Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit on NDT philosophy

Kevin Behan

 There's a lot about Whitehead I resonate with. But I don't see how it logically follows that animals think. On the other hand what you call reason may be what I call network consciousness. That might be a point of intersection. 

So, yes or no, are you saying that dogs don't think?  Just for the record.

spiritdogs

Fair enough.  I guess my concern is that the terminology doesn't really reflect the feel that a reader might get from the word "natural" - which, today, is associated with things like "holistic" or "unadulterated" or "wholesome."  First of all, there's nothing "natural" about training dogs with e-collars, or with flat collars or harnesses, for that matter.  Dogs don't come with any of those accoutrements - we humans add them to the equation.  Call me oversensitive, but I've had about enough of people euphemizing the word "shock" into something it is not, and branding training with nebulous terminology to disguise either ruse, lack of education, or inability to argue a point or be accountable in terms of results.  A shock is not a tap, although it could be considered a stimulus - "stim" being ever so much kinder a terminology than "aversive stimulus" which is what most dogs probably perceive it to be, even at low levels.  Heck, I hate winter because I keep getting "stimmed" by the static electricity in my hair;-)

I entirely agree with the langauge issue. You have to give them one thing, they sure as hell made something nasty sound nearly ok. Can you imagine selling good old shock collars in toda'y's market? Well they work just the same with just a fraction more couthness, and of course they are scientifc, see Ma look at the knob or the slide with the numbers on it.... Numbers makes it scientific...

 The next "natural" thing is to go on a suitable forum. Maximum kudos goes to the dog that least notices a huge shock. That wins you the state bragging rights...

Yep, that lack of results always gets me. 

 I want to hear the details of how his network consciousness work, so that i might have soemthing to work with. How do the creatures communicate? What is the physical layer? What is the communication? What is the reason for the communication/ What happens if something is wrong with the communication. Time to get specific... If you can't give some details, there is no point waiting for some researcher at the peaks of Nepal to find it for you...

 I'm saying that dogs don't think, with my definition of thinking being a mental capacity to compare one moment to another moment, or one point of view to another point of view. This doesn't mean that they aren't intelligent or aren't conscious, but that their cognition is of a group nature, and this is basically composed of emotion and its counterpart, stress. 

 Network consciousness works by emotional experience capturing the energy of change (processes of nature, weather, things moving, any kind of change whatsoever) and incorporating it into an animals conscious awareness of its reality. This emotional state changes to varying degrees the way the animal feels for other living things with the phenomena of personality and sexuality being how this energy of change that has caused very real physiological changes in the animal, is harnessed and converted into social bonds. Because all animals share the same universal emotional core, they respond and act on others just as if they have an "emotional sonar" so that they can read the emotional states of others and thus very real physiological changes are induced simply by observation. Emotional experiences can be transmitted vicariously, just as dolphins can transmit acoustical pictures from one to another so others see what they haven't directly experienced. If there is a failure to convert a heightening of an emotional state into a bond, then the organism will experience greater and greater states of distress and this will compel it to interact in some way or another, we will observe this as friction (competition) and this will constantly keep the system in motion. Eventually, this "charge" at some point down the line will become part of a coherent expression of sociability, thus the network is always increasing in complexity. The validity of this idea can be tested as an exercise in logic because it asserts that all behavior is a function of attraction and so therefore, if this gives rise to a model that best encompasses the evidence before us, the necessary scientific experiments and statistical analysis could be done by researchers. Another interesting approach would be to design a robot using these principles to see if it can effectively mimic how animals behave and learn. In my view this could be done without much computational software per se; other than as what is needed to synthesize and execute actions. (In no way do I believe such robots would be conscious, it would simply demonstrate the primitive architecture of the deepest emotional core that all animals are endowed with, as opposed to the current top-heavy high horsepower computational approach.) I believe evolution works like a hacker, the less lines of code, the less chance for error, the more adaptable to change in real time. Emotion makes an animal "network-enabled" so that the information is available from the environment itself, the animal doesn't have to be fully loaded at the "factory." Imagine if all the information on the internet had to be preloaded on a computer. Not efficient. So all living things form a network, and this creates an overarching storehouse of information which can be accessed and added to.  

Kevin Behan

 I'm saying that dogs don't think, with my definition of thinking being a mental capacity to compare one moment to another moment, or one point of view to another point of view. This doesn't mean that they aren't intelligent or aren't conscious, but that their cognition is of a group nature, and this is basically composed of emotion and its counterpart, stress. 

While I agree with your premise that it's good that animals don't come "preloaded at the factory" I'm not so sure they can't compare one moment to another moment, depending on what one's definition is.  Memory, by definition, compares one moment in time to another.  I can say, with certainty, that dogs can recognize people they know in places they have never been before, by sight, not scent, and without any cue whatsoever from the human they are with (who, in my particular situation, had her back turned to the dog and was engaged in conversation with someone else).  Also, the fact that a dog will bait another dog with a toy means that they understand that the other dog might be engaged to chase in that next moment, and they are ready for the game which they fully intend to start.  I do think that well socialized dogs realize when another dog is unwilling to play, for example.  Sure, it's communicated by body language, but how many times have you yourself realized by seeing a wince or a scowl that you should leave the human who is doing that alone.  The circuitry that tells you that is probably quite similar to that which tells the dog.  I am willing to be open-minded and let research eventually tell us exactly where the line falls between the species in terms of what they can and cannot think about.  But, your definitions are based (again) on your feelings, not on any valid construct that we have been able to get you to elucidate in terms of scientific inquiry.  At least now, we have a statement on the matter that eventually will prove you right or wrong, even if it's not in either of our lifetimes.  My guess is that dogs are more similar to other social organisms, including humans, than we currently realize, and that the main reason for our preposterous insistence that they aren't is based more on simple human arrogance, and their lack of language, than the much-needed study of organic brain chemistry and cognition that is beginning to take place (thank goodness).  Keep Alex in mind as you formulate your theories on dogs, because we've just begun the studies on them that will, hopefully unlock the secrets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_%28parrot%29

My guess is that dogs are more similar to other social organisms, including humans, than we currently realize, and that the main reason for our preposterous insistence that they aren't is based more on simple human arrogance, and their lack of language, than the much-needed study of organic brain chemistry and cognition that is beginning to take place (thank goodness).

Absolutely accurate and poignantly said, SD.

Since the medieval churchmen gave 'rational souls' to men alone, the Western mind has been DEEPLY prejudiced to hold fast to this bulls**t originating w/ Aristotle's 'science' and embellished by Thomas Aquinas' philosophy/theology.  Even those wishing to throw off the medieval spooks - like DesCartes - couldn't manage to use their own eyes to get beyond anthropocentrism to observe that dogs are feeling, conscious, and primitively rational.  The empiricists did start to use their eyes, thus we have Hume saying if animal behavior appears analogous to ours, it must mean we have similar operating systems.

 Despite realists like Hume and naturalists like Darwin, old myths die HARD, and we see learned modern people walking around with blinders on as they repeat the HARMFUL myths of Aristotean-Thomistic metaphysics that man is set apart ontologically with an immaterial soul.

 If I got one, so does Happy, Sissy, Red, and even our little sh*t, Peanut! (I just like to tease her, I really love her.)

 When I hear a modern scientist or just a dog trainer unknowingly reverberating the bogus 'rational soul' anthropocentrism, I want to make dog food of them.

 In my model, your innermost animal, the source of one's sociability, is a dog. How's that for similarity? 

 canidcentrism - better yet, alpocentrism!  Better than anthropocentrism, though. 

I always wondered why a dog licking its genitals so impressed me!

corgidog

what you've missed is that your way of thinking is just an extension of a "western mentality", that you only think you are rejecting. in reality, you are embracing it unknowingly. you are maintaining the belief that there is only value/worth/respect/dignity, in the rational/thinking mind. therefore, you are obligated to extend animals rational thinking minds, so as to provide them with value/worth/respect/dignity. this is a self defeating logic loop. i believe it to be more arrogant to defend this ******** belief, that the only intelligence that exists is a product of a brain. if instead, the human mind is merely an elaboration of a more fundamental intelligence, as ndt suggests, respect for all things follows.

Well said and true for many, but not this pilgrim. 

I say we must look upon humans as merely more highly evolved mentally - in NO WAY does this mean I put a higher value on rationality.  It is a faculty we have in bucketfuls compared to other mammals - that is it.

Further, I have argued with many Aristotelean-Thiomists (A-Ters) that the very thing they say that makes man special and apart from nature and thus worthy of meeting God - rationality - is INDEED the faculty that makes us most UNdeserving of any such self-glorification.

 My dogs are so valuable to me because they center me back in nature: they are not ruled by rationality - they are more emotional.  But this does not mean they lack rationality either - they, like many mammals, evolved a degree of reasoning ability to help them negotiate their environments better.  They don't have as elaborate a cortex, partly since  they don't need it to walk on 4 vs 2 legs.

Hopefully, after reading this, you can get a sense of why I do not completely turn my back on Kevin's NDT talk, but also why I sympathize with many of its outspoken critics.

 If the premise is that dogs have a mind akin to ours, then why can't we use our subjective feelings as a legitimate means of inquiry because the premise is that we have some aspect of this in common with all animals?The trick would be to parse apart emotion from instinct, a feeling from a thought.

Also, I'm not saying that dogs don't have a memory, I'm saying that they have a physical memory and can't think about it so as to compare a moment from the past to a moment in present or future, and then make decisions based on that kind of linear analysis. Dogs' can't remember, but they never forget. They don't remember the past, they relive it. Furthermore, this physical memory to which I allude has a qualitative aspect (the specifics by which it was acquired) as well as a quantitative aspect (an "emotional mass" by which it has something in common with all other sentient beings). The qualitative aspect elicits old habits of mind and instincts, whereas the quantitative aspect (and this is the basis of what I mean by a "true" feeling) is the means by which any two animals can emotionally communicate because it recapitulates the earliest memories of life, being pushed and pulled, the feeling of warm flow coursing into the gut, warm tactile sensuality, etc.. This allows a new emotional value to displace an old qualitative memory. This latter modality of memory equips the individual to intelligently adapt to its surroundings because now its physiology and neurology are working in conformance to the same principles by which the natural world changes. Thus, by being social, it becomes a prediction of potential energy able to be realized via a cooperative team effort.

If the premise is that dogs have a mind akin to ours, then why can't we use our subjective feelings as a legitimate means of inquiry because the premise is that we have some aspect of this in common with all animals?

Can't we say we have the same problem trying to reach severely autistic people?  We have a radically different signaling (language) system, for one thing. 

Do autistic people think?  Must we posit their emotions work from an entirely different physiology than ours - as you make up for dogs - simply because their autistic behavior is different from what we easily grasp?

 One other thing, a brain requires a lot of your favorite stuff - energy - to function, so it better pay off with big dividends.  Dogs have brains that a structured a whole lot like ours.  And I know for a fact they are working hard.  I can feel some waste energy being emitted as heat from their head most of the time - noticeably more heat than from the rest of their body.

The following is what I mean by making-up your own physiology to account for behavior differences that, as SpiritDogs points out, is obfuscated by having a very limited common dog-human language:

 If I have to take a stab at it I would say that autistic people think very much, this in fact is the problem. Everything is mental. I heard one autistic person after being told that the meal they were being served will taste even better the next day as left overs, the autistic guest replied: "Then why didn't you make it yesterday?" The trouble seems to be feelings, and by this I mean the brain-to-gut connection and the interplay of physical memory in its quantitative sense.

Also, human brain is singular among animal kingdom in that it consumes a huge dose of energy as Sapolasky (?) noted in the lecture cited earlier. This is a profound distinction between man and dog. When we would sit around and think, dogs take a nap.  

 The dog brains are at work while they rest and when they sleep.  Their brains are eating up a lot of energy, like ours.

 OK. In really severe cases, the autistic does not speak, and maybe then one could posit no thoughts.  But as you correctly say, he/she thinks a lot.  Can you describe their thoughts...and...in the case where dogs, too, do not speak...can you say what their thoughts are?

No. 

 Shouldn't we all presume the severe autistic's thoughts are something like ours.   So, how about doing something similar for dogs and dolphins and apes?  Hume, Darwin, Whitehead, and Panksepp say you must.