Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit on NDT philosophy

corgidog

@poodleowned i don't think you're reading the same forum thread.

don't ever pretend that you are operating from a scientific basis.

kbehan has stated on numerous occasions and quite explicitly that these ideas are his interpretations based on his own personal experiences training dogs and readings from various scientific sources. what about that don't you understand? you are so hard to take seriously. he's not pretending to hold a degree from an institution or falsifying documents. he has a model that works, has written a book on it, the methods can be reliably repeated and produce consistent results w/ any dog and owner and he is articulating the mechanics of it. this is the extent to which it is scientific.

you make statements based off a set of assumptions you're not even aware of and you frequently bring them into the discussion where they have little relevance. [insert story about dog winning a meaningless trophy here]

i don't mean to sound condescending, however, a tone of condescension permeates each post you and milkyway write. i presume you can handle it. this wouldn't be that bad if you were at least making a coherent argument.

do you understand what kbehan is saying? i challenge you to articulate it. i seriously doubt you can repeat his argument beyond the sophomoric, superficial treatment you have been giving it.

the science has not proven definitely proven that dogs do in fact think. research is being done as we speak at the canine cognition lab at harvard and in vienna, most famously, to make headway in this area.

so if you are capable, entertain the absurd notion that dogs in fact do not think. how would you then go about explaining behavior?

My dog is a participant at Harvard's Canine Cognition Lab, and we have received simple debriefings after each visit.  The end result may be less clear than you think - some dogs do tasks that the researchers didn't expect them to be able to do, and that the majority of dogs don't seem able to do.  But, I can tell you from my personal experience that the research design failed to take into account that some dogs have superstitious behaviors once frightened and will not be able to complete tasks that they were previously doing quite well.  At my second visit, rather than signal the beginning of an exercise with voice, the researcher rang a rather loud bell, which was very disconcerting to her.  I think the frequency was just not good, as she is not generally fearful of noises.  I made my concerns known to the research associate, but don't know what came of it.  I've just been invited back for our third session, so if I can get there perhaps I will find out. 

 I'm still waiting to see how selective imitation becomes uncontrollable urge? 

I'm still waiting for you to come up with an experiment that will demonstrate any principle of NDT

I'm still waiting for any evidence that would support NDT over the prevailing views.

 I think this from my previous post bears exploring

Integration with other Disciplines -- Pseudosciences thrive and require isolation; by necessity they need to ignore, misuse and misrepresent mainstream science. NDT and its defenders have gone so far as to declare particular subfields aren’t ‘science’ because they contradict the main tenets.  As such, NDT is forced to invent new physics, chemistry, even ignore basic anatomy in order to make sense of their beliefs. Psychology, astronomy, agronomy, neuroscience and all modern sciences (except maybe theoretical physics) are integrated disciplines. Integration is important to the advancement of science and one of the reasons NDT will never advance.

Kevin Behan

I reserve the right to question authority. 

Back in the sixties I used to have to tell clients that when their dog didn't meet them at the door, a telltale sign that disaster awaits within, their dog wasn't feeling guilty. It was simply afraid. But now forty years later if Range is right about the interpretations of her experiments and with which you agree, then the rolled up newspaper crowd was right all along.

I don't think so. 

Kevin, by going off half cocked, you just foul the pitch for others that have bothered to understand the science that they use. You make alternative views harder to get across. It is a bit like really bad greed products.. people won't buy the real things that work because the the market has been marred by very poor products. There is a marketing term based on pyschology.

It is never too late to learn. I was 27 when i first graduated which seemed really old then, and 49 when i next graduated. I did another degree to make sure that i could communicate well with my profession and understand  the conventions of it. In my class was a Doctor who was well into his mid sixties who always wanted to be an Engineer but never got around to it. Good on him!!

You  and your mate corgi whatever seem to forever miss anything less than a sledge hammer aimed straight for your forehead .. it is so hard to get my whole view across.

 Do dogs have a sense of fairness? Do dogs experience guilt?

 I do think dogs have a sense of fairness.  Come to Yappy Hour and I'll show you.

spiritdogs

 I do think dogs have a sense of fairness.  Come to Yappy Hour and I'll show you.

At play, a big dog tones down its rough-housing with a smaller one.  If this is violated, play stops. At treats, when you give one a treat, the other naturally looks for one also.  Refuse to treat both, and the second will react in a variety of ways - perhaps not immediately - according to its own temperament.

Are they reacting after reading the Bible or some book on ethics?  Of course not, but we (and they) do not need to be told what fairness is - we simply know it - or we have a pathology.  

 So then dogs experience guilt?

 I seem to recall you said earlier that chemistry, anatomy and quantum mechanics had nothing to do with behavior. Why exclude these disciplines when everything in nature is integrated?

Kevin Behan

 So then dogs experience guilt?

You always bring this up, as does your more eloquent disciple who quit spamming here a while ago. 

 There are two different things here, though I know you will not get it, or you will ignore it with yet another tangential deflect:

1) an innate sense/expectation of balanced behavior amongst peacefully interacting creatures needs fairness as an operating principle to keep things orderly.  This naturally keeps individual passions/desires tempered, otherwise no peaceful interaction in nature could exist.

2) a metaphysical understanding (i.e., a belief) that there is a principle of fairness, and when violated, one has failed morally and has awareness of this as discomfort (guilt).

Nobody knows of the nature of dog spirit.

 Such an interpretation gives credit to thinking and the brain, what is actually due to feeling and the heart.

Kevin Behan

 Such an interpretation gives credit to thinking and the brain, what is actually due to feeling and the heart.

I figured you might get it wrong or deflect...your thinking is wrong here.

I point to a affective (heart, in your words) aspect to fairness and a moral (brainy, for you) aspect.

I acknowledge the former aspect, and am uncertain of the latter.

To say my interpretation does just the opposite is to characterize your ability to listen to others.

 I am focusing on the logical consequences of these statements as these prompt questions..

"an innate sense/expectation of balanced behavior amongst peacefully interacting creatures needs fairness as an operating principle to keep things orderly."

1) An expectation is a thought? However if it is innate then it can't be a thought.

2) What is the principle that underlies the notion of balance by which this standard of fairness is arrived at?

2) If a dog transgresses this balance, does it experience guilt, or does it dispassionately think, "I have upset the balance," or are you saying dogs are only aware of when they have been transgressed but not when they have been the transgressor?

Start again.  I edited.

Kevin Behan

 So then dogs experience guilt?

You always bring this up, as does your more eloquent disciple who quit spamming here a while ago. 

 There are two different things here, though I know you will not get it, or you will ignore it with yet another tangential deflect:

1) a sense/instinct of balanced behavior amongst peacefully interacting creatures - fairness - keeps things orderly; it naturally keeps individual passions/desires tempered, otherwise no peaceful interaction in nature could exist - agression would be all there is.

2) a metaphysical conceptual understanding (i.e., a belief) that there is a principle of fairness which, when violated, causes an uneasy awareness of moral failure - guilt.

I do not have certainty of our creature morality (innate, highly conceptual, spiritual ??). 

"I point to a affective (heart, in your words) aspect to fairness and a moral (brainy, for you) aspect."

So a concept of fairness is innate and is predicated on an apprehension of balance/imbalance, is this correct?