If I’m somewhat understanding Burl’s very deft translations and commentary on Whitehead, then apprehension is mental and prehension is energy. And therefore animals have no intention, rather they feel the energy that percolates up through their cells and then through their metabolic, mechanical and neurological systems and then go on to formulate a coherent response to their world. Furthermore, prehension fundamentally revolves around a state of resonance with energy, and therefore animals learn in reverse, backwards in time which is another argument against intention since that is forward directed. In other words, animals develop in embryo in complete resonance, they are born with the answer already inculcated in every cell, fibre, tissue and neuron of their being, and then through prehension (sense the essence within the form) they ultimately connect with those things in nature that serve to recapitulate resonance. Whereas the human intellect sees them working things out as if they are mentally apprehending what’s happening over time and relative to other points of view, when they are really “learning: backwards in time, regressing internally to a state of resonance but now, by unconsciously inducing the object of attraction to play its part as a counterbalance in that same wave function, and given all the experiences they’ve metabolized as stress, incorporating all that energy of resistance back to a smooth wave function of resonance has added more energy to the network. So animals are out there as stress magnets bumping into things, generating friction, and then turning this into a wave function which we otherwise recognize as social structures. This resistance is now part of consciousness, and more importantly as information that expands the network. It seems to me that prehension is a manifestation of a network consciousness.
How do kids learn to ride a bike? At each phase of the process, the awareness of a tense contrast of successful rolling forward and upright juxtaposed with the possible painful failure by falling IS conscious intent.
But what happens as we progress successfully? The feelings of contrast lose their intensity as we become less and less conscious of what we have to do, until it is no longer a conscious effort, merely an experience of what is (until we lose our traction in loose gravel and are again conscious of our situation).
A dog learning to ride a bike will go thru the same conscious process. A bird gradually learns that the initial intense awareness of danger is now diminished w/r its enjoyment of the feed, so it now unconsciously eats even while a human is at the window. What is common to the kid, dog, and bird? They learn new things. And what is required for learning…R…E…A…S…O…N.
Just ‘cuz doggie don’t talk and birdie don’t do algebra, we have no warrant to conclude that they do not consciously reason. Why so many are happy to say we have shared embodied emotion systems, but think conscious reasoning is altogether given to humans, really is an echo of mediaeval notions that animals are soul-less.
The trail from mundane existence to the thrill of awareness of novel adventure is that of experience becoming consciously alive. Evolution is not propelled by survival of the fittest, if it were, the process should have culminated with rocks, which survive far longer than any evolved life form. The creative advance towards greater adventure is what Whitehead understands to be the thrust of reality. In a similar vane, Pirsig quips that all evolution is merely an attempt to defy gravity (like dogs jumping, and us going to the moon)!
Disparage A. N. Whitehead as you wish. Most do owing to the formidable challenge posed by the depth of his thought. But should you like to experience creative advance, you could easily approach Whitehead through Fr. Thomas Hosinski’s _Stubborn Fact and Creative Advance _.
Oh, the experience dogs have pulling on their leash is one of the best examples of contrast of ‘what is but might not be’ – I am tethered here but could be on top of that squirrel. This has to be one of the greatest exhilirating CONSCIOUS awarenesses a dog might have. See if a cell phone can feel that.
Conscious yes, but would Whitehead say that animals are self-aware, have thoughts about themselves, ie, “self-consciousness”? There is in fact no separate-ness, there is only connected-ness, we are all, even the rocks, of the same ever-moving/changing stuff and living in the same physical world. Humans have the ability to understand this, which results in the development of complex personalities (the self-consciousness) to enable us to deny it for some measure of perceived safety. These personalities bumping up against each other results in all sorts of conflicts between humans. It doesn’t seem to be the case for other animals (except maybe primates) – to me, the evidence seems to point to animals feeling connected, not separate. I actually think it’s more amazing that way, it means there is so much we can learn from animals, that it is possible to discover our “animal-mind” as Kevin puts it, and animals can show us the way.
Burl: “How do kids learn to ride a bike? At each phase of the process, the awareness of a tense contrast of successful rolling forward and upright juxtaposed with the possible painful failure by falling IS conscious intent.”
KB: I don’t know what you mean by the term “conscious intent,” but in my mind intention means an apprehension of a future consequence, and so riding on a bike feels good because it recapitulates weightlessness and this isn’t an intention, getting on the bike to go somewhere is an intention, or getting on the bike to learn how to ride a bike is an intention. There are a million reasons and intentions for getting on a bike, but there is only one way to feel good about being on a bike, weightlessness. So I would say being weightless is a pure state of consciousness, and I wouldn’t invoke the term intention. It’s like going to sleep. I don’t have the intention to dream or what I will dream, I just have to get to weightlessness because it’s how my consciousness is organized completely beyond my comprehension, as it is for the newborn baby as well who I don’t think has any intention of nodding off in order to get some rest. In dream time there’s no resistance to consciousness so it’s a pure manifestation without any mental rationality to encumber its smooth progression. This is why dogs are always nodding off because it’s hard work for them to focus energy in order to deal with this fractious dimension of gravity and resistance.
Burl: “But what happens as we progress successfully? The feelings of contrast lose their intensity as we become less and less conscious of what we have to do, until it is no longer a conscious effort, merely an experience of what is (until we lose our traction in loose gravel and are again conscious of our situation). A dog learning to ride a bike will go thru the same conscious process. A bird gradually learns that the initial intense awareness of danger is now diminished w/r its enjoyment of the feed, so it now unconsciously eats even while a human is at the window. What is common to the kid, dog, and bird? They learn new things. And what is required for learning…R…E…A…S…O…N.”
KB: I still don’t see why we need to add reason to the formula. As the wheels spin, their mass increases and this lowers the center of gravity of the system to which the rider is physically attached and so the balance problem is neutralized and hunger for motion has precedence. Eventually, all the motion of the the entire system averages out and the center of consciousness takes up residence in the heart rather than the Big-Brain and we are in a heightened state of pure flow because we have become less rational and more attuned to energy. We have become one with the bike, with the road, with the scenery rolling by, there is a diminished sense of a self as apart and distinct from the flow of energy. The most enjoyable bike rides are characterized by no thoughts, no reason, just the feeling of energy.
Burl: “Just ‘cuz doggie don’t talk and birdie don’t do algebra, we have no warrant to conclude that they do not consciously reason. Why so many are happy to say we have shared embodied emotion systems, but think conscious reasoning is altogether given to humans, really is an echo of mediaeval notions that animals are soul-less.”
KB: It seems to me you’re making a moral argument that human reason is superior to any other form of intelligence and should therefore be accorded to animals so that they can be accredited with a soul. And if emotion and reason are inextricably linked, then why do we even need the term emotion? Every dog owner I’ve ever worked with has tried to reason their dog out of its emotion/feelings/drive, (I’m your leader, I love you, I will reward you, I will correct you) and it never works. This is because emotion/feelings/drive has a physics, and if that isn’t reconciled it’s all for naught.
Burl: “The trail from mundane existence to the thrill of awareness of novel adventure is that of experience becoming consciously alive. Evolution is not propelled by survival of the fittest, if it were, the process should have culminated with rocks, which survive far longer than any evolved life form. The creative advance towards greater adventure is what Whitehead understands to be the thrust of reality. In a similar vane, Pirsig quips that all evolution is merely an attempt to defy gravity (like dogs jumping, and us going to the moon)!”
KB: I think NDT is the only behavioral system which is saying that evolution isn’t about survival of the fittest. It’s a network consciousness so that adding energy to the network is how an individual flourishes. It’s not about gene replication or survival whatsoever, those are human concepts, concoctions of reason. Network consciousness turns gravity into new energy. Network consciousness is the only system postulated that does in fact defy gravity.
Burl: “Disparage A. N. Whitehead as you wish. Most do owing to the formidable challenge posed by the depth of his thought. But should you like to experience creative advance, you could easily approach Whitehead through Fr. Thomas Hosinski’s _Stubborn Fact and Creative Advance _.”
KB: Again, I don’t understand Whitehead so I’m certainly not disparaging what he’s saying. But I will go to the mat about the notion of reason because it is the grist of my daily grind working with problem dogs and owners. The modern dog owner is going more by reason than in any time in the relationship between man and canine and it’s not working out well for the dog. (The dog was domesticated via humans who went by heart, i.e. a feel for the hunt.) The dog’s mind is an energy circuit, it’s not about the dog, it’s a group consciousness. I don’t believe a dog has an individual soul, but participates in a group soul. Understanding what dogs are here to show us is a great adventure in consciousness. What I’m trying to say is that dogs show us that the information is in the energy, not in the brain.
Burl: “Oh, the experience dogs have pulling on their leash is one of the best examples of contrast of ‘what is but might not be’ – I am tethered here but could be on top of that squirrel. This has to be one of the greatest exhilirating CONSCIOUS awarenesses a dog might have. See if a cell phone can feel that.”
KB: A dog pulls on the leash because output doesn’t equal input. It has no idea why it’s pulling, it’s trying to balance the emotional checkbook. A thousand volts of squirrel input requires a thousand volts of tactile grounding and the tension on the lead and someone yelling and screaming at him and jerking him around thereby becomes what catching a squirrel feels like because it’s the only thing real and physical that’s happening to it.
If a dog could reason, it would chase a ball–once. “You threw the ball, you go get it.” But a dog will chase a ball to the point of death. Derek Jeter is a rational person, he gets a lot of glory and money playing baseball, but even he won’t shag a ball to the point of death. What rational person chases a car?
People suspect that I’m a mechanist because I’m talking about the mechanics of emotion but I’m not equating a dog with a cell phone. I believe that only by understanding the mechanics of emotion can we see how energy is organizing everything, even rationality. Because of the two brain makeup, every thought ever thought in the final analysis merely adds to the force of attraction available to the network.
Very well said, Kevin.
For anyone else interested, I sometimes get the feeling that when Kevin and I discuss the differences — the clear dividing lines — between canine and human cognitive abilities, it’s as if we were discussing a dog’s anatomy with people who believe — or, rather, who are totally convinced — that dogs can walk upright on two feet, they have fully-opposable thumbs, and large brains with fully-developed frontal lobes. (I also get the feeling that there are two different people using Burl’s screen name.)
Just as there are differences in the physical evolution of dog and human, there are differences in our cognitive abilities.
There are two pdf files available on my website which enable anyone who’s interested in looking at what some of the top cognitive scientists in the world think about what the dividing lines are between human and animal consciousness. They also include all references to all kinds of (for the most part) carefully-designed studies that have been done to try and determine what cognitive abilities humans and animals have and don’t have. These are people who are highly trained in this area and spend their entire lives working out these issues.
Darwin’s Mistake
Rational Animals?
I haven’t read much of Whitehead, but I have a feeling he’d be scratching his head over the idea that dogs have the ability to engage in conscious, rational thought.
For instance, Burl wrote: “What is common to the kid, dog, and bird? They learn new things. And what is required for learning? R…E…A…S…O…N.”
This isn’t at all true. A cuttlefish can learn new ways to read cues on where to find prey. The stentor, a single-celled organism, can learn, by experience, which behavior (out of several options) will enable it to avoid noxious substances in its environment.
Burl: “the experience dogs have pulling on their leash … has to be one of the greatest exhilirating CONSCIOUS awarenesses a dog might have.”
Kevin has given a fully-realized alternative explanation for this behavior, as have I (in a recent article at <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/my-puppy-my-self/201006/why-dogs-pull-the-leash-pt-ii-gender-roles-sexual-chemistry"PsychologyToday.com). If you’re going to state, so emphatically, that pulling on the leash really is based on conscious awareness, you’d have to describe exactly how this is possible.
Can you prove, logically, that dogs have a conscious awareness of themselves as “selves” (meaning they’re aware that they’re something separate and apart from their experiences and their environment), that they have a conscious awareness of the difference between their present, past, and possible future circumstances, and that they are capable of mentally conjuring a number of hypothetical outcomes to non-real, imagined events, as well as a number of theoretical, imaginary avenues for the possible (or hypothetical) success of those outcomes?
Do dogs really “think things through,” or do they feel things out? Which is the more logical, and the more parsimonious, explanation?
LCK
Sorry for the problems with the text following the first two links.
Here (hopefully) is the third link:
Why Dogs Pull on the Leash, Pt. II”
LCK
Lee, I do not think the divide between canine and human emotion/reasoning is clear, yet … one can find studies that disagree on basic issues. I have read many on cognitive ethology. I read your pdfs a while back and your blogs.
I agree I am contradicting myself where in a previous comment I said dogs reason, then retracted the word when Kevin challenged me. This made me want to go back to Whitehead, where I knew for sure that he applied the same emotionality and consciousness to ALL higher order organisms. This is what prompted me to reread a few of his key sources and bring his ideas up to this group once again.
Mistake. I am no longer under the illusion that anyone has or will seriously read Whitehead, but if you don’t, don’t call him convoluted and untrue. Simply say you haven’t read his theory describing phases of prehension leading (in rare occasions) to conscious awareness of the contrast inherent in an affirmation/negation propositional feeling. If you could understand this concept, you will see why kid, dog, and bird are consciously aware when entertaining such basic propositions, and such a process is defined in most dictionaries as REASON.
Sorry for the shock, but having an agenda that mandating that dogs cannot reason just don’t make it so. At best, it is a matter of a private subjective experience – yours and the dog’s. Ask any honest person where that leaves you.
BTW, I stand by my claim that “the experience dogs have pulling on their leash is one of the best examples of contrast of ‘what is but might not be’ – I am tethered here but could be on top of that squirrel. This has to be one of the greatest exhilarating CONSCIOUS awarenesses a dog might have. ” Understand Whitehead’s theory of consciousness and you will see why.
I made a statement of what it is like to experience conscious awareness. Period.
This statement is the reason I hate text arguments: “If you’re going to state, so emphatically, that pulling on the leash really is based on conscious awareness, you’d have to describe exactly how this is possible.” Lee I never said or implied any such thing. But, I will not bother to explain how valuational and appetitive tones of prehensions arise, but the leash pulling event is initiated in emotion.
To sum up, for living organisms, feelings and emotion are the rule, with periodic events of conscious awareness. I do not know what it is like to for other beings, but I do see _basic_ reasoning behavior in my dogs.
“Can you prove, logically, that dogs have a conscious awareness of themselves as ‘selves’ (meaning they’re aware that they’re something separate and apart from their experiences and their environment)”
This is semantics, but I would say that it is not possible to have an “awareness” of being “something separate and apart from experiences and environment,” because in fact it is not possible to be separate. The separation is a mental construct. So to me the question would be, which, if any, non-human animals have behavior that might indicate that they think of themselves as separate and apart. I don’t know if science bears this out, but it seems that language would be an important aspect of thinking in this manner.
I’ve only been able to read portions of Whitehead because I can’t understand him. I admire that you are able to absorb and discuss it so cogently and I’m willing to rely on your interpretation as a legitimate introduction. I think I’m pretty much on board with everything you’ve said until we get to the reason part. I get the dynamic contrast component and I agree that emotion and feelings are the norm for animals, and that leash pulling begins in emotion, but I don’t see the propositional aspect. In my model the dog pulls on the lead because the squirrel’s fluffy body and high vibration triggers physical memory in gut of grounding experiences, but there is nothing in the gut so we’re dealing then with ungrounded energy and hence the vibration of an intensely excited dog. This is the nature of the dynamic contrast. The dog is running in place by pulling on the lead because output-has-to-equal-input or else the state of attraction will collapse and the dog is running toward the squirrel to escape those sensations of falling, which is in animal consciousness the definition of death. So it is being pushed from behind by fear and pulled toward the preyful essence of the squirrel by hunger as revealed in its shape, texture and vibration. I don’t see the reason in it or that the dog is cognitively comparing where-it-is-now relative to where-it-could-be-next. So while no physicist knows what it’s like for an atom to be an atom, nevertheless I’m willing to entertain someone who develops a model for what’s going on inside an atom that best conforms to how atoms behave in reality. It doesn’t prove anything of course, but a model that is resonant with behavior would be the most logical explanation until a better model comes along. It doesn’t seem to me that Whitehead is postulating a model and therefore I believe that unless there is a model for what’s going on inside the dog’s mind, then we could say he’s excited by the squirrel by any means. If we say it’s in a state of reason, we can likewise extend reason to bacteria floating toward a food source in a medium. They don’t get there by accident. Without a model terms like instinct, association, reinforcement, high value, etc,. are actually meaningless, they serve as a handy labeling, categorizing device, not as a means of explication. Unless I have a model for why my car starts, I can’t say anything about why my car starts. So I am unclear about the distinction you’re making between emotion, feelings and reason in terms of a model for a dog’s mind. If a feeling is propositional, then a feeling is rooted in the concept of time and I believe this is a contradiction in terms. If feelings are propositional, then there cannot be a model for the mind, it is free form and that would preclude even a philosophical system for consciousness as nothing definitive could be said.
One of the definitions from my dictionary that best fits this discussion says reason is a computation. So if the dog is computing that its life would be better if it had the squirrel in its jaws, what about the dog that has never had a squirrel in its jaws and yet is wildly energized by squirrels even though it’s never experienced a squirrel in its jaws? Most would say it’s going by instinct and so now then is instinct in the novitiate dog synonymous with reason? How exactly does a dog reason that its life would be better by getting the squirrel, what criteria was pulled into the rationale process to arrive at that conclusion? Why does a dog’s hackles go up when it sees its first squirrel and only after subsequent sightings does it engage in leash pulling and now the hackles are down? At the sight of the squirrel why does a cat go into stalk mode whereas the dog leaps to the chase, the cat’s behavior is more reasonable, more likely to lead to the consumation of its attraction to the squirrel? And then if reason has anything to do with it, wouldn’t some dogs become excited because they want to play with a squirrel rather than kill it but instead we see that the degree of excitement is directly proportional to the drive in the dog to kill the squirrel when it catches it? That linkage would mean in the Whitehead schema that the squirrel-killing dog is more conscious and aware and reason inspired than the squirrel-playing dog. In this view of consciousness and emotion, then wouldn’t denying the dog the squirrel will do harm to its state of consciousness? Even if one humanely channels its energy into an alternative expression, the dog can still reason and be damaged by the betrayal of the owner. Why can’t a dog reason that the pulling on the lead is futile as this never leads to squirrel in jaws and instead gets it harshly corrected by an irate owner? And if such an owner does successfully intimidate the dog so that it doesn’t pull on lead when it sees a squirrel, why then does this denial of squirrel energy method of training then leach into all other areas of the dog’s behavior and deportment rather than stay confined to the reason for why, when, where and how it was corrected? Finally, how is reason different from energy-can reason control and dictate terms to energy? Until these questions are answered then I don’t believe we can be accused of having an agenda. In today’s modern dog ethos it would be much a easier path to be cheering for reason.
My argument is that a model that accommodates all these possibilities without resorting to reason is more logical than an explanation that doesn’t provide a model and uses reason to hold the disparate parts together. And if emotion, feelings and consciousness are universal, then it should be possible to know what’s in a dog’s mind to some extent and construct such a model because we all experience emotion and feelings and are conscious. What we need is a model to find the commonalities and parse apart the distinctions.
There is a problem with observing one’s own dogs (or a small number of dogs) to look for evidence of rationality/reason — dogs are so emotionally conductive and in tune with humans, that our own lack of understanding of “who we are” influences their behavior to a large extent. So what may be taken to be evidence of rational thought, is instead an indirect expression of the dog’s owner’s “irrational” thought. In other words, we can screw up our dogs just like we screw up ourselves, so looking to our own dogs, or a few dogs we know, for insights on which to base a model is going to be problematic. Kevin is in a unique position of having been able to study thousands of dogs over the period of a lifetime, so in effect he has made discoveries (vs. just conducting a series of “experiments”). Since it’s not really possible to study “domestic” dogs in a “wild” setting (they wouldn’t be domestic), and wolves are not really a close enough substitute, this real-life laboratory is probably as close as it is possible to get to a natural setting for studying dogs.
Honestly, Kevin, I am no cognition researcher, so I haven’t got definitive answers to naby questions you raise. I reread this essay by ANW http://www.anthonyflood.com/whiteheadreason.htm and think you will benefit from reading its 1st Chapter. He discusses the purpose of reason at the level of a single organism and at the general global level simultaneously. One quote: “Reason is responsible for bringing novelty into the appetitions of mental experience.” Think of reason as giving ability to make progress by evaluating the implications for action posed by the contrasts felt in the present conscious event. It might help to think of a stray dog.
While reading the 1st chapter above, I started to realize I was thinking “Ted Kerasote was following this line of ANW’s ideas when giving Merle the freedom to experience novel adventure.
I read CH 1 of the essay, and my take-away is that Whitehead is chiefly concerend with reconciling religious teachings with what was becomming clear about the physical nature of things. To establish an intellectually-satisfying middle ground.
To live, to live well, to live better, accomplished via reason…those are subjective, relative terms, which follow from his “reversing” the way of looking at things — instead of looking from earlier (animal) to later (man), which is offensive to the religious view, look in the other direction, from man to earlier animals.
It is a neat way to straddle the fence as a religious scientist, and probably most useful for heads of religion to hold things together at the time. The problem is that at the start he is not open to all possibilities – it is necessary for man to be special in the religious sense.
I’m no cognition researcher either so we have a big advantage. I’ll talk about one paragraph that stood out for me in that article but in the overall I think Heather summed it up well. I think Whitehead is making a very necessary argument against the nihilism of survival of the fittest which was the prevailing mantra of that era but I think it doesn’t address the notion of a network consciousness, wherein there is no such thing as one species competing against another. Every species evolves in terms of the network. The network expands, the various genomes shift as an expression of that uniform charge.
“I now state the thesis that the explanation of this active attack on the environment is a three-fold urge: (i) to live, (ii) to live well, (iii) to live better. In fact the art of life is first to be alive, secondly to be alive in a satisfactory way, and thirdly to acquire an increase in satisfaction. It is at this point of our argument that we have to recur to the function of Reason, namely the promotion of the art of life. The primary function of Reason is the direction of the attack on the environment.”
If by reason you mean that there is an overarching framework to everything in the universe, then I agree, however, I think the term energy is more accurate than reason, because it has innate properties and principles of movement and this is what “directs the attack.” I am trying to show that in the absence of a model for what’s going on inside the animal, which is a mind we are only dimly aware of within ourselves, we end up missing a simple truth about the nature of the self, altruism, the nature of sociability, choice, emotion and so on because everything will become enfolded into thoughts. I don’t believe that animals have an apprehension of time and I believe that is essential to what is generally recognized as human reason. Without the distinctions between the various components of the mind I feel this kind of argument ends up running into itself. In my view, “the live, live well, and live better” can be more concisely and accurately stated as add-energy-to-the-network. There are examples of noble individuals choosing death in order to “live better” because they saw their death contributing to a larger cause, in other words, their death added energy to the network. So even the notion of life isn’t big enough to encompass the phenomenon of how things self-organize to plug into the network. The prey are to be eaten by predators, their death adds to the network and so deer will never evolve to live better by learning to look up for danger. Every fall hunters climb trees and shoot arrows down at them and venison ends up in the larder in conformance to the network. The deer species flourishes because of how it fits into the network, not because it always opts for a better life.
Let me put it this way. Fear keeps individuals separate. This is beneficial because one self running into another self causes friction. Friction is energy. If at some point some self is able to come along, capture and then harness this energy, then the network can keep expanding and that particular self lives better. The main function of the Big-Brain is to cause separation and friction, whereas the heart and feelings is what synchronizes and harness this friction into useful energy. Reason (I’m speaking here of the intellectual variety) is the ultimate agency of separation and friction making. It is not possible to feel too much, yet it is possible to reason too much.
Kerasote did not want to take responsibility for the dog. There is no “Merle.” There is no dog as a self-contained agency of intelligence. The dog is Kerasote’s heart, they are one group mind. The dog came through time and space to teach him a lesson. The dog didn’t want freedom, that’s an illusion of the human intellect.
I reached back to see why and where I brought up Whitehead. It was http://naturaldogtraining.com/blog/what-are-dogs-thinking/comment-page-1/#comments last October, and went on for over 2 months with comments, many of which show flashes of clear expression that were generally preceded and followed by longer stretches of muddled thinking and poor reasoning due to undefined or poly-definitive terms.
In this review, one commenter with whom I consistently agreed was Jenny Ruth Yasi – her ideas were strong, yet not reflecting any agenda. NDT dogmatically speculates of non-conscious, non-thinking dogs in favor of modeling them as deterministic satellites of humans – like us in that we both feel emotion, but whose emotional behavior is uniquely more analogous to the functioning of a remote-controlled electric toy.
It is interesting to be reminded that the original subtitle of the Natural Dog Training book was “Born Wild, Train to be Free”, but now you say dogs “[don’t] want freedom, that’s an illusion of the human intellect.” I predict another badly chosen title with the forthcoming “Your Dog is Your Mirror.”
Inevitably, critics will note that if the reason dogs cannot have conscious thought or reason is that this ‘anthropomorphism’ of dogs is wrong, how can it be that we look to them as mirror images of us?
Your critics (with whom I am increasingly sympathetic) will observe that you reject anthropomorphism for the more dominant stance of anthropocentrism – the guy with the leash is boss, or from an NDT follower, “Dogs are very tuned-in to our desires. As Kevin has written … they’re designed to either do what we want them to do or do what we need them to. So there’s no doubt that the dog knows you want him to do something. He doesn’t think about it, though, he feels it.”
I hate to say it Kevin, but it sounds as if your next book should be titled _ No Dogs Think: Your dog is your slave._ Ponder Whitehead a bit more on Reason id for the art of life.
Burl: “I reached back to see why and where I brought up Whitehead. It was http://naturaldogtraining.com/blog/what-are-dogs-thinking/comment-page-1/#comments last October, and went on for over 2 months with comments, many of which show flashes of clear expression that were generally preceded and followed by longer stretches of muddled thinking and poor reasoning due to undefined or poly-definitive terms.”
KB: I’m still trying to untangle your definition of reason that seems to extend from the instant of creation to the tying of a shoelace. I don’t have a problem with the continuity of all things, but nevertheless there are precise distinctions to be made between things and there is no other website or discussion going on in dogdom which offers pin point definitions which you are welcome to rebuke, and yet you never deal with specifics or even the logical consequences of your arguments when I bring them to your attention.
Burl: (In NDT dogs are) “deterministic satellites of humans – like us in that we both feel emotion, but whose emotional behavior is uniquely more analogous to the functioning of a remote-controlled electric toy”
KB: You are saying that thinking like a human is the only way a dog can be intelligent. I think you are determined to value them only in terms of a capacity for thought. That if a dog isn’t thinking it is not able to fully participate in conscious awareness.
Burl: “It is interesting to be reminded that the original subtitle of the Natural Dog Training book was “Born Wild, Train to be Free”, but now you say dogs “[don’t] want freedom, that’s an illusion of the human intellect.” I predict another badly chosen title with the forthcoming “Your Dog is Your Mirror.”
KB: The juxtaposition in that working title between ‘Born Wild,’ (prisoner of instinct) ‘Train to be Free’ (emotionally synchronized with another living being and hence able to go anywhere) I think sums up a subtle truth of nature and the nature of emotion pretty well.
The interesting thing about the discussion of dogs, is that it isn’t really about dogs, it is about how unresolved emotion makes us feel. It can be very threatening to contemplate that emotion doesn’t work by reason and can’t be controlled by the intellect. I stand by the “Your Mirror” title.
Burl: “Inevitably, critics will note that if the reason dogs cannot have conscious thought or reason is that this ‘anthropomorphism’ of dogs is wrong, how can it be that we look to them as mirror images of us?”
KB: If you dance with someone, or play tennis with someone, the more one masters the medium, the more one becomes their perfect mirror completely in the absence of thought or reason.
Burl: “Your critics (with whom I am increasingly sympathetic) will observe that you reject anthropomorphism for the more dominant stance of anthropocentrism – the guy with the leash is boss, or from an NDT follower, “Dogs are very tuned-in to our desires. As Kevin has written … they’re designed to either do what we want them to do or do what we need them to. So there’s no doubt that the dog knows you want him to do something. He doesn’t think about it, though, he feels it.”
I hate to say it Kevin, but it sounds as if your next book should be titled _ No Dogs Think: Your dog is your slave._ Ponder Whitehead a bit more on Reason id for the art of life.”
KB: Somehow I don’t get the feeling that I am only now losing your sympathy. Consider the consequences of your belief that dogs think. To me that would mean that it is inhumane, cruel and unusual to keep a dog as a pet. In good conscience I could never keep a thinking being as a pet. Seems like the definition of a master/slave relationship to me.
I also wonder as Lee mentioned if there are two people using the screen name Burl…the Burl who can read and understand Whitehead/process theory, could surely read and understand Kevin’s model presented here, and critically compare the two ways of looking at animal consciousness. If there is one Burl I am not saying this as a personal attack, but it is frustrating that after you present some really intellectually interesting material, and receive detailed analysis of where that material and NDT would diverge and why, the discussion reverts back to remote controls and canine enslavement.
I think I have followed cited links all the way through the Internet and back and have not yet come across a reasoned argument/opinion as to why Kevin’s model (which says that Reason (intellectual, thought-based) is not part of the nature of dogs/animals) is wrong, and why another model (e.g., Whitehead’s metaphysics, which says that the same form of Reason is not only present but is the basis for evolution) better explains the nature of dogs.
Ms. Yasi says that dogs think, but also says that thoughts, emotions, feelings, and instincts are all lumped together. So a dog’s thoughts could be any one of the foregoing or any combination thereof. That does not provide any meaningful metes or bounds to her position that dogs think. But at least I can understand her main point, that operant and classical conditioning is the best model (perhaps it’s not a model but I am using my own words) to explain how dogs learn and why dogs do what they do.
Burl, you’re in a better position to know this than I am, but my feeling is that Whitehead specifically states that even most of what human beings do is based on non-conscious thought processes. And I think his views on the place of Reason in nature and consciousness is more of a broad-stroke version than the way you’re applying it to dognitive science.
You stated in an earlier post that inherent in your definition of learning is the ability of an organism to reason, to see cause and effect. In rebuttal, I gave two examples of organisms that would have no possible capacity to think this way (a cuttlefish and an amoeba), and yet both are capable of learning new behaviors (or choosing a behavior based on past “experience”).
Whitehead writes: “Animals and even vegetables, in low forms of organism exhibit modes of behavior directed towards self-preservation. There is every indication of a vague feeling of causal relationship with the external world, of some intensity, vaguely defined as to quality, and with some vague definition as to locality. A jellyfish advances and withdraws, and in so doing exhibits some perception of causal relationship with the world beyond itself; a plant grows downwards to the damp earth and upwards towards the light.”
Do you really think he means that jellies and ferns are consciously aware of the linear passage of time, cause and effect, and have the capacity to reason on an intellectual level?
It seems to me that sometimes we, as humans, get too focused on one particular idea or set of ideas, one particular philosophy or philosopher. This is where intellectual curiosity turns into a rigidly-held, deeply-cemented belief system. It’s a natural human tendency; it’s what religions are built on.
I have a client whose boyfriend is studying philosophy at NYU. I asked him what he thought of Alfred North Whitehead. He said, “He’s a mathematician, isn’t he, not a philosopher?” On Wikipedia Whitehead isn’t even mentioned in their list of “important philosophers of the 20th Century.” Most people who’ve been to college have at least a vague idea of who Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, and Martin Heidegger are (if not what they stood for), but Whitehead is far from being anywhere close to them in terms of their “brand” of philosophy, or their “household word” status. Why is that?
Obviously he appeals to you. Some of his ideas appeal to me as well. There’s clearly something about Natural Dog Training that appeals to you as well.
Another thing to consider is that even if you haven’t misinterpreted some of Whitehead’s ideas on animal cognition, or missed the differences in scale that he was referring to, I think that, what with all the advances in neuroscience (not to mention the advances in artificial intelligence, computers, etc., and what those things mean in terms of our modern understanding of what does or doesn’t entail cognition, rational thought, etc.), how do you know that Whitehead himself wouldn’t have a very different set of ideas now than he did back in the 1920s? Reportedly, his views were influenced by the introduction of quantum physics, which sort of toppled the old, so-called Einsteinian model of the cosmos. But modern physics has gotten even stranger than the one Whitehead grew up on. How would that change his philosophy today?
I’ve spent a lot more time on the internet than Kevin has, and whenever I’ve discussed the dividing line between dog and human cognition in the way that we do, I’ve seen a very similar emotional reaction to what you’re exhibiting now — anger, hostility, fear, all of which sometimes carries with it an underlying feeling of depression.
When we form belief systems, we protect them. All wars, small and mighty, have been based on either protecting our resources or protecting our belief systems. This indicates that belief systems may be felt by us, on a very real and very deep level (deep enough to give up one’s life for) as a kind of resource.
Whitehead was clearly a brilliant thinker, with a lot to offer. But remember, he also said that there are no “whole truths, only partial truths.”
With that in mind, all theories of dognition are based on partial truths. But it seems to me that Kevin is on the right track when he suggests that human beings have kind of lost our emotional connection to nature. and that dogs, more than any other animal, have the capacity to reawaken that connection in us. But to me it’s clearly an emotional connection we share with our dogs, not an intellectual one. To me that’s one of the wholest partial truths you’ll find anywhere, at least when it comes to dogs.
You’re free to disagree, of course. But seriously, if you have any clear new insights on how you think logic, reason, perception of linear time, Theory of Mind, etc. are present in the canine mind, I, personally, would like to hear them.
LCK
All this came about when I was challenged for using the concept of reason. I had in mind that Merle unlearned a habit he fell into while a stray: Ted tied a long rope lead that abruptly stopped him after running 50 ft towards killing a calf. Two abrupt stops and Merle had learned a new way to react to cattle.
The pre-conscious experience of emotional (appetitive) proposition – chasing/killing is food – is brought to an occasion of conscious awareness in which the affirmation or negation of this proposition poses a decision – it is or it might not be. After only a few such occasions of confirming the latter, a novel memory is created for future occasions. This is how reasoning works for all higher-order animals.
That is what I understand from ANW. Consciousness is thus seen to shed light on experience with the result that new experience is available for shaping the future.
Kevin, I don’t think we are thinking the same thing about thinking when it comes to dogs’ thinking. They process sense-based phenomena just like us, only we can catalog them with labels. On the notion of immediate present – this is a given for dogs and us. We can both draw from our past memories and with varying degrees, anticipate the future.
I know you will think this silly, but with a dog pulling to get at a cat or some hi-value thing, could its turning and biting you be, at least in part, a reasonable act?
Heather, what I just asked is what Yasi might think as well.
Lee, good questions and post. Whitehead knowingly went against the deterministic sciences of the day that had turned their back on grand cosmological schemes (Kant was probably the major reason). He is intolerably hard to comprehend and given Kant, no one had to bother. The biggest reason is likely that his follower, Hartshorne, turned ANW’s minor nod to theism in his organic philosophy into a religious movement of Process Theology, which only interested seminarians.
To everyone, what I was hearing from Kevin’s emotion/feeling, interconnected subjects, evolutionary implications of animal similitude – all this is why I suggested he look for some help in framing his thoughts. That was all I intended.
I am not a Whiteheadian, but I am very drawn to many of his profound insights. He had a genius for metaphysics.
Leem you might appreciate this paper on philosophy of mind suggesting a return to ANW http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~seager/whitehead.htm
Why is chasing/killing related to food as a preconscious proposition? The problem with Ted’s reasoning as a training regime is that there are unintended side effects. He used electric collar, sharp corrections, and the dog ends up noise phobic. I believe he even neutered the dog or it was neutered but don’t recall. There isn’t any training theory in the book that I haven’t tried with a few thousand dogs in the sixties and seventies and his prescription for living with a dog anywhere else but the wilds of Montana would get a dog killed in short order. His dog broke away and got into a fight with the aggressive dog tied out in its own yard. If the dog could reason then this kind of training might work. But it never works if a dog has a strong nature and it always has unintended side effects. The reason being that the dog’s energy isn’t being taken into account and so its emotional battery isn’t being tuned. The truth of Merle is that he didn’t trust Ted with his deepest, darkest, dankest energy and this energy never became grounded between them and it went on to take on a life of its own. Everything the dog learned in its life was simply piled on top of that foundation. A dog’s mind is an energy circuit, physical memory is stored in the battery, every moment is connected but not in the dog’s brain so Merle didn’t just learn a new lesson for cattle and that was the end of it. Absolutely every time the dog hit that level of intensity he hit a circuit breaker relative to a human being. Ted is a lovely guy with a great dog and that’s the beautiful moral of the story. Who knows how many deer the dog chased on snowy nights while Ted was fast asleep. Then after the dog comes back to the warm cabin and his bowl of kibble or chunk of venison and sleeps soundly while the deer are confronted with the peril of the cold after needlessly wasting their energy. This book is not a serious probe of the nature of the dog. Because he loves his dog he has no other way of considering his affection but that his dog must think like a human.
I’ve been explicit by what I mean by thinking, it’s the capacity to compare one moment to another, one point of view to another. Period. Anything else is not what I mean by thinking. And there’s a difference between thinking and the processing of energy into information. I don’t believe dogs anticipate, even when they sit to get a cookie. The question remains, why does only a dog sit for a cookie?
Once I was holding a Doberman while my father agitated it and I held the leash too tight. Dobies have a very low threshold which means that an emotional circuit breaker flips which means the dog has to recycle and reacquire a focus for its drive. This is manifested physically by spinning. On one of his orbits he intersected with my leg and sunk his teeth into my thigh. It was not an act of reason and it wasn’t an unreasonable event. It was my handling error. A GSD never did that because its “refresh the screen” rate is much higher. If you stake a Rotty, a Dobie and a GSD on a protection field, then when the helper arrives the Dobie gets up first, the GSD next and the Rotty last. After working the dogs and the helper leaves, the Rotty lays back down first, the GSD next, and the Dobie never lays down for the rest of the day. Everything about dogs occurs on a continuum, every moment is connected, but not by human reason, by a network consciousness that perhaps Whitehead means by prehension but which I understand as energy. The mistake that is being made however is to see it as disconnected and only tied together by human intellectual concepts, of seeing the dog as a self-contained entity of intelligence figuring things out intellectually. I’m going to keep pushing and maybe I’ll be able to explain it more clearly, but my advice is to not try to fit what I’m saying into existing compartments and square it up against what is already known.
My last post was brief, as I a) posted the Merle example of ANW reasoning while you guys were posting (my brief post took a lot of thought, for me). The next post to Heather, Kevin and Lee was hurried because Sissy, Red, and Peanut were making it known that we were in that phase of the circadian rhythm cycle signaling the warrant to meet their emotional desire to walk at 4 pm.
Because of the post crossups, I would like to address any key points you may have in light of what is in them. I will also address a few that I missed:
KB: [you think] if a dog isn’t thinking it is not able to fully participate in conscious awareness.
B: Right. Why shouldn’t the dog get the thrill of novel experience – this is the whole message of Ch 1 of ANW’s ‘the function of reason.’
Heather: the Burl who can read and understand Whitehead/process theory, could surely read and understand Kevin’s model presented here, and critically compare the two ways of looking at animal consciousness.
B: I have a hard time with ANW’s wording and find I get a lot of his ideas secondhand (other scholars, like Hosinski). As for Kevin’s imagery and prose…it is why I pointed him to ANW sources in hopes to somehow impress a need to synthesize and concretize his writing. I cannot follow KB most of the time.
LCK: It seems to me that sometimes we, as humans, get too focused on one particular idea or set of ideas, one particular philosophy or philosopher. This is where intellectual curiosity turns into a rigidly-held, deeply-cemented belief system. It’s a natural human tendency; it’s what religions are built on.
B: Just how wide a net are you throwin’…who is included here?
LCK: Reportedly, his views were influenced by the introduction of quantum physics, which sort of toppled the old, so-called Einsteinian model of the cosmos.
B: ANW developed tensor theory that Einstein needed to do his math work, and he proposed an alternative to Ein’s space-time model that some say is more correct.
LCK: But it seems to me that Kevin is on the right track when he suggests that human beings have kind of lost our emotional connection to nature. and that dogs, more than any other animal, have the capacity to reawaken that connection in us.
B: Most Excellent…I am there!
LCK: But to me it’s clearly an emotional connection we share with our dogs, not an intellectual one. To me that’s one of the wholest partial truths you’ll find anywhere, at least when it comes to dogs.
B: ANW’s process vision substitutes events for substance as the actual units of reality. These ‘occasions of experience’ are immediately present subjective entities calling upon (prehending, feeling) the past (the objective, physical reality of occasions already gone by with an eye towards making a definite decision as to what comes next.
Sounds weird, You bet’cha! Contrary to Occam’s razor, where we look for the most parsimonious answer, ANW’s mind was broad enough to take in what was known and he quipped
“Seek simplicity – and distrust it.”
Burl: “what I was hearing from Kevin’s emotion/feeling, interconnected subjects, evolutionary implications of animal similitude – all this is why I suggested he look for some help in framing his thoughts”
I find the NDT model to be well explained, the terms are defined and used consistently, and there are many examples provided that illustrate the theory…ie, the thoughts have been framed. If it were possible to translate Whitehead and Kevin into the same definitional framework (like transcoding computer source code from one language to another), I suspect there would be some common ideas. But what they have concluded with respect to animal consciousness is fundamentally different.
I find it to be helpful when trying to understand something (eg, an invention, which is where my experience has been) to think about it in terms of what about it is similar to what I have seen in the past (or can learn about by googling), and what about it is different. Sometimes it’s hard to close other sources and focus on the new material, especially if it seems really similar to something else, but right there is a great lesson from ANW – seek the novel, it is the path toward better living. Haha.
Burl, when I first started reading the NDT site I had trouble understanding, too. What made all the difference in the world for me was that I started applying the techniques diligently, including aspects that I doubted, like not letting my pups sleep on the bed and as weeks went by I began to understand the concepts intrinsically and so as I continued to read more of the site I found I was actually comprehending much more because I was seeing and feeling the results with my dogs.
I have always considered myself a very competent pet dog owner/trainer in that I research tons and enjoy training and my dogs have always been happy, healthy, mannerly critters. Since grasping the very simple NDT premise of the emotional battery and training and living accordingly I would say that my dogs experience much greater freedom to be themselves in all their doggishness while they navigate this very human oriented world.
Crystal,
What happens when dogs sleep w/ you, or rather, what changes when they are made to stop? I really am interested, as ours sleep w/ us.
In the 1st NDT book, we kinda liked the notion of natural animal energy (and still do) especially as it seemed less follow-the-trainer’s-procedures way of acclimating dogs to us. We do not train our mutts to do anything, but they seem pretty well adjusted and content.
I have seen problems with some of Kevin’s more recent poly-definitions of terms and have noted this to him in numerous comments with the aim of tightening up his jargon. One example that comes to mind is that consciousness is energy. If this is so, it would be possible that consciousness could also have mass (E=mc2), and neither energy nor mass are what appears to most when considering consciousness. This is just a for instance case.
In addition to my question on sleeping, I have been wondering and would like an answer (or notion) for something that I will not empirically test:
Suppose every mealtime consists of all 3 dogs getting their bowl of kibble. They are full, but after, I have all come round and give a milkbone to Sissy and Red, but not Peanut. At all other treat occasions throughout the day, they all 3 get a treat. If I keep this up, how will it play out?
Burl, I would suggest you stop sleeping with your dogs and see what happens. Kevin explains the whole energy dynamic somewhere on this site. I can only take his word for the dog’s experience. I will say that even though I was reluctant to give up my cuddle time it was actually good for me as I spend a great deal of time with my pups and I actually felt more separate in a good way no longer having them in the bed.
Now you may not have the same experience. I am a mother and I am the grounding force in my family. My two teen-aged children will still ask to sleep with me for a night when they are having a rough go. So I think I was probably absorbing as much of the dog’s energy every night as they were mine and breaking that cycle was beneficial for all. Cleared the air sort of thing.
As far as consciousness being energy, well I knew that well before I read this site. I have been privileged to attend the deaths of a couple of dear friends and I have also attended two births besides my own two. When consciousness leaves the body for good every one in the room can feel it. One doesn’t require any monitors and when a baby slides into this world the extraordinary energy that fills the room is exactly the same as the energy that fills the dying one’s room just before the moment of death. At least that has been my experience.
I have no idea whether consciousness has mass, but it is interesting to me that we describe and feel emotions and people as heavy or light. Why is it we can feel another being in the room even if we can’t see them or hear them, i.e. little brothers under the bed?
Because I implemented the pups sleeping in their own individual beds in my room and started pushing and tugging all within the same week I really can’t say what shifted what in my dog’s behaviors. I can say that my dogs are far more relaxed, confident and obedient in general and especially in highly electric states. This all happened very fast. Within three weeks of applying NDT principles I was seeing large changes, especially in my Colt dog who has stranger danger issues that I had worked on very diligently over a number of months using counter conditioning. Looking to help him relax in discomforting situations I was actually shutting him down, but so slowly I didn’t really notice until I started NDT and on day three he came flying at me to push with a joie de vivre I hadn’t seen in a very long time. That energy feel has stuck around. Colt is back.
My dogs are border collies and it is so easy to think border collies are reasoning and thinking things through because they do uncanny things and they seem to understand english. After all they are the “smartest” dog, don’t cha know, but working within the emotional paradigm of NDT has garnered me much more access to my dogs than I ever had before. Dare I say they understand even more english now than previously?
BTW, (Kevin plug your ears) I still call the dogs up for a nap sometimes.
Consciousness is energy that repeats itself, that’s the operative concept. In order for energy to repeat itself there has to be a reliable circuit, like a river bed, otherwise it’s a one hit wonder. But moreover there also has to be a dynamo, Temperament, that organizes the animal’s perceptions of the world into this circuit so that energy can repeat itself, it replicates the network as the animal’s perceptions of its surroundings. Temperament also converts friction into circular motion so that new energy is continually added to the system in deference to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, the rain must constantly fall on the watershed so that the river of consciousness reliably repeats itself. There also has to be a battery to smooth out irregularities, so that the circle doesn’t implode if there is a dearth of energy, or explode if a very strong input comes in, this steady state regulation of inputs that are stored and then account for the individual’s “vibration” is behaviorally manifested by the phenomenon of personality.
Consciousness acquires mass through emotion. Every animal is expelled from a state of weightlessness into weighted-ness, this sudden expulsion from the womb or the yolk activates the central nervous system and the subliminal beam of attention is created (since pups eyes and ears are sealed this is more predominant in a dog’s state of attention than its external focal gaze) and begins to create in the nascent pup’s mind an awareness of its surroundings as first and foremost a function of the dead weight of its immobile body. The resistance of its body activates its nervous system. The exact epicenter of the puppy’s mass is a single point, its physical center of gravity. As the pup gains awareness of its surroundings by becoming familiar with the workings of its mechanical body, its sense of its p-cog gradually sharpens to a single point that is then projected onto the eyes of things as “the negative” or access point to the body of the form to which it has projected its “self” into. The negative now equals access to the positive, (its mother’s eyes as access to its mother’s belly) and everything about animal consciousness organizes around this template as the architecture of its consciousness and manner of learning. There is no distinction between this and wolves hunting the moose.
Thus, whenever an animal is the object-of-attention and experiences being the “point” of another beings’ focused energy, it feels accelerated at its body’s physical center of gravity, just as if it’s being physically pushed.
An electron is called a “point particle” as it is an infinitesimal, tiny speck of mass around which coalesces an electrical charge. The dog is also a “point particle of consciousness” as all the incredible electrochemical charge of its nervous system is organized around an infinitesimal, tiny particle of mass, the physical center-of-gravity.
perfectly sublime‼ ♥
I have a question for Burl. In a previous post you made it clear that you think your dogs are capable of linear, rational thought, and that they are “conscious” beings.
What specific behaviors, if any, can you provide us that will prove your point.
For instance, I recently posted a video here of Donnie the Doberman, who, at one point shortly after he was first adopted, arranged his toys in geometrical patterns, ostensibly to “communicate” something to his owner. (The video was made in 2007 and nothing has been heard from Donnie since then, plus the animal behavior expert from the University of Michigan who studied his behavior put up a section on her website asking for information from other dog owners about dogs who form geometric patterns with their toys, and no one has yet come forward, and no new information about Donnie has been posted on her site.)
As I’ve written in my recent series of articles at Psychology Today, forming the intent to communicate (or report information) requires the use of language, written, spoken or signed. If Donnie had the intent to communicate with his owner, what was his message? If he was reporting information, why wasn’t he more clear about it? Is it because dogs speak a different kind of language? If so, why does Donnie seem to be the only dog who speaks through geometric shapes?
If, however, dogs are telepathic (which I think they are), then it’s possible that Donnie — who in the video seemed very happy to have been adopted by his very sweet and very loving new owner — was trying to “please” her (i.e., foster group harmony), and did so by recreating harmonious symmetrical images that she’s constantly generating within her unconscious mind. Those images were being transmitted, unconsciously to Donnie, and he was retrieving them, fetching them for his owner.
It seems to me that triangles, particularly the equilateral kind that Donnie seems to have favored, have a calming effect on the mind (and soul). We’d have to do some research into what Carl Jung or William Campbell might have to say on the topic, but that’s the feeling I get when I try to tune in to what Donnie must’ve been feeling when he formed those patterns in his back yard.
If this is the case, then Donnie wasn’t attempting to report information to anyone as much as he was using his OCD-like Doberman mind to form prey objects into soothing patterns, a self-pacifying behavior, the kind we see in some autistic children. Or perhaps at first, Donnie felt that his owner wasn’t completely on board with the idea of having this big dog living alongside her in her perfectly appointed home, and perhaps the triangles, etc., were created to calm her!
Was Donnie communicating? I would say that of course he was. Did he have the conscious intent to do so? I would say, no, otherwise he would have used some form of language rather than seemingly random patterns. (Of course I don’t think they were random at all.)
So back to my question, you reportedly have three dogs. What kinds of behaviors have you specifically seen in them that makes you believe they think rationally or that they can form the intent to communicate?
LCK
LCK: I have a question for Burl. In a previous post you made it clear that you think your dogs are capable of linear, rational thought, and that they are “conscious” beings. What specific behaviors, if any, can you provide us that will prove your point.
B: Like for us, dogs’ 5 senses are causes for conscious awareness – we must compare what our neurons just now report as a sense percept, “car form/sound/smell,” with “my master’s car” and we must reason it so or not so before we see/hear/smell master’s car.
I am not of the mind that dogs thoughts are ours, but that they are similar. Our experienced world from which we form thoughts is different. For one thing, ours is more visual and audible, theirs more olfactory and motion-focused. So, if we focus on how we process our memories of smells, we are closer to glimpsing what is involved in dog reasoning. Dogs probably store images labeled by up/down emotion evaluations, while we index ours more with words. But all these data in our memory banks built on past experience forms the stuff that we experience in the present moment as we are vaguely moving to what is next.
To, me this is a sensible notion. I do not know exactly if a ‘linear process of logic’ has much to do with mixing images, smells, valuations, and simple propositional comparisons in a given moment, but this is the stuff of thought, and only some of it is conscious thought.
Only one observation is needed. When one of the mutts needs to go outside and we are at the computer or asleep, they signal us to alertness with a yelp or a nudge. This is also an example of conscious intention and communication
A second common example is the communication to go get the rope-toy, followed by the dogs interpreting the message, leaving to find where toys are, and deciding which to return with.
Donnie the Dobie is a mystery. His 1st 4 years may have been w/ a circus trainer. I’ll observe this much, there is a reasoning process at work in laying out and spacing the items = as each item is placed, judgements are needed as to where to place the next in a pattern.
The argument for conscious intention is always applied facilely to behaviors seen as virtues. What about the “dark” side? If dogs waking up an owner at three in the morning to be let outside is evidence of conscious intention, what then of the dog that sees its master pet another dog and then attacks and kills it? Murder?
Burl: “When one of the mutts needs to go outside and we are at the computer or asleep, they signal us to alertness with a yelp or a nudge. This is also an example of conscious intention and communication.”
To me this is clearly an example of a behavior performed by a dog to try and get its owner to do something, not performed with the conscious intent to report information. Do you not see the difference yet?
From a recent article I wrote for Psychology Today.com:
“Some would argue that a pup who paws at his dinner bowl seems to be telling his owner that he’s hungry. Likewise, a dog who drops his leash into your lap seems to be reporting his need for a walk. But there’s a substantive difference between a dog who’s trying to get his owner to understand something – the dog’s need for dinner or for a walk – and a dog who’s trying to get his owner to do something.
“Eugene Morton of the National Zoo has done an extensive study of the sounds made by numerous species of animals. He says that to really understand these sounds, it’s best not to try to understand what they mean, but what they accomplish. If we translate that to canine body language we can see that it’s not about what the postures and facial expressions mean to the other dog (or human), it’s about what they get the other dog (or human) to do: to back off, come closer, play a game, not play so rough, etc.”
Burl: “A second common example is the communication to go get the rope-toy, followed by the dogs interpreting the message, leaving to find where toys are, and deciding which to return with.”
This is an example of a dog associating an auditory cue with a prey object, which doesn’t require the ability to think rationally or consciously or understand the meanings of words, just the ability to recognize patterns — something a computer program, such as the voice-recognition software used by the phone company — can do.
Phone Company Computer: “Are you calling about your home or business phone? Say ‘home’ or press one for your home phone, say ‘business’ or press two for your business phone.”
Me: “Neither.”
Computer: “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that. Are you calling about …?”
Is the computer program conscious?
Look, if the dog really recognizes “rope toy” as a set of words which linguistically, i.e., symbolically, represent a prey object, then by saying, “Go get your dope-roy” in the same tone of voice you usually use to tell the dog to get its “rope toy,” you should rightly expect the dog not to recognize those sounds as valid words, and not to go get the rope toy. But chances are pretty good that if the dog is in a playful mood, and motivated to do as you ask, he’ll bring you his rope toy, and waste little or no time searching for a “dope roy.”
One of the most amazing examples of this ability to differentiate the auditory cues connected to different prey objects was a border collie named Rico, who reportedly had a “vocabulary” of over 200 words. A study was done at the Max Plank Institute, and while the conclusions drawn by the researchers were very generous in how they described his behavior in near human-like terms, they also wrote:
“Our results strongly support the view that a seemingly complex linguistic skill, previously found only in human children [that’s the overly generous part –LCK] may be mediated by simpler cognitive building blocks [that’s pattern recognition –LCK] that are also present in other species.” (“Word Learning in a Domestic Dog,” Juliane Kaminski, Josep Call, ulia Fischer, March, 2004)
Burl: “Like for us, dogs’ 5 senses are causes for conscious awareness”
Not at all. Insects have visual systems, some of which are fairly complex. Does that mean a fly’s visual system is a cause for conscious awareness?
Plus, our sensory systems rarely register on the conscious scale (something that Temple Grandin is very good at pointing out, since for her, as an autistic person, her consciousness is constantly being bombarded by visual, audible, and olfactory impressions that the rest of us filter out so that we can think clearly with the conscious parts of our brains).
As I was coming home from the grocery store this evening I was lost in thought, only vaguely aware, if at all, of what my eyes were seeing and my ears hearing. This is similar to the phenomenon of the person who drives the same route to work every day and who almost never remembers any particular part of his trip.
All that aside, you’re defining consciousness and reason quite differently than Kevin does. I think he made it very simple: KB I’ve been explicit by what I mean by thinking, it’s the capacity to compare one moment to another, one point of view to another. Period.
Nothing you’ve provide here — not the dogs using behavioral cues to get you let them outside, or pairing a prey object with an auditory cue — has anything to do with a capacity to compare one moment in time to another, or one point of view — theirs or another being’s — to another.
Yes, by your definition dogs are rational, thinking beings. But your definitions are, I think inexact and muddy, in part because they’re based on inexact interpretation of Whitehead’s, “panexperiantialism,” which posits that all beings have a form of phenomenal consciousness i.e., the ability to process raw sensory data, which is true, as shown by the fact that a fly has vision and a plant has feelings. (This is why I said earlier that Whitehead would be scratching his head over much of what you’re saying.) But having the ability to see and hear and smell is not the same thing as having the ability think about those sights and sounds and odors, and make conscious comparisons between one set of sensory data and another. That requires the use of symbolic language. You can’t make comparisons without it.
LCK
Since reading these posts I have been thinking about this video most of the day. Since LCK brought up Grandin I thought I may as well link to it.
When I first saw this vid I immediately thought the first part may be how many animals experience the world.
I love her message. Not sure about referring to it as language, but I think I know what she was getting at.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc&feature=PlayList&p=778CCB8D201508C9&playnext=1&index=26
Kevin, your example of jealous dog kills another gets at my concern of how my 3rd dog’s reaction to being treated differently might play out. I think you are acknowledging two different reactions to perceived favoritism. As for murder, willful premeditation must be shown. And note I do not equate conscious reasoning with the will, the conscience. (Still wondering why dogs should not sleep w/ us if they want.)
Lee. I sense that much of your readings are from academics caught up in what Rorty popularly refers to as the “linguistic turn” where analytic philosophers (like Dennett) and most other disciplines as well, focused ALL on human language – they actually believed words were the only reality. This originates with the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle, with Wittgenstein its champion celeb. Chomsky was a latter day example of taking it too far, theorizing human brains were born with an in tact language. Quine helped put an end to analytic philosophy by showing its futility.
I believe I am fairly close in interpreting ANW’s panexperientialism and how experience of a definite existent ‘may in some occasions’ give rise to conscious awareness. (As an aside, with your interest in ESP, you might wish to delve more into his theory of prehensions and its implications for panpsychism – see David Ray Griffin).
LCK: …this is clearly an example of a behavior performed by a dog to try and get its owner to do something, not performed with the conscious intent to report information. Do you not see the difference yet?
B: Are we discussing or indoctrinating?
LCK: From a recent article I wrote for Psychology Today.com: “Some would argue that a pup who paws at his dinner bowl seems to be telling his owner that he’s hungry. Likewise, a dog who drops his leash into your lap seems to be reporting his need for a walk. But there’s a substantive difference between a dog who’s trying to get his owner to understand something – the dog’s need for dinner or for a walk – and a dog who’s trying to get his owner to do something.
B: I totally disagreed with you there, still do, and I’ll bet I am in good company w/ those who likewise disagree.
I recommend you start with a look at Beckoff’s recent blog about dog’s theory of mind, then get some knowledge on about semiotics just in order to gain a broader definition of language. You are already headed there with these words…”But having the ability to see and hear and smell is not the same thing as having the ability think about those sights and sounds and odors, and make conscious comparisons between one set of sensory data and another. That requires the use of symbolic language.”
I was captivated by Crystal;s vid on autistic experience. It seems resonant w/ what I said
B: I am not of the mind that dogs thoughts are ours, but that they are similar. Our experienced world from which we form thoughts is different. For one thing, ours is more visual and audible, theirs more olfactory and motion-focused. So, if we focus on how we process our memories of smells, we are closer to glimpsing what is involved in dog reasoning. Dogs probably store images labeled by up/down emotion evaluations, while we index ours more with words. But all these data in our memory banks built on past experience forms the stuff that we experience in the present moment as we are vaguely moving to what is next.
To, me this is a sensible notion. Stop limiting consciousness, thinking, and reasoning solely to their higher order instances. This would by Whitehead’s admonition.
I think autism is a highly developed Big-Brain mental acuity, and lower emotional capacity in the sense of not being able to project the e-cog into the forms of things and then derive a feeling based on resonance. There’s a lack of B-B grounding in the gut (apparently there are a lot of digestive issues) and this may be why there is “stimming” as a compensating movement for a lack of feeling grounded, and there is also a profound aversion to eye contact as this triggers p-cog and creates a void of vulnerability there from whence the e-cog is projected. The neuro-scientist who suffered a stroke (Stroke of Insight) I feel offers an amazing account of what she experienced when she lost contact with her rational mind, and this I believe is how animals when in a state of resonance/weightlessness experience the world and their higher faculties are subordinated to the deep emotional circuitry.
I don’t know why we have to go round and round to get at the nub. If a dog is able to think ahead that if it goes to the bathroom inside, the owner will be upset, so it thinks further ahead yet and wakes up the owner in order to be let outside, because it can think further ahead yet that it is going to be able to relieve itself outdoors, and further ahead yet, that its owner will be pleased, and if wolves are able to plan their hunt, and if one dog could be jealous because it can understand that it is not being given a treat while another dog is being given a treat and that must be for some reason and therefore it is jealous; “My owner doesn’t like me as much as he likes that other dog and this matters to me not of course because of a single cookie in this one instance, but for the principle of the matter and the reality that I’m going to have a much more limited future than this other dog if this pattern continues.” Then where in this incredible chain of mental linkages is there any big leap to willful premeditation? So dogs can think but it can never factor out to the ultimate conclusion except for the good, they can be intelligent but never capable of evil intent?
“But there’s a substantive difference between a dog who’s trying to get his owner to understand something – the dog’s need for dinner or for a walk – and a dog who’s trying to get his owner to do something”
I guess I agree with Burl in that I don’t see the distinction here either. Both cases could be explained in a similar manner as the article regarding the dog who went to the car to find its owner instead of going directly to the owner on the hill, even when the owner was in plain sight. The dog is in tune with the owner’s wants, via the owner’s emotions, eg, the owner wants the dog to eliminate outside and that channel has been well strengthened, and the owner is a central aspect of the physical memory associated with eliminating, because the owner opens the door when the dog feels that way. So when the dog is moved to eliminate, the door, the owner, are all associated with that feeling, and it need have nothing to do with either the dog telling the owner something or the dog trying to get the owner to do something. Same thing with the leash and the bowl at dinnertime or any other ritual.
“Stop limiting consciousness, thinking, and reasoning solely to their higher order instances”
That makes sense with respect to consciousness, but when discussing the distinction (vs the similarities) between human and non-human cognition, it is necessary to define what exactly is meant by thinking and reasoning…I think Kevin’s definition of the ability to compare one thing to another, and one moment in time to another, makes sense. You would say that dogs can do that. But if they can do that, they would necessarily be capable of having premeditative intent, and when you have premeditative intent, you can plan destruction (evil) as well as “construction” (good), then of course there will need to be invoked the notion of morals, or a supreme moral being that endows only certain species with the ability to conceptualize right from wrong and exercise that sort of choice…so then the conceptualization of right and wrong is not really a function of the ability to think/reason, it is endowed magically.
To me this doesn’t make any sense at all, yet this is what flows from accepting that dogs think and reason. If they don’t think and reason by Kevin’s definition, then what you are saying is that they don’t think and reason (which I think is correct, they don’t, but they are no less amazing).
Oh, I suppose you could conclude that dogs do conceptualize right from wrong, but I don’t think there are many people arguing that point.
Burl, I anticipate that you will say that dogs thinking and reasoning by Kevin’s definition is not the only way to define “think and reason,” and that conscious reasoning need not have any notion of concscience, as you stated above. All I am saying is that I think it’s not possible to define thinking and reasoning as anything “lower order” than Kevin’s definition. Maybe it would help instead of using the terms “think and reason” to use the term “cognitive computation/cognitive computing” or something like that, to differentiate the pure thought-based processes from those that are tied in some fashion to “substance” (to use ANW’s terms).
Not quite sure I follow your point, but reading it one way, it comes down as to whether or not there is a distinction between a feeling and a thought, in other words, do we need to say the dog is thinking in order to account for the time-deferred, complex behavior? The only logical explanation in my mind is that no thinking is required as the dog is going purely by feel. The dog’s perception of its owner is a function of intestinal grounding (BB->lb) and so it feels a pull to owner both for food and for eliminating. This is why the dog can be house trained by virtually anyone without understanding any modern codified systems of learning, whereas the ape, chimp, orangutan, monkey cannot unless elaborately trained by a clinician and even then I seem to remember the chimp always wore diapers when trotted in by an animal guy on late night TV. To get this point one must actively resist their intellect begging for a thought, just consider that inside the dog is a magnet that feels a pull of various magnitudes and this is how it knows where to go and what to do. In the absence of this magnet it goes by instinct and old habits and these are never nuanced to the immediate-moment. When Burl uses a loaded term such as “up/down emotional values” what else could that mean but that the value is a hierarchy of thoughts. Without a model the intellect fills in what it presumes to be a void with thoughts because it associates open with a state of confusion. (New information does not get into the system through thoughts.) The values which guide a dog are states of energy. And so the owner becomes part of its mind by feel, if it were thinking then it would be separate from its owner’s being. A dog learns to change the way it feels by way of aligning with its owner’s BODY, not its owner’s intellect. When you command your dog to sit, he doesn’t sit where he is at, which he would do if he understood that sitting when told to sit is a concept. Rather, he sits where he learned to sit relative TO YOUR BODY. And so first he must come to you. This is because the owner and the dog form a wave function (energy circuit as a group mind) and the owner’s body attracts the emotional mass in the dog’s mind, thoughts don’t weigh a thing.
Okay, Okay, enough already‼ I feel like I’m in the Office of the Interiors Circumlocution Division‼‼ LOL ☺ I much prefer Kevin’s “dogisms” to all this over-intellectualizing, which goes around-and-around-and-around (ad nauseum) yet never reaches any conclusion or resolution. Like Rabbis or Lawyers trying to out-reason, out-think each other and for what?
BTW Crystal, I found your video very intriguing as I work in Special Education and have never thought of autism as anything other than a disability. I appreciate the tweak…Thank You‼♥
That is what I was trying to get at but I am not fluent in either NDT or Whitehead – thoughts are intangible, nothing (no-thing), they are not the processes related to objects of substance (including emotions) that I believe Whitehead refers to.
I am not trying to out-reason anyone, just clarifying in my own mind; I am fine with lack of agreement, but I am not good at making leaps of faith.
I would say that true “arguing” is not about winning or convincing someone that you are right, it is about agreeing about where the disagreement is, which first takes real understanding of what the other person is saying (assuming a willingness to try). Most arguing takes place during the process of (mis) understanding what others are saying, or not bothering to listen. Once everyone understands what the others are saying, it is a matter of noting the point of disagreement(s), and usually there are places where reasonable people could reach different conclusions. So I say lawyers are a good thing (haha), otherwise there’d be more of the ultimate dispute resolution that is seen in the wild.
Point taken…but still, I’m quite dizzy from all the roundabouts‼ 🙂
Oops, sorry, I have to raise my hand to register an objection. Dogs don’t conceptualize right from wrong, they are only aware of the battery going from compressed to expansive, which speaks to whether energy is being added to the network or not, and since raising network consciousness is always good for all in the network, that’s the definition in the animal mind of “good.” Altruism, cooperation, empathy, compassion, sociability, in short, love, is synonymous with feeling good and this is what guides the animal mind. The problem is when you look at the animal mind in isolation from its surroundings, and as one species in competition with another, and as one moment disconnected from another, this obscures our apprehension of the network and its operation by way of the laws of physics. Physics not psychology is the root source of a moral code.
Thx Kevin for reminding me to pick up “Stroke Of Insight”. Heard an interview with her on the radio a few weeks ago.
Christine have you read Temple Grandin’s Autobio and her Animals in Translation? Many gifts with autism.
A Question of Motive
Besides being a dog trainer, I’m a crime novelist. So motive is a key element in how I look imagine the characters in my novels, both the guilty and the innocent. It’s also a factor in how I look at scientific papers, internet videos, and discussions such as this one.
Burl suggested that I read one of Beckoff’s papers on Theory of Mind. Here’s the problem. When I write about dogs my motive is to enable dog owners to see the world from their dog’s point of view. When Beckoff writes, his motive is to convert the entire human race to veganism. Both may be valid, but which is more directly-related to understanding dogs?
The video posted by Crystal brings up similar questions for me. I went to film school in college. (In fact, in my film criticism courses I favored semiotics over the auteur theory.) So whenever I watch a film or TV show, or see a video on the web, I’m constantly aware of what the camera is showing us, wondering why one shot was selected over another, one way of framing the action was selected over another, why the music I’m hearing was selected, etc. Whenever I watch a video posted on the web (and this was true of the Donnie the Doberman video), my first question is always, was this faked? If so, why was it faked? (The Donnie video probably wasn’t faked.)
Was the autism video faked? We can’t know for sure. Certainly the “natural” behavior of the person in the video seems very real. What doesn’t seem real, not to me at least, is the way she types her “thoughts” onto her computer. My question is, if this woman were really typing her own thoughts onto that computer, wouldn’t the director have lingered long and lovingly on that part of the film? Wouldn’t each keystroke have been shot in close-up with a quick pan to the screen to show that she was, indeed, writing the very words we’re hearing the computer-generated “narrator” speak, as they’re being spoken?
Does this mean that the woman in the film doesn’t really have these thoughts? We don’t know, and we can’t know until see a more honest mise en scene depicting her condition. (Sorry, there’s no better phrase to describe the totality of camera placement, editing, soundtrack, etc.)
Autism is a broad-spectrum disorder. We’re not given any medical or scientific background on where this woman’s condition sits on that spectrum; we’re just plunged into what is, ostensibly, this woman’s experiences.
Which brings us back to motive. Was the video meant to show us the honest, daily reality of this woman’s experiences, or was it designed to manipulate us in some way? (All movies are meant to manipulate the viewer; the question always comes back to why.)
We don’t know because the film-maker is dishonest about that one sequence where the woman is typing at her computer.
As for Burl’s motives, I’m not sure what they are. In some cases his style of discourse is to ignore tangible (or ostensibly tangible) proof that goes against his way of thinking. For example, he had nothing to say on the difference between what the words “rope toy” and “dope roy” would mean to a human being, as opposed to what they would “mean” to a dog, and whether this indicates that dogs do or don’t understand the meanings of words, or just respond to a simple auditory cue instead.)
Whitehead is a dead end. That seems obvious by now. If he’s not, I think it would be in Burl’s interest, as an adherent of his, to enlighten us a bit more (heaven help us!),but to do so in a way that doesn’t rely so much on incomprehensible (to most of us) labels like prehension, that no one here can really get a handle on, and explain exactly, in concrete terms what they mean, and how, exactly, in concrete terms, how this relates to canine consciousness and dog training.
I think that any debate between Quine/Skinner and Chomsky/Behan or Bekoff/Kelley is also a dead end.
Look, we know that the modern dog owner is different from the dog owner of the past.* Most believe, very deeply, that their dogs are part of the family. That seems to be Burl’s mindest as well. It may be true; I always felt like Freddie was not only my best friend, but that he was also an extension of my own consciousness. But this nurturing tendency in human beings (which is reinforced in us by the production of “feel-good” neurochemicals like oxytocin and dopamine) can sometimes take on the features of an addictive behavior, and can turn really nasty in the obsessive-compulsive behaviors of animal “hoarders.” So there has to be a balance, not just for the sanity of the dog lover, but for the good of the dog.
I’ve gotten off topic, I’m afraid. The topic? There are three. What are the motives of those who tell us that dogs can think, what does Alfred North Whitehead have to tell us about dogs, and what’s Burl’s motivation for bringing Whitehead into the discussions here on Natural Dog Training?</I/
For me, if I have a question about canine behavior and learning, I'm going straight to Kevin Behan and not waste too much of my time poring over the writings of a minor 20th Century philosopher. That’s because my motive is to always do what’s best for the dog.
LCK
NY Times article: Raising the Bar on Pet Décor
I was also saying that I don’t think there are serious arguments that dogs are operating under notions of right-and-wrong (but maybe there are serious arguments about that? uh oh…)
Not only did I get off topic, but I intended to mention Quine and Skinner (who were proponents of verbal behavior as a product of conditioning) versus Chomsky and Behan (who propose that the ability to use and understand language is innate to the human (and perhaps dolphin) brain, but failed to indicate that Bekoff and I were on opposite poles of a similar face-off.
Did I clear this up? I hope so.
LCK
Amen, Brother‼ And Thank You, LCK for being an able writer. I find much of human philosophies to be a dead end. After all, we are limited (individually and collectively). I pick and choose carefully which, if any, of those philosophies to take to heart (in whole or in part). Happily, NDT is one that I can readily absorb without any negative consequences to my spiritual self.
I did have the same concerns re: the autism video. It just didn’t feel right that the person depicted was actually doing the typing. The “Voice” didn’t match the physical person. Nonetheless, I appreciated the ‘tweak’ towards seeing individuals with disabilities more as persons than as their disability. Sometimes it’s a hard distinction to make, to say nothing about trying to hang on to it! ♥ One never can get enough ‘tweaking’‼ 🙂