques.

We look at US trials with some degree of wonder. The heeling pattern is short. You have ring barriers up. The ring is tiny. We have this exercise called "seekback" which requires a dog to find an article placed within a heeing pattern with in a ring, except the ring is outside in all weathers and is 45M X 15M.So my 7kg female poodle needs to be emotionally ok about working away from me in a situation where the likelehood of having to work among and ignore much larger dogs is very real. I guess aware clicker people get there , but i fancy my chances of getting there better by using an emotional model better. I would be lying if i told you it was easy. We talk a lot about poodles being smart. But unfortunately becuase of the concerns that i have just mentioned, very few mins make it through.

There are three not two articles for seekback, and they are not dumb bells!

We never stack our dogs for any grades, all stand for exams are "moving".

 PoodleO

 

What is Panksepp's best work on Dog behavior?