https://aeon.co/ideas/the-mind-isn-t-locked-in-the-brain-but-extends-far-beyond-it?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=d3f294acf8-Daily_Newsletter_7_July_20167_7_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-d3f294acf8-69057377
Currently, all theories of behavior— save one — treat the mind of the dog as a self-contained faculty of intelligence. It’s the easiest way for the human intellect to conceptualize the phenomenon of intelligence given that the intellect is primarily fixated on material causation. As this article puts it, historically the mind has been seen as “brain bound.” Likewise during the decades when I was formulating NDT and editing out human thoughts from the mind of the animal, I was at the same time swimming against the tide of scientific consensus which considered an organism’s phenotype a direct and one-to-one expression of its genotype. In other words, once an organism was born it operated as a self-contained genome. At the time behaviorism was looking for a gene for this and a gene for that. But this gene-centric view of behavior didn’t make sense when, through an immediate-moment manner of analysis, I came to believe that a universal code was underwriting the behavior of all species. And when a litter was born their temperaments were uniformly distributed according to a spectrum and these differences were then amplified through the stresses of life on planet earth. There was a deeper mechanism at work, Temperament, and in my NDT book I used the terms “group dynamic” and “group mind.” I came to understand the animal mind as an auto-tuning/feedback dynamic that integrated the individual with the environment, both the mind and the surrounding environment working according to the same laws of nature. With the advent of epigenetics mainstream science is now coming to this view as well as it demonstrates that the environment, and the organisms’s emotional response to the environment, can determine when genes are turned on and off and this variable manner of activation can radically affect how genes render physical or behavioral traits. It would appear from such articles above that mainstream science is now beginning to see this is true for the mind as well. However, it will very quickly fall back on intellectual understandings of cognition because it won’t be developing a model, it is still highly “brain bound.” Consider for example how the Mirror Neuron discussion ended up being distorted in this way.
So how does the mind extend itself into its surroundings? Through the projection of the body’s center-of-gravity, an immaterial, mercurial point around which an animal’s capacity to move, ability to achieve physical equilibrium and a state of emotional well-being, depends. This projected point is the “emotional center-of-gravity,” the kernel of a group mind, the source of collectivized, cooperative and altruistic behavior. This point which is not even in the body, is the key to the individual’s mind.
Therefore one can springboard off this understanding to make the following statements which integrate body, mind and nature. (1) When stimulated an animal MUST move. (2) Momentum commits the Mind to a Forward Point (e-cog) the Body MUST occupy. (3) These movements MUST conform to principles of Thermodynamics as well as the Laws of Motion. No action, no behavior operates in isolation from these logic statements. The next time you see a dog positioning its body next to another dogs’ body, resist the urge to put YOUR thoughts into their heads as in dominance, submission, territoriality, resource guarding, etc., etc.. Instead, practice inserting the above logic statements–the dog must move relative to the other dog–the Subject must occupy a Forward Point contained by the Object—and soon you will see a dog’s mind unfolding according to the laws of nature by which its surroundings function as well. You will not be looking at two self-contained entities of intelligence trying to figure out how to get along, you will begin to see two physical bodies becoming one emotional body, one group mind.
For hundreds of years, dog training has been revolved around the strongest is the ruler that’s where the term alpha leader comes from. Reading at your three points above make me thing of a whole new way to train dog. The simple application of your three points is at leash training methodology. I think we can try to teach the dog to learn to walk along with the owner willingly not by force.