Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit on NDT philosophy

 Emotion is hard-wired, like looking in the direction of a sound.  Having suckled, now smoozing with the siblings...

Burl

 Emotion is hard-wired, like looking in the direction of a sound.  Having suckled, now smoozing with the siblings...

 

 

And certainly, that is the quick synopsis of Panksepp and Solms, et al. But the corollary(?) is that it can also imply reasoning, as the hard-wired emotion is found in humans, who consider themselves reasoning creatures. Also, arrogant creatures, hence "Theory of Mind" to differentiate themselves from the other creatures. Oops, I think I said that out loud.

Burl

 Emotion is hard-wired, like looking in the direction of a sound.  Having suckled, now smoozing with the siblings...

 

 

And certainly, that is the quick synopsis of Panksepp and Solms, et al. But the corollary(?) is that it can also imply reasoning, as the hard-wired emotion is found in humans, who consider themselves reasoning creatures. Also, arrogant creatures, hence "Theory of Mind" to differentiate themselves from the other creatures. Oops, I think I said that out loud.

ron2

Burl

 Emotion is hard-wired, like looking in the direction of a sound.  Having suckled, now smoozing with the siblings...

 

 

And certainly, that is the quick synopsis of Panksepp and Solms, et al. But the corollary(?) is that it can also imply reasoning, as the hard-wired emotion is found in humans, who consider themselves reasoning creatures. Also, arrogant creatures, hence "Theory of Mind" to differentiate themselves from the other creatures. Oops, I think I said that out loud.

 

Now here is some weird stuff that we share with other mammals. You can fairly easily see the survival nature of the responses. Without training amamls tend to align themselves with the direction of higher frequency sounds. So does the ear notice distortion, pitch or direction more easily? Probably direction (or phase). Within about a degree at high frequencues, a hard wired response that gives a particular behaviour (alignment of head to sound). 

Low frequency sounds often create a sense of unease and in many animals trigger flight resposnes. It appears that we judge distance with low frequency stuff.

There are journals and journals and journals that talk about the field of physco acoustics. You can look on this site http://www.aes.org/ their journal usually  contains articles on this topic. Of course there is huge commercial value in this stuff, without it no MP3, dolby, telephone standards.

One simple corrolary is that there is one thing that dogs learn more simply from a sound cue than a visual cue is directional jumping. If you cue them with a audible signal in the direction that you wish them to go and jump, they learn really quickly... But i you treat them harshly and get frustrated with them, they shut down to all cues, so you might as well go into a corner and sulk.. it is about as useful as anything else that you may do.

 HI Spirit Dogs

spiritdogs

I, for one, would be very interested to see a video of you and a yet untrained dog, working on some obedience skills, or behavior modification exercises, based on your hypotheses about how to deal with dogs based on NDT.  

I am always up for this kind of test.There is probably no point as you know showing my older girl. All that you are going to see is one fast happy little dog . She has been trained with some of Panksepps ideas particually as far as using play much more heavliy. If you see the cues at the starting post, i deliberately do stuff to try and change her affective state, but it can be a little sublte.

But may be in a couple of weeks i could post working with my younger dog who can be quite feral and i could overlay what i am doing and why i am doing it? You would think for all intents and purposes  that i was just another positive trainer but using my dogs body and hence affective cues a little more heavily. I am probably even more "let it be" than many positive trainers, i don't know. I think that many positive trainers out there use a lot of Panksepps stuff almost accidentally.. they are so tuned into their dogs.

I think sharing our videos is a fun way fo expanding our knowledge.. and bring down cultural barriers. My personal love is taking really feral Labs and helping them and their owners get something going,It is simple stuff but is all about timing and observation.

I think we all agree that emotion is universal to all animals, and so in that sense I concur that it is hardwired. In other words, the genetic code of all animals endow them with the basic emotional repertoire of affects. However by definition if emotion is a universal feature of animal consciousness, it cannot therefore be a function of instinct since instincts are species-specific fixed action patterns dependent on more customized sets of genes and which keep the various species specifically adapted to their evolutionary niches. This is the point of departure I would like to make from the implication of the term hardwired, i.e. spitting out a series of pre-scripted actions. (For example; a feeling, predicated on emotion, is innate, spontaneous and automatic, but it is not a reflex because it is infinitely malleable to the emotional context of the moment.) So if emotion is universal it can therefore potentially enable any two animals to communicate, and of course there are many documented cases of this, most especially between dogs and every other animal, and this then means that emotion is the basis of a networked-intelligence. Furthermore, this is also why the best definition of emotion will prove to be that it is a universal impulse ("force";) of attraction.  
 

Kevin Behan

I think we all agree that emotion is universal to all animals, and so in that sense I concur that it is hardwired. In other words, the genetic code of all animals endow them with the basic emotional repertoire of affects.

Actually ,many behavourists and others would deny animals emotions. The basic premise of behavourism is that behaviour is studied , not the underlying phsiological or neuroligical origins of that behaviour. I really suggest that you get Panksepps book "Affective Neuroscience" as it has quite concise  chapter on this

Kevin Behan

However by definition if emotion is a universal feature of animal consciousness, it cannot therefore be a function of instinct since instincts are species-specific fixed action patterns dependent on more customized sets of genes and which keep the various species specifically adapted to their evolutionary niches.

This is a complicated mix up ! I try and use the word mode rather than emotion to explain to lay people what an emotion under modern research is defined as. One explanation is that an emotion is a nerochemical state that involves the actiation of a particular brain ciruit that may or may not be mediated by higher order brain functions. There are instinctive behaviours that result from such emotions that are often species specific. What you have got mixed up is that Emotion-> Instinctive Behaviour NOT the other way around. You would make a good behavourist!!!

There is a strong possibility that other animals can detect other animals emotional states. To do so is a very neccessary tool. There are several ways that this may happen. One is visually, another is by scent, it seems that for dogs there very good sense of smell aids them. We give them an abudant array fo signals as to what our state may be. It is vital for their survival that this be so. This communication involves emotional systems, and doesn't generally involve higher order mediated functions.I think Networked Intelligence is a fantasy at this stage and discredits what we know. An advantage of Networked intelligence would be that the overall intelligence would be raised, but to be honest we are communicating at a very primal level with a whole lot of information such as cognitive thought discarded.Any network that does this doesn't usually have the word Intelligence attached.

Kevin Behan

Furthermore, this is also why the best definition of emotion will prove to be that it is a universal impulse ("force";) of attraction.  

Emotions may jst as  easily result in distance being placed between animals, and in a huge number of cases does. You can look at Lion, Zebra interactions, for example. I can't accept this a all. it seems shallow and doesn't reflect the most basic of objective observations. It does nothing at all to understandings. Give me Panksepp !!

I can't accept [networked consciousness] at all. it seems shallow and doesn't reflect the most basic of objective observations. It does nothing at all to understandings. Give me Panksepp !!

 Agreed.  Poodle also said that animals show they read each other's emotion, which is surely so given that they involuntarily show up in our faces and in a host of other bodily phenomena.  If matronly care be a basic affect, when one species suck;es the pup of another, isnn't that reading another's emotion.

And as Ron says, all the above too demonstrates animals like us all have ToM - we all intuit that the other-over-there is behaving in a manner that I know something-of-what-it-is-like (I'm feeling Heidegger taking over my keyboard!)

And as for the reasoning that Ron credits dogs and other creatures - of course.  As Panksepp said, we all think in images, and surely dreams show us this.

poodleOwned

 HI Spirit Dogs

spiritdogs

I, for one, would be very interested to see a video of you and a yet untrained dog, working on some obedience skills, or behavior modification exercises, based on your hypotheses about how to deal with dogs based on NDT.  

 

 

I am always up for this kind of test.There is probably no point as you know showing my older girl. All that you are going to see is one fast happy little dog . She has been trained with some of Panksepps ideas particually as far as using play much more heavliy. If you see the cues at the starting post, i deliberately do stuff to try and change her affective state, but it can be a little sublte.

But may be in a couple of weeks i could post working with my younger dog who can be quite feral and i could overlay what i am doing and why i am doing it? You would think for all intents and purposes  that i was just another positive trainer but using my dogs body and hence affective cues a little more heavily. I am probably even more "let it be" than many positive trainers, i don't know. I think that many positive trainers out there use a lot of Panksepps stuff almost accidentally.. they are so tuned into their dogs.

I think sharing our videos is a fun way fo expanding our knowledge.. and bring down cultural barriers. My personal love is taking really feral Labs and helping them and their owners get something going,It is simple stuff but is all about timing and observation.

 

I do too, except I take pretty bad videos of myself LOL - the last one showed my belly fat (jeez, I almost just spit my own coffee all over my keyboard thinking about that). 

 Look what I found while looking thru all the Christmas pics on our forum from oreocookiemom (Happy Holidays! thread)

Talk about shared emotion 

 By "we" I meant that "we here in this forum" probably all agree that animals have emotion, not that everyone everywhere believes it.

PoodleOwned said: "One explanation is that an emotion is a nerochemical state that involves the actiation of a particular brain ciruit that may or may not be mediated by higher order brain functions."

So is this your position? If emotion is instinctive and can possibly be mediated by higher order brain functions, therefore when in a situation that the instinctual nature of emotion has not evolved to cope with, the higher the brain function of the animal, the more it can potentially adapt to those kind of novel situations.And therefore the infinite social adaptability of domestic dogs means that their emotions are moderated by higher brain functions, such as TOM. In short the higher the brain function, the more adaptable the animal. 

My point is to correctly articulate the logic stream of this forum. Presumably a goldfish is not aware of its owner's point of view, hence, TOM would be considered by most to be part of the catalog of higher brain function. So if emotion is instinctive as the point was just made, how does an animal under its affects, vary from these in order to adapt to novel situations since there is a high likelihood that said affects are non-adaptive since they are instinctive? Do they adapt by higher order brain function since the point was also just made that emotion can be moderated by higher brain function? If so, and since dogs are so adaptable to the novelty of human ways many of which the instinctive nature of emotion couldn't possibly have equipped them, is it logical to conclude that the adaptability of the domestic dog is a function of higher brain function?

Kevin Behan

since dogs are so adaptable to the novelty of human ways many of which the instinctive nature of emotion couldn't possibly have equipped them

 Kevin this statement is not clear, so an opinion on the following question may go off course.

Kevin Behan

is it logical to conclude that the adaptability of the domestic dog is a function of higher brain function?

Burl

Kevin Behan

is it logical to conclude that the adaptability of the domestic dog is a function of higher brain function?

 A paraphrase of Panksepp: We are bio-physical creatures that feel and think…non-humans are affectively enhanced and less cognitive, while we are more cognitive and less in touch with our affects.

 

Firstly i must say that i live in a way different time zone. So please do not regard my either answering or not answering to posts as any kind of rudeness of lack of interest. it is very reductionist, i just live in a different time zone! I am actually writing this at 1 44 AM because my dog needed to relieve herself and i couldn't go back to sleep.

I think that if we look at higher brain functions we can only make very generalist statements. The ability of neuron pairs to make decisions etc is enormous. We have a truck load of them. There is a lot of interesting stuff in Panksepp.  The correaltion between adapabilty and higher order functions may not be as simple as we think here, i can think of a few exceptions

Adapabilty is generally tied to higher order function. Adapability though comes at a huge cost because it takes time to wire it! Panksepp (and others ) borrow an engineering term RAM.. Random Access Memory which is memory that you can constantly read and write too.Writing too it is pretty behavourist ....