According to science, not me, the human brain is singular among animals relative to animals in the amount of energy it consumes. The reason dogs can't wait to sleep, is because in dream time reality proceeds according to a pure emotional, energetic logic, and is far less taxing than in a wakeful state. Because dogs don't conceptualize and intellectualize and live wholly in the moment, they don't take anything for granted, they are constantly converting environmental friction into emotional values via their body/mind and this is all consuming.

The problem with severe autistics, apparently isn't due to obviously flawed mental equipment, but that they aren't in their bodies. Sensory inputs seem not to be grounded in the brain to gut connection and so they reverberate painfully in their mind. I think the "stimming" is an attempt to turn inputs into periodic rhythms instead of intense spikes, the smoothing out of which is in my view the function of the body/mind. There is also the case of an autistic boy from India whose mother refused to accept the diagnosis and taped a pencil to his hand and over the years by doing the actual writing herself at first, brought his mind to life so that he could actually write. He now travels the world giving lectures to professionals and parents and he said that the reason he would freak out and smack his body which would mortify everyone around him, is that he couldn't feel his body. Temple Grandin recovered her body/mind in this way as well with the cow press. My understanding was that even so, autistics have thoughts and their inability to socially integrate is that unlike dogs, they don't have a strong brain-to-gut connection. I've also been told there is affiliated gastro intestinal issues and difficulty tracking moving objects, not to mention aversion to eye contact (which penetrates the deepest layers of the body/mind as an emotional battery).Damasio writes about a condition wherein the person loses feeling in their gut, and then when the loss of sensations travels up and reaches their throat, they pass out. I see this as the brain being unplugged from the mind since the body is now missing.  

Kevin Behan

First question is to consider if there is evidence that there is a universal code, or platform, by which animals can emotionally bond? I am arguing there is (one example is the hippo/tortoise bond after 2004 tsunami, however the best everyday example is the domestic dog)

"Apophenia is the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena. The term was coined by K. Conrad in 1958 (Brugger)." -- http://www.skepdic.com/

A perfect example of the incredibly low standards required by the madness of NDT.  We can then extrapolate all manners of aberrant universal codes from any aberrant behaviour you can imagine.

Kevin Behan

and the logical consequence of this very far down the line, is that consciousness is an overarching phenomenon of all living things and that evolves in complete integration with the environment rather than it being a self-contained agency of the individual mind merely buffeted by the environment

Not only is this claptrap not reasonable, the consequence you wish to impose on it does not exist. It is not only illogical, it is highly implausible. 

Bertrand Russell wrote "that those who feel certainty are stupid" and Darwin that the ignorant are always sure of themselves; well how much ignorance does it take to believe that with no education you've stumbled onto a new physics, new biology, new chemistry that no one else has seen.  How much ignorance does it take to believe that you've figured out how all of life develops and the true nature of evolution simply by watching dogs and never getting a degree?

Kevin Behan

Therefore all organisms are interconnected via emotion.

No. Even if we accept all animal have the same basic emotions, there is no reason to posit 'interconnectivity' 

Kevin Behan

Emotion and its equal and opposite counterpart, stress, also turns genes on and off and this will prove more logical platform for the genetic shifting of the species and so I believe this is where epigenetics is going to end up.

More drivel. Stress is not the opposite of emotion. Behan your logic reeks and actual experiments trumps your

Kevin Behan

Now before this logic might appeal to someone, they may first have to recognize that there are some internal contradictions

You've always failed to point out any contradiction.  And when you attempt to do so, it only highlights how little you understand what you are trying to criticize. 

 I'm still waiting for an experimental scheme to investigate the major aspects of NDT.  The cowardly dodge to address it is noted.

 BTW Kevin you still haven't told us how you managed to turn selective imitation into uncontrollable urge?  Any chance that you'll stop punking out and address this?

Kevin Behan

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 explains nothing.  It also show how poorly Behan understand the concept of energy as it applies in the real world.  And for those that like to get really technical we can even rip him on this 'energy of change' nonsense. It is quite possible to have 'change' without any change in energy.

 Lets' rework his sentence and see if anything changes?

Network consciousness works by Elven Lords 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

Nothing changes.

The most obvious question is HOW is energy captured? What kind of Energy?  What Organ captures this Energy? How is it Stored?  None of which Behan is able to answer because he has simply made this up. 

OTOH those that deal in reality can point to the cell, the organelle, the molecule involved in 'energy', we can detect it and quantify it without any problem. This applies across all fields from dust to stars.

Kevin Behan

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.

The reader won't be surprised to know that Behan is once again wrong and the evolution of communication and signals can be explained most easily with a Darwinian model.

 On a different vein, this may be of interest for those who train with markers.

The auditory cortex mediates the perceptual effects of acoustic temporal expectation

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v14/n2/abs/nn.2688.html?lang=en

It requires payment for the full article but the abstract should give you enough info and it can probably be accessed for free from any college or university library, maybe even your public library.

 http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/57959/

Dad's genes affect dominance

Reading the article as I write this. But NDT and Behan take another beating from science.

Burl

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.

I like what Hume wrote on this in 'Of the Reason of Animals'

Next to the ridicule of denying an evident truth, is that of taking much pains to defend it; and no truth appears to me more evident, than that beasts are endow'd with thought and reason as well as men. The arguments are in this case so obvious, that they never escape the most stupid and ignorant.

Kevin Behan

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.  

Once again Behan, your beliefs have no common ground with reality. *removed by moderator - personal attack*

One way by which evolution occurs is gene duplication followed by modification.   Well documented across all biota.  It also points to the Behan's erroneous (que'lle suprise!) belief in teleology - that nature has intention.

For the sake of full disclosure, I should also mention that genome reduction is a player in evolution. Most easily seen in mitochondria DNA and endosymbionts.

Kevin Behan

 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.  

Most of thiis is off the planet in terms of facts that we know, hard physical facts, or is restatements of prinicipals that you suggest you don't agree with. It is never enough to come up with a theory, it is incumbent on you to back it up. 

I am going to deal with just one fallacy of yours, i will leave it to others to deal with the rest. I am kind of sick of it, but realise that i have to go the distance so that others don't think that you hold the answers because you don't.

""  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""

This is just plain wrong. The internet is actually a robust netwrok but is not efficient or particually fast and is quite difficult computationally. Much more data floats around the internet than is recieved or transmitted. In fact in terms of total energy and speed, it would be better to load it on one computer, and to some extent that is the purpose of local servers. 

But like nature, there is always a trade off between FAPS and adaptable learning, oops behavorism stirkes its "ugly head"!!

So the larger the network the more complicated it is to interface unless there is sufficient local intteligence to process it. In distributed systems, there is an emphasis on redundacy and simplicity and the whole is actually less than the sum of the parts. There are lessons here. There is a strong argument (which can be modelled) that the intelligence lies wirth the unit, that the unit has FAPS and can learn from expiosure to the environment, that emotions compel this exposre,  That interactions are governed by quite simple rules held by the unit not by the group.

Now here is another point..

 AI (A huegly intersting field) and associated researchers spend millions of dollars and thousands fo hours working out how to mimic nature. A new field of endeavour is "Affecive Computing". Much of this is abstraction. We sure as hell can model reinforcement as a training stratergy and it works well. Modelling emotions is quite new, we needed researchers like Panksepp to codify things better to make it workable. It may make the maths more workable than some preivious models. The model of attraction is old old old and discredited. It isn't even that novel. Read Panksepp Pge 45 and 46 for a courteous and damming critique of this view..Sort of the hard luck story is that you have to write the Maths or find someone to do it.. If you believe that it is right, you get to put up or shut up. That is how science works. I believe that there is some vaidlity in an affective approach so spend my time and my skills pursuing it. If i am succesful then it is workable and i may publish and be dammed. If it isn't well i will move on to soemthing else. That is how it works. There are millions of people out there blowing off with so called original ideas, but as Edison said invention is 99% perspiration. That is why i detest your carry ons.You cheapen the work of real hard working scientists with BS .

The sad thing is that this internet, the work of scientists so that they could talk peer to peer is being used to peddle anti science quackery that in the end will cause dogs and humans to suffer more than they should. It is sometimes a mad sad world!

corgidog

Themilkyway, the points kbehan is making go so far over your head. Just to let you know, the larger font size doesn't improve your argument. Actually, you have no argument. You just state kbehan is wrong. Anyone can do this. Your intellectual credibility has been bested by the need to resort to an h1 tag.

By the way, you have a lot of work to do policing the internet. Check out this book & author http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/books/review/Coyne-t.html who also has an idea that challenges us to think in new ways.

Your statements are boring and predictable. Don't you realize that over the last thirty pages you are saying the exact same thing without making a specific argument against ndt?

stating ndt is mush, doesn't make it so.

The large font wasn't part of the argument Corgidog. *removed by moderator - rude* .  Behan is spouting sheer, demonstrable idiocy. Time and time again he's been proven to be wrong but in a perfect display of intellectual cowardice he refuses to address his errors.  The poor fellow doesn't even know the meaning of allergy, but still tried to work it into his argument.

I treat garbage as garbage and that is what Behan and you are peddling.  In the past 35 pages, neither of you has made one empirically defensible claim.  Stop wasting my time and learn some science - *removed by moderator - rude*

And you poor fellow, read the whole article because the author makes the same criticism I just made regarding teleology. 

"But his take on biological evolution is one that, while beloved of creationists, is completely rejected by scientists: he sees it as teleological, driven by external forces to achieve certain goals.

Sadly, evolution doesn’t work this way. In fact, the distinguishing feature of evolution is the complete absence of “laws” or “forces” that push it in a single direction. "

 Kevin

I think you need to stay out of the field of Autism. You are talking a fair amount of gbberish. Autism is a continum. A significant number of succesful animal trainers are well down the spectrum. I find a lot of what you wiite insulting, plain wrong and unhelpful. Social integration is a variable. Many Autistics do learn to intergrate to quite an extent. It has nothing to do at all with so called brain to gut connections, but self reinfoecement and self learning. That nast thing called behavourism. That BS about eye contact is just.................... Here is how you find out.. It is called research, someting that you never seem to do. Ask someone who knows. There is bound ot be someone around you who has say Asperger's. Ask them why they don't make eye contact how does it fell? What goes on? Rather than relying on the view of a quack..

You could also ask them how they fell during a melt down? (the self smacking.. quite common)  What goes on? What starts and stops it?  And deal with known anatomical facts rather than maginal crap from quacks.

I iwsh you would have the good grace  to withdraw this post. It is a poisinous piece of patronising ioncorrect garbage and it offends me on a personal level greatly.

This is just plain wrong. The internet is actually a robust netwrok but is not efficient or particually fast and is quite difficult computationally. Much more data floats around the internet than is recieved or transmitted. In fact in terms of total energy and speed, it would be better to load it on one computer, and to some extent that is the purpose of local servers.

 Corgi Dog

Read my post carefully. Look at my words, then get back to me. I said " terms of total energy and speed"...  Do some research I did not say flexiblity or adapatabiliy. I was very careful with my language...

I am now reporting you for abuse, something that you are fond of dishing out but not fond of taking . Yoiu insulted my dog and now you insult me.

 Let's go here and reply to questions by citing the works of noted researchers when answering questions.  This is the only way to end this circular argument.  No ndt, just Kevin and corgi responding with citations from others in support of claims - same for everyone else, any opinion must be related to some study.