In my view consciousness is energy that reflects back on itself so that it reliably repeats and nature is so construed with elements that reflect, absorb, conduct and interrupt the “flow” of consciousness, and this is because consciousness is not a self-contained phenomenon. Consciousness is a network device because it takes a network to turn physical energy into information. I believe that what happens in the mind is that a frame of reference is erected as containment vessel so to speak, so that this reflecting back and forth process can be enabled rather than energy being diffused and dissipated into the surroundings. The more advanced the brain, the more arbitrary the containment device, but that not to say that these frames of reference are completely in error since they are akin to dolphin sending out a sonar ping and then getting back a ping or a pong and thereby constructing an acoustical image of their reality. But it’s easy for the highly intellectual mind to be waylaid and I think this is the problem Whitehead is addressing.

I don’t think it’s coincidental that dogs and humans seem particularly prone to epileptic seizures because the higher the emotional capacity of a species, the more they go by emotional sonar and if there isn’t enough emotional grounding in this ping/pong process of consciousness, they can get stuck in an echoing loop that generates an unbearable amount of electro-chemical energy spikes in the central nervous system and the system crashes. Less emotional capacity and the animal stays reliably grounded into its network niche since it doesn’t have to create frames of reference on the fly and in novel circumstances. For animals of lesser capacity if they experience a rate of change that is too high they just go by instinct and this has its own measure of being adaptive. I think this is also why electroshock therapy remains the only viable course of treatment for the most severe cases of depression (which is over-stimulation rather than under-stimulation of the involuntary nervous system). The shocks wipe out these reverberations so that the system can reboot and establish a ground into the little-brain. {Luca Turin also talks of some morbid scent pathologies being a kind of epileptic seizure.}

These containment vessels while necessary, as I mentioned above are also arbitrary to greater or lesser extents because the human intellect tends to become attached to these frames and we end up projecting the ones that work for us onto animals in order to account for their behavior, and in particular to feel safe about emotionally investing in what dogs do.

Related posts:

1. Thoughts on Whitehead
2. Behan is too new-agey in his explanations to be taken seriously. He also dismisses large tracks of learning theory and psychology and ethology. He prefers undefined explanations like “emotional circuitry of dog and owner” Frankly I tend to dismiss and distrust anyone that talks about ‘energy’ or ‘vibrations’ to explain animal behavior.
3. Definitions