Comments on: What Are Dogs Thinking?

By: christine randolph

christine randolph — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 16:36:08 +0000

about this blog…
there’s 110 responses to this topic. i guess 111 with mine now.
when i click on the new posts to ReadMore, i then have to scroll down all the way and click Newer Posts to actually see the entire post.
Kevin tried to start a new discussion at New Years so we can contribute to that ? it would be easier. I think… can we do that ?

By: kbehan

kbehan — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 15:48:46 +0000

Christine: I would hope that no one here would take offense by anything one might think in a genuine pursuit of understanding. (In my emotional model there’s no such THING as offense, it’s actually a function of fear.) While I’m all for intellectual combat, humility is always in order as we may not be in any position to rate any given fundamental proposition as being more or less fantastical than another. It seems to me that the mainstream biological theory that consciousness emerged from nothing; is just as fantastic and requires the exact same leap of faith as the Creation story, alien insemination or quantum weirdness. Just because certain ideas might be conventional, doesn’t necessarily make them the most conservative interpretation of the evidence. Keep on pushing!

By: kbehan

kbehan — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 15:47:01 +0000

Right, the dog can lead us to the water, but it can’t prevent us from seeing our own reflection in it. I do believe however that we can see through the mirror if we learn to see by feel. We can learn to do this by seeing dogs in terms of the immediate-moment with emotion being a function of energy. Thanks.

By: kbehan

kbehan — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 15:44:40 +0000

I’ll be looking into the references you’ve posted but I’ve been warned that Whitehead is extremely difficult so don’t know how far I’ll get. If you would like to submit any correlates you’ve found between this philosophical systems and dog-as-being-of-the-immediate-moment, that could be helpful. At any rate, keep us posted and thanks for checking in and offering this input.

By: Heather

Heather — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 15:27:55 +0000

I remember a story of a Zen teacher asking his students “what is the way to enlightenment?” and one saying “polishing the mirror.” That was close, apparently, but the student who was ultimately to become the next master replied “what mirror?” The meaning being that while there is still an awareness of the mirror, a person is not truly living in the moment – there is still that separation.

I also don’t know whether dogs are here by some intention or design, but I guess it doesn’t much matter because they just are. The biggest obstacle to humans living in the moment is our own thinking – and a dog can (literally) be the mirror in the most difficult circumstances (its not the quiet moments that are difficult, but the super-charged ones). How amazing is that?

Before getting a dog I really had no idea how amazing they are. Certainly they are worthy of our respect and efforts to support their innate way of being! It seems to me that to try to humanize them by looking at their behavior it through the filter of human thought as a starting point (the “+R” specifically), is to get it backwards. Not that I think it is necessarily harmful to the dog, and the dog may perform at the highest level, but it is missing a lot of the wonder and it is more of a loss from a human point of view (to have something but not know it).

By: Christine

Christine — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 14:51:31 +0000

I found Burl’s blog interesting, especially his reference to Rene Descartes (Cartesian Philosophy). I consider myself to be a spiritual person (i.e. spiritual as opposed to religious; there is a difference!) and the Bible does support the concept that humans are not the only beings with souls. Genesis 1:20-31 refers to acquatic creatures, flying creatures and land animals as having souls, the same as humans. And we were given dominion over all of it so we ARE the masters, or more appropriately, the stewards of the earth. Kevin’s theories and philosphies seem to me to dovetail nicely with how the universe really works; the emotional battery and going by feel because thinking IS the box. Not that thinking is a bad thing, it is a gift from God. However, in our present, imperfect state we tend to misuse that gift and we get all balled up relying on thinking and logic alone as opposed to trusting our “gut” (feelings if you prefer).
Whether or not dogs are here for us to learn from is intential or happenstance I cannot say definitively. I am content with the understanding that ALL of creation is here for a reason and that we can learn a great deal from any and all parts of it.
If any object to my references to the Bible and God I am sorry, I do not intend to offend or make anyone feel uncomfortable, but that is how I FEEL!

By: Burl

Burl — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 22:22:36 +0000

Kevin

I found your website some years back when we first got our shelter dogs and we both read your book with interest. Your thoughts on energy resonated with what we see, and I have often mentioned these notions (and you) to other dog people over the years.

I recently revisited your site, now with its blogs, vids, and more ideas – most excellent. I have been studying philosophy as an avocation, and my biggest interest is in justifying my heartfelt conviction of how much is akin and in harmony between human and dog psyches (souls, if one wishes). (I was unconvincing in conveying my views to bloggers who followed a Cartesian body-mind(=religious spiritual soul) philosophy.

You have implied that you are open to scientific support and elaboration of your theories. I believe you might find extremely close collaboration between your ideas and the branch of metaphysical philosophy known as Process Thought, originated by the Harvard philosopher Alfred North Whitehead in _Process and Reality_ in 1929. Another more accessible writer whose thoughts are also process philosophy is Robert Pirsig of _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_.

Both speak of the centrality of the ‘immediate moment’ as the baseic reality. For Whitehead’s natural evolutionary cosmology, the only realities are ‘occasions of experience’ which are moments of activity caused by the FEELINGS, which each occasion takes into itself from its world. Whitehead coined the term ‘prehension’ to describe this ‘grasping’ of feelings, and he developed a fairly elaborate theory of all manner of these prehensions. He developed process philosophy (he also called it Philosophy of Organism) to bring science (particularly the new quantum theory) into a balance with itself and an experiencing world.

His theory of consciousness, which is attained in higher order sentient occasions of experience, is that it is the subjective form (essence) of those types of feelings that concern ‘what if this were not so’, or ‘if this were somehow something different).

I just thought you and your blog readers might be interested.

By: kbehan

kbehan — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 23:37:42 +0000

The second brain is not in the head, it is called the little-brain-in-the-gut, aka the enteric nervous system, aka the emotional brain. Humans and dogs have the same temperament, the same emotional mind, i.e. heart, which is a faculty of intelligence that reconciles the two brains and generates a true feeling. The difference is humans can think about what we feel and so we must choose to go by feel, whereas dogs just do.

By: kbehan

kbehan — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 23:32:46 +0000

In addition to the pushing exercise, I feel the eye-contact exercise is quite definitive. There’s no conditioning involved, the dog manifests the behavior in seconds because it’s an underlying template for its very consciousness. In future articles I’ll broaden the discussion to include other animals as well. But these are only tips of the iceberg. For example, why are any two dogs that live together evolve to become equals and yet opposites in all things but one? And if one dog is removed and another inserted, sure enough over a period of time it too becomes the polar complement of the original dog. This is in contravention to all learning theory as with the eye-contact exercise. It is stunning to me how much of behavior does not fit into the current models and yet there is no serious questioning. Meanwhile, these experiments I have profiled on this site have gross misinterpretations based on anthropomorphic projection of thoughts into the dog’s mind and this just slides by. Not to mention that no mainstream model can accommodate the phenomena of sexuality, personality, sociability, aggression, play, emotion and yet again no serious questioning of the current models.
Ultimately, everything requires a leap of faith and so I don’t guarantee I can prove anything, rather I’m arguing for the most comprehensive and conservative interpretation of the evidence, which is exactly how particle physics is conducted. Despite the high falutin math in physics, the evidence remains circumstantial and indirect.
You would be surprised to learn how much dog training has shifted over the last twenty years to incorporate the prey instinct/drive I’ve been promulgating and yet the mainstream models that co-opt the techniques then claim it verifies the very model it contradicts. Holistic vets are only recently coming around to the health of a whole dog.
Finally, since I’m arguing that emotion is the basis of a networked intelligence, therefore the same animal mind that runs the dog runs our emotional mind as well so if one is willing to suspend everything they think they know about the dog, and try to get in touch with my energy theory without resorting to any human thought to understand a dog’s behavior, they will be able to see the dog anew. I believe one can know what’s going on in a dog’s mind because it’s going on in our animal mind as well. Self exploration and a willingness to question everything is really the only way to know what I’m saying. Hope this helps, thanks.

By: Lee Charles Kelley

Lee Charles Kelley — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:20:49 +0000

Sorry, more gabreld stuff. (That was intentional, the bit with the word “garbled.”)

If you click on that lonesome “The” it’ll link you to my description of how to do the pushing exercise. The other link is self-explanatory.

Kevin may have other info in mind, but to my way of thinking, if there’s anything that definitively proves Kevin’s theory, it’s this one exercise.

LCK