What Are Dogs Thinking?

I’m still searching for a point of intersection with the mainstream interpretations of behavior and learning and I’m starting to get the impression the learning theorists are ducking a simple question. I’ve posted it here and on several sites, and perhaps it’s so simple it’s thought of as trivial, especially with all the heady talk of learning theory, but if so, this is a critical error.

Currently on the web site “Dog Star Daily,” which is promulgating the work of Dr. Ian Dunbar, Lee Kelley is engaged in a point-by-point discussion involving neuro-anatomy and learning theory as he argues for a different interpretation of what such evidence reveals.

Click here for the discussion.

Lee is being taken to task for an article he wrote on his Psychology Today Blog wherein he entertains the proposition that Operant Conditioning might be losing the intellectual battle against the Cesar Milan media juggernaut because why would there be a media juggernaut if Operant Conditioning model was truly comprehensive. The OC camp counters by saying what battle? And if there is one it’s due to a misapplication and misunderstanding of learning theory. They also argue that whatever technical success Cesar enjoys is due to his inadvertently capitalizing on those aspects of learning theory that he is able to apply correctly.

As I mentioned, on this particular web site there is in depth discussion of neural anatomy as well as liberal use of the term “thinking.” The following quote was posted by “fun4fido” in the above mentioned article and thread that was prompted by Lee’s article.

“…there are two different processes, a dogs behaviour is guided by either emotion or thinking. Two sets of structures in the brain share a very important relationship in canine behaviour. The limbic system is a complex circuit of neural structures involved in the expression and experience of emotions. The cerebral cortex on the other hand is involved in various cognitive functions including learning, thinking and problem solving.

The limbic system and the cerebral cortex have an inverse relationship. When either one is activated, the other system cancels out, or rather gets over-ridden. If a dog is mentally stimulated and encouraged to think, his cerebral cortex will be activated and learning is effective. In this state he is less likely to experience intense emotional responses. Likewise, a dog that experiences intense emotional responses has his limbic system activated and his cerebral cortex inhibited. A dog experiencing an intense emotional response – and I must stress the word intense, is reacting to a given stimulus/event and no longer thinking. This intense emotional frame of mind is not a good place for a dog to be because it can push him/her to react instinctively, and not all instinctive behaviours are helpful to a dog in the human world.

Learning is best accomplished when a dog is in thinking mode, in particular, this is why counter conditioning and desensitisation should always be applied while the dog is sub-threshold, when a dog is over threshold his/her stress level is too high, emotions take over, the dog starts to react, and is unable to learn effectively.”

Now this is a very definitive statement based on drawing an explicit connection between components of the brain, and I can understand the merit of such logic. The fact that dogs and humans share certain critical brain structures that seem central to thinking does present a compelling argument that dogs may be capable of thinking. OC believes this is then confirmed in the phenomenon of learning. Therefore, it seems reasonable to ask the question that such definitive statements beg, what are dogs thinking?

Pet communicators likewise claim that dogs think but then they go on the record and articulate what they think dogs are thinking. So since learning theorists argue that the phenomena of complex and learned behavior is fully encompassed by the science of learning, what are dogs thinking?

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Published October 18, 2009 by Kevin Behan

118 responses to “What Are Dogs Thinking?”

  1. Jenny Ruth Yasi says:
    November 10, 2009 at 6:58 pm

    “You guys are so funny with your rhetoric!”

    Good. Another evasion…

  2. Shanty says:

    I find this topic enlightening in many ways. I think there is much we do not understand about the natural world which makes the study of animal behavior (in particular, dogs) such a revealing topic.

    The conversation may seem pointless to some, and that’s fine. However, what Kevin is on to here may well redefine our understanding and while it gets a bit complicated at times I personally find it amazing.

    Thinking, instinct, feeling or energy? It doesn’t necessarily matter if what you’re doing happens to work in your relationships with the animals in your life but as a theory or a science it may be that Kevin’s model borders on the discovery of gravity or magnetism – something that was always there but no one knew how to define it.

    By defining it – really nailing down the process that makes dogs do what they do – we could learn something even more powerful than having a well behaved dog.

    Whatever you call it I’m happy to see this new angle being given serious thought. Thanks Kevin.

  3. Seb says:

    That doesn’t contribute anything to the conversation.

  4. Shanty says:

    Seb – not sure who your comment was intended for but my comment was actually in support of what you were saying about the special abilities dogs have in regards to tumors, seizures etc. Is there something special about animal behavior that could be eventually explained if it was approached from a new angle that wasn’t based on the currently accepted theories?
    Perhaps you weren’t speaking about my comment but there it is anyway.

  5. Seb says:

    Sorry Shanty! I either missed the Newer Comments link or it seems there’s a delay. I meant that to the “You guys are funny with your rhetoric” comment. Thanks for pointing that out.

  6. The you guys are funny with your rhetoric means I am tired of the conversation. Kevin contineus to respond that no one is answering his question about what dogs think. Kevin, this is the answer. Dogs think THOUSANDS and ZILLIONS of things. You guys waste all your time in round around conversations trying to prove your point like it’s a high school debate, not truly trying to engage in conversation, you want me to agree with you that dogs don’t think? That is a moronic waste of time and I’m not into it. Dogs think. If you want to engage in rhetorical games, go for it. I’ve got real dogs to work with.

  7. Seb says:

    We’re looking for examples. Dogs think. What do they think about? If they think thousands and zillions of things, how come there has not been one example? That’s what we’re looking for – not agreement. It’s just been dragged out because it hasn’t been provided.

  8. Angelique says:

    I hesitate getting involved in these conversations because they can degrade so quickly. BUT…

    I think the conversation needs a little bit of definition. It doesn’t make sense to ask Jenny over and over again what dogs are thinking when you haven’t proposed a scenario for her. If the whole point of this exercise is to get folks to understand the differences between training theory models (never mind their strengths or weaknesses), let’s build a simple summary of what those models would say, and all of you OC and dominance, or other training models please pitch in.

    So here’s a scenaro:

    If a dog with a history of squirrel chasing is out on a leash walk with his owner and spots a squirrel, and starts to chase it, even though his owner is calling his name and yanking on the leash to get his attention, what do you suppose is going on in the dog’s head? What is that dog thinking?

    OC folks, what do you say?

    Dominance/Millan folks, what do you say?

    NDT folks, what do you say? (Yes, I know you’ll say the dog isn’t thinking, so tell me what the dog is feeling 😉

    Anyone else brave enough to answer, what is going on in that doggie’s head?

  9. Dogs don’t think in words, but we can translate what they think into words, because we think in words (and we teach dogs to think in words). When Tigerlily hears the words “squirrel” chicken” “kitty” “Outside” “pop” she thinks about all those things associated with those words. When she meets a new pushy dog she thinks, “stay away from me you big idiot.” only she wouldn’t use those words, but that’s how I translate the thought. When she is thirsty, she thinks, “I want water.” When she needs to go outside she thinks “I need to go out.” Just because she doesn’t use words to think, and people describe thoughts using words, doesn’t mean she doesn’t think.

    In the squirrel dog on leash being yanked scenario, the dog is thinking, “let me go!”

  10. Jenny, I think the problem is that you’re not differentiating between thinking and feeling, and there’s a huge difference. Helen Keller said that before she learned sign language she lived in a world of “no consciousness” and wasn’t able to differentiate one feeling state from another.

    In “Darwin’s Mistake,” by Penn et al (which is available on my website under the “Links/DVDs” menu) the authors quote Daniel C. Dennett, one of the world’s leading experts on the philosophy of mind. “Perhaps the kind of mind you get when you add language to it is so different from the kind of mind you can have without language that calling them both minds is a mistake.”

    For example, you said that a dog who’s being prevented from chasing a squirrel is thinking, “Let me go.” On the face of it that sounds reasonable enough, but what do “let,” “me,” and “go” mean to the dog? And are those thoughts are feelings?

    After quoting Dennett, Penn et al go on to say that linguistic ability alone isn’t enough to account for the cognitive disparities between human and non-human minds:

    Numerous studies have shown that subjects with language impairment exhibit a variety of cognitive deficits (e.g., Baldo et al. 2005) and that deaf children from hearing families (i.e., “late signers”) show persistent deficits in ToM tasks (see Siegal et al. 2001 for a review). Furthermore, there is good evidence that a child’s ability to pass certain kinds of ToM tests is intricately tied to the acquisition of specific sentential structures (de Villiers 2000). Normal human cognition clearly depends on normal linguistic capabilities.

    But although natural language clearly subserves and catalyzes normal human cognition, there is compelling evidence that the human mind is distinctively human even in the absence of normal natural language sentences (see Bloom 2000; Garfield et al. 2001; Siegal et al. 2001).
    Varley and Siegal (2000), for example, studied the higher-order reasoning abilities of an agrammatic aphasic man who was incapable of producing or comprehending sentences and whose vocabulary was essentially limited to perceptual nouns. In particular, he had lost all his vocabulary for mentalistic entities such as “beliefs” and “wants.” Yet this patient continued to take care of the family finances and passed a battery of causal reasoning and ToM tests (see also Varley et al. 2001; 2005).

    Although late-signing deaf children’s cognitive abilities may not be “normal,” they nevertheless manifest grammatical, logical, and causal reasoning abilities far beyond those of any nonhuman subject (Peterson & Siegal 2000). And the many remarkable cases of congenitally deaf children spontaneously “inventing” gestural languages with hierarchical and compositional structure provide further confirmation that the human mind is indomitably human even in the absence of normal linguistic enculturation (see, e.g., Goldin-Meadow 2003; Sandler et al. 2005; Senghas et al. 2004).

    So it’s not just symbolic thought, in the form of words symbolizing things, events, feelings, concepts, etc. There’s something else at play.

    And since the ostensible purpose of this discussion is to nail down what dogs are thinking when they learn through operant conditioning, a better question than Angelique’s examples would be, what is a dog thinking when he learns to sit for a treat?

    LCK

    And in my experience when someone complains about someone else’s rhetoric, that’s usually a cop out, unless of course that person points out where the other’s argument has fallen flat. (Personally, I’m always happy to know when one of my arguments is illogical or purely rhetorical; you haven’t done that.)

  11. Also, Jenny, I don’t think I’ve given you enough credit for even taking part in this discussion.

    Thanks for that,

    LCK

  12. Is your argument is that operant conditioning doesn’t use thinking, or that it does? That it shouldn’t or that it should? You need to get your story straight. Operant conditioning works with the visible behavior of the dog, not with whatever crazy thing anyone might imagine about how dogs think. You can’t and Kevin can’t and no guru opr whisperer can look inside a dogs mind and think like a dog. But we can imagine. All the people in this discussion clearly have vivid imaginations. I think you should. I would never say that Kevin is wrong about the way dogs think or feel. But I have no idea about how Kevin thinks, or how anyone thinks. I can’t get inside your brain and peep out through your consciousness. But fortunately, our consciousness isn’t just your own personal consciousness, it’s part of a river of consciousness, form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations. We share that river with our dogs. The only reason the word “squirrel” means anything to me or my dog is because it means something to all of you.

    Remember when we were kids, and we’d look at a color and say, “I wonder if when you see something “red” if you’re seeing the same thing I’m seeing?” That’s what this whole conversation is about. And I guess that’s where it gets down to a spiritual way of thinking, and being Buddhist, I say, it’s all connected. It’s all one big interwoven mat, and of course, we share consciousness, consciousness has been handed around like a flu virus, for a very long time. Our dogs don’t think like we do, but they don’t think in an ENTIRELY different manner. There is plenty of overlap.

  13. Angelique says:

    I think the dog is feeling a greater attraction to the squirrel than to the owner. I also think that the resistance the dog feels on the leash is increasing its attraction to the squirrel.

    I don’t personally think the dog is processing anything along the lines of “I wish human would let go of my leash so I could get the squirrel.” I don’t think the the dog even really connects the human with the leash in a way that allows him to understand it is the human providing the resistance.

  14. Angelique I think what you’re saying there can be true, but not always true. I was referring to what my own dog might be thinking in that situation. But really, it depends! At what stage of training are we talking? In what context? Dusk, midnight, midday rain? How old thhot or tired, is there was also a pack of dogs nearby, or deer: all sorts of things would influence what she might be thinking in that situation, including training.

    I don’t know about your dog, but my dog knows that I am at the other end of the leash.She doesn’t pull around squirrels anymore, I was remembering when she did, now she just sort of prances on air and is happy to see them, hopeful she will get a chance to climb a few trees. But untrained dogs can just get so unconscious and overstimulated that yes, they would be sort of insane with preydrive and lose consciousness regarding anything else.

    It all depends.

  15. Seb says:

    So there’s no consistency in dog behavior? (And if thinking dictates behavior, consistency in thinking?) Shouldn’t that be what behavioral science is for?

  16. kbehan says:

    JRY: “Is your argument is that operant conditioning doesn’t use thinking, or that it does? That it shouldn’t or that it should? You need to get your story straight.”

    My position is straight and it isn’t about what should or what shouldn’t be, it has consistently been that dogs don’t think and therefore OC can’t be using thinking because it’s not possible for thinking to be going on in the canine mind. I am saying that dogs learn by feel and I am prepared to say exactly how. OC says dogs can learn by thinking but then they are not able to supply a non-human linear-based perspective inside the thought balloon. I can understand why someone would find my argument rather fantastic, but the far more amazing argument is that dogs are thinking just like humans, albeit in a somewhat more primitive way as Stanley Coren puts it, “varying by degree not in kind.” (The Aborigines talk of “dream time” and I think this is perhaps the same as animal consciousness.) If a dog is capable of thinking when seeing a squirrel, “Let me go.” Then it’s capable of thinking of its self separate and distinct from the owner, not to mention the squirrel. It must then construct a reason why it’s not being let go, what is motivating its owner, why would it owner hold it back, doesn’t its owner want it to have fun, doesn’t’ the owner want the squirrel to eat like it wants it to eat? Why don’t humans eat squirrels? And so on in an infinite cascade of thoughts. If the dog can think this, then the dog can think of very good reasons not to chase the squirrel without any reinforcement being required whatsoever since thinking beings do such things all the time. And if this were true, then we wouldn’t observe the existence of breed traits whereby well bred specimens can’t resist doing what their emotional charge ordains them to do.

    JRY: “Operant conditioning works with the visible behavior of the dog, not with whatever crazy thing anyone might imagine about how dogs think.”

    If it works with the visible behavior then why make the claim that the dog thinks? You may disagree with me and that’s fair, but I’m arguing that an energy theory as opposed to a thought-centric theory does indeed allow one to look into the mind of the dog because it reveals that the mind of the dog is organized according to the same principles of nature that nature itself is organized around. In fact, I believe this will prove to be the only view consistent with evolution that the formed evolved from the unformed, i.e. energy. Thus the behavior of the dog is an external expression of internal principles. If one studies the behavior without projecting thoughts onto it, such as causes and effects, the capacity to compare one point-of-view to another, territoriality, dominance, submission, time, one self-relative-to-another-self and so on, these internal principles can become exceptionally vivid because they are being made physically manifest by the expression of behavior. I have only just scratched the surface in what I have been able to get up on the website so far but in the meantime you might take note that there is a precedent in science for my claim of the incisive power of an energy theory because for example, an energy theory of chemical behavior allowed physicists to see inside the atom and divine the photon.

    JRY “You can’t and Kevin can’t and no guru or whisperer can look inside a dogs mind and think like a dog. But we can imagine. All the people in this discussion clearly have vivid imaginations. I think you should. I would never say that Kevin is wrong about the way dogs think or feel. But I have no idea about how Kevin thinks, or how anyone thinks. I can’t get inside your brain and peep out through your consciousness. But fortunately, our consciousness isn’t just your own personal consciousness, it’s part of a river of consciousness, form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations. We share that river with our dogs.”

    I couldn’t agree more that everything is connected via consciousness. My point is that the only possible way that all things could be connected via consciousness is via energy, not through thoughts. I can never know what another is thinking, but I can know what another is feeling, if that is I am able to separate a thought from a feeling and an instinct from emotion. Because dogs are so very adroit at feeling what we feel, is precisely how they know to adapt to us. They’re not reading our thoughts, they’re reading our hearts.
    In a long-winded nutshell I will summarize my position as the following. I am promulgating a model wherein animal consciousness is a networked-intelligence. Cognition in dogs is a function of emotion as a form of a group consciousness. Dogs learn according to a principle of emotional conductivity, specifically, the expression of emotion begets unresolved emotion as a physical memory of experience, and the way that the neurology and physiology of a dog is organized in response to the affects of physical memory when it is activated by external triggers, thereby configures the dog’s mind so as to implement the principles of gravity, the laws of motion and electromagnetism and the dog is then able to feel its way as to how it can align with what it is attracted to, and moreover, to make contact and self-organize so as to thus make new energy. This amazing capacity of intelligence has been confused with a mental acuity. Emotion and feelings are what we have in common with dogs, thoughts and genes are what keep us separate.

  17. christine randolph says:

    does it really matter how the dog arrives at their learning ? (emotion or thinking or a mixture of both?)

    Obviously Stimulus.response works REALLY well.

    the way Operant Conditioning is used, it also works, maybe not As Spontaneously as Classical Conditioning, but it seems like fun for dogs and owners, and you can chain behaviours which is important for stuff like dolphin shows.

    anyway, I think a dog can think because I can see it in my dog’s faces when they try to work out what i want from them and then select a behaviour that they will present to me in order to make me give them a treat.

    even the fact that they can CHOOSE a behaviour rather than just work off off the one track stimulus.response gambit seems to indicate that they think.

    and when they try to work out how to get the treat, they think intensely and their entire brain is engaged.

    so maybe there is an exclusion of emotion at that time. except, there might be a small part of the dog’s brain that feels frustration because the treat has not arrived yet.

    at other times, to me it must be true that thinking and emotion are both present.

    if it gets INTENSE, emotion and thought exclude each other. (for people too, hence courts allow temporary insanity as a defence…)

    I think if an owner is able to present many different ways of learning to their dog, this helps to have the dog more happily engaged with their owners so it should all be encouraged.

    Also, especially with red zone cases, whatever works.

    So if Cesar’s stuff works with the dogs he is working with, fine, but do not expect it to work with all dogs always in equal measure. too many variables. it seems as though his is the uncanny ability to divine what works with what dog.

    if this is true and if behind the scenes he is not trying out 1001 different ways to get the dog to behave as expected, until he has the final selection filmed, then he has to be given credit for that power of divination.
    he’s a divvy !

    I think this is how i also work with my dogs. i try to figure out what will work, from my past experience with them, and if it does not, try something else etc until i find something that stimulates their brain going in the right direction.

    i understand that it would be good to analyse the dog’s brain to the n’th degree so we can make the entire training experience more predictable but since we have not been able to do it with PEOPLE who can VERBALIZE thought and emotion, I think we will run into a brick wall with this research sooner than later.

    I think the emotional battery theory is better especially when it gets used to deliberately spike the battery and then deal with it, rather than being afraid to overload the battery as many owners are who are unable to deal with their dog’s intensity.

  18. Christine: “I think a dog can think because I can see it in my dog’s faces when they try to work out what i want from them”

    What you’re actually seeing (in my view) is a pause, a gap in the action. And anytime those of us with human brains see such a gap in the action, particularly when observing animals who have expressive eyes, as dogs do, we automatically project some kind of thought process onto the animal’s behavior. But as Kevin has asked, if you’re seeing a thought process in your dogs’ behavior, then simply imagine a thought balloon over their heads. What would you write in that balloon to describe their thoughts?

    As for Cesar Millan, he sometimes knows what he’s doing, he just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. (Read my article, Pack Leader or Predator?.) Millan has a certain knack or ability with certain types of dogs, but it’s the kind of approach where these dogs will need to be exercised for hours at a time on a regular basis to burn off their aggressive energy, or else they need to be kept under strict control (i.e., “dominated”) at all times.

    Kevin’s ability is several notches above and beyond that because once the kind of relationship has been established where the owner or trainer becomes the release point or grounding point for higher and higher levels of energy, the dog no longer needs to be given excessive amounts of exercise, and also needs no “dominance” whatsoever. The dog and the owner are in harmony. Cesar is always trying to attain a state of balance, which is equal the opposition of forces. True harmony is what we see when a wolf pack hunts together: everybody knows their “job,” no one is pressuring or forcing anyone to “obey” them; it’s all part of a natural flow of emotion.

    When dogs have no other option, they’ll settle for being in balance, but they much prefer to be in harmony. That’s their natural state…

    LCK

  19. christine randolph says:

    what would I write in the thought ballon?

    Simple: I want the treat. i got treats before by doing weird stuff, and I already tried 2 weird things, that did not get me the treat.
    I can predict, that when I do the thing that mom wants, I will GET IT !!!!!

    so now I am not doing ANYTHING until I have thought about it. Because I am wasting NO MORE physical energy ! so, which 3rd weird thing can i try ? hmmmhmmmm hmmm oh yeah! a TWIRL !!!!!

    the dogs also make whingey sounds during that process, that seem to show their frustration at not having reached the goal yet. They also sometimes get faster and faster in their offered behaviours, panicky but then when the handler does not reward any of that, they get more calm, into the “THinking groove”.

    For instance, the “extinction burst” is such a moment, where the dog has to re-adapt, think etc, use their cognitive power.

    this is for naming a shaped behaviour.

    the first step is to shape the behaviour with a clicker. then, the cue is given while the dog performs the behaviour, then click then treat.

    eventually, the handler does no longer reward the behaviour unless they have given the cue FIRST (verbal or whatever). so, the dog offers the behaviour – the handler does nothing. there is a moment of total surprise in the dog and then… thinking and an extinction burst, i.e. the learning, that this will not work so well any more. then the handler gives the cue, and the dog is sort of relieved to be given the opportunity to do the behaviour.

    most animals have those abilities, do they not ? I thought it was pretty much accepted that dogs have the cognitive abilities of a 3-4 year old child.

    We all know dogs can deal with new situations and adapt, I would say, by their cognitive processes.

    i think cesar is like a lot of people dealing with dogs, misinterpreting what actually happens to make sense out of it…

    it seems difficult not to do this….

    I am doing this too, when I say they think. however, I think there is a lot of evidence that they think….

  20. Sean Behan says:

    This reminds me of the original under title of the Natural Dog Training book “Born Wild, Train to be Free”.

    The fleeting moment of harmony within the group found during the hunt is the exception rather than the rule. In the relationships with our dogs we have the opportunity to escape this state of nature. We don’t actually have to kill the Moose to survive these days.

  21. christine randolph says:

    especially if I am supposed to be the moose, I hope we do not have to kill the moose !

    I think cesar could say DOGGIE DADDY rather than Pack Leader, and he would be OK again…

    since the packs are mostly families… where the so-called alpha are the parents.

    anyway, who knows, maybe Cesar is also thinking mostly of emotional batteries and particle physics but since that does not sell to average america, he decided to stick with the pack leader for the tv….

    i think his concept of assertive energy is what makes him attractive to the dogs

  22. Christine says:

    This makes good sense to me: “KB-I couldn’t agree more that everything is connected via consciousness. My point is that the only possible way that all things could be connected via consciousness is via energy, not through thoughts. I can never know what another is thinking, but I can know what another is feeling, if that is I am able to separate a thought from a feeling and an instinct from emotion. Because dogs are so very adroit at feeling what we feel, is precisely how they know to adapt to us. They’re not reading our thoughts, they’re reading our hearts….. This amazing capacity of intelligence has been confused with a mental acuity. Emotion and feelings are what we have in common with dogs, thoughts and genes are what keep us separate.”
    My understanding is that everything in existence is a product of energy and our ever-expanding universe is kept in check by forces we don’t yet understand (i.e. “Dark Matter” and “Dark Energy”). Truly wonderous and awe-inspiring! There are many types and forms of intelligence, not all of which require cognitive thought as does ours. It only seems natural to me that there should be a way to “plug-in” to all of it. I am envious, to a point, of wolves and their ability to “feel” and sense the world without thought. I would hope that, at some point in our existence, we will be able to figure out how to “tune-in” to the physical and not so physical world in a simiilar fashion. Happy Day!

  23. Christine Randolph writes: what would I write in the thought ballon?

    Simple: I want the treat. i got treats before by doing weird stuff, and I already tried 2 weird things, that did not get me the treat.
    I can predict, that when I do the thing that mom wants, I will GET IT !!!!!

    so now I am not doing ANYTHING until I have thought about it. Because I am wasting NO MORE physical energy ! so, which 3rd weird thing can i try ? hmmmhmmmm hmmm oh yeah! a TWIRL !!!!!

    Let’s leave the ability to use language aside (an ability dogs don’t have, but we’re sort of suspending that for the purposes of filling in the thought balloon). Let’s look at the first thought: “I already tried 2 weird things.”

    If dogs live totally in the now moment, how would they have an ability to reference past events? How would dogs be able to count? Without the use of language, how would dogs know the difference between normal and weird. (Helen Keller said that before she learned sign language she wasn’t able to differentiate one thing from another; you can’t make comparisons without the ability to put names to things.)

    The next statement, “I can predict…” means dogs would not only have to able to have a sense of linear, chronological time (meaning they would no longer be living totally in the now moment), they would have to be capable of what cognitive scientists call “mental time travel,” going from the present, mentally, to the past or to the future. That’s simply not possible without a whole host of cognitive abilities dogs don’t have.

    Then you say the dog is thinking, “I’m not doing anything until I have thought about it.” That’s what cognitive scientists call metacognition, or thinking about thinking. So in your model, not only is the dog capable of having private, conscious mental conversations with himself, he’s also able to think about what he’s thinking. Humans do that sort of thing quite naturally. Dogs show no signs of having that ability.

    You’re right, in a way, about one of the “thoughts” the dog has. “…when I do the thing that mom wants, I will GET IT…” Dogs are very tuned-in to our desires. As Kevin has written here (or somewhere) 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.

    Then finally, you get to the real (in my view) “thought” process going on in the dog’s mind (though it’s not a thought process, it’s another emotional process). “I am wasting no more energy…” This is the most accurate thing in your example. The dog is very likely frustrated that it can’t get a treat. Wanting the treat creates a feeling in the dog’s body. That feeling resonates with the energy of previous experiences where the dog wanted a treat. Those vibrations are stored in the dog’s physical memory. But that feeling is not mental, it’s visceral. It’s comparable to the way you might feel when the smell of a certain type of comfort food reminds you of your mother’s kitchen, etc. — you’re briefly taken back to a moment in time where that smell and a particularly strong emotion were tied together.

    So the dog isn’t thinking this through mentally. He’s feeling it. And when the desire for the treat and the way that desire resonates energetically with the wavelengths stored inside his cells that are normally in-synch with a previously-stored pattern of behavior, and the pattern doesn’t repeat itself, that’s when you see a gap in the action that you interpret as “thinking.” The dog isn’t thinking. He’s pausing simply because he can’t tune in to the pattern. He feels lost. He feels disconnected. He pauses, and waits until the energy of his frustration is released, either in a repetition of a previous pattern, or another behavior that has a similar wavelength (in terms of the type and level of energy stored in his cells).

    This is the gap in behavior I was talking about earlier when I said that whenever humans see such a gap, our minds fill in the blanks with some sort of thought process. But for the dog, it’s not mental at all, except perhaps the feeling that the patterns don’t fit. But again, that’s a feeling, not a conscious thought process. (Pattern recognition is an evolutionary pre-cursor to logic; in fact, chess masters win games by using pattern recognition, not logic, which is why they’re able to make moves so quickly.)

    I’m recommending a couple more articles:

    The Debate Between Emotion and Logic

    The Canine Mind Doth Make Fools of Us

    LCK

  24. Footnote: my only reason for analyzing canine behavior in such exact terms — trying to remove all possible humanlike thought processes from our explanations of how they perceive their experiences, how they learn, etc. — is that in my view doing so will help people understand their dogs better. The less we project our own thoughts or forms of thinking onto our dogs’ behavior, the more we can see them and celebrate them for who they truly are — the most remarkable animal on the planet.

    LCK

  25. christine randolph says:

    Lee, I think if you do exact terms, and stuff, does it not have to be repeatable as many times as one wants ? like the alarm clock thing, I do not think is very repeatable ????

    i mean, a lot of scientists work with dogs/wolves.coyotes.dingos ? to find out what they do, repetitively as a species. not to hypothezise about it.
    i mean there is NOTHING wrong with hypothesizing but it is very different from exact science ????
    so i think there needs to be room for both and the theories you guys think up, they need to fit with what is observed in the behavioural science experiments, not necessarily with how this is interpreted.
    i.e. if a dog can remember tricks and have them on cue, that means they can remember the past, no ?

    and if a dog can scratch the door because the have an expectation that the owner will let them out to the bathroom, that is a prediction the dog makes of the future, no ??

    anyway, maybe not ???

    anyway, how do you know that Freddie had not turned over and remade his bed 5 times during the night, and those times you did not wake up ??

    btw my dog is also called Freddie is it not the coolest name

  26. christine randolph says:

    “…when i do the thing that mom wants i will GET IT” is also a prediction of the future, based on memory of the past, no ?

  27. christine randolph says:

    “weird things” I call things that a dog is not genetically programmed to do…

    of course dogs cannot verbalize or conceptualize like humans, but IF they could, their thoughts would be SOMETHING like what I said, I think.

    we know that on a very basic level they can work goal oriented and communicate their intent in a group (hunting, herding, what not)

    what about imitating ? dogs sort of imitate, as do cats. apparently cats do not make noises with their mouths unless they are exposed to humans (or parrots.or the TV???) because apparently, they are trying to imitate our speech. like parrots…so, even if this is all about wavelength, what kind of intent would an animal have other than thought, albeit very basic, to imitate human speech ?

    this is why pet animals change when they are with humans (if the humans spend time with them and get them involved with stuff), they can no longer be Super Wild they become “sophisticated”

  28. kbehan says:

    We’re not saying that dogs aren’t intelligent, we’re saying that their intelligence is a function of emotion, feelings, and then whatever interpretation of energy makes the most sense. We’re arguing that dogs don’t have to be like humans to be considered intelligent.
    Saying dogs thinks at first appears to be saying something laudatory, so perhaps it might help if you consider the flip side of the argument. If dogs can think and if dogs therefore have intention, then this means they intend to disobey, they intend to hurt another, they intend many things. This means that someone could perfectly train a dog but the dog could disobey from a malevolent motive. And if a dog kills another dog after attacking without provocation it means it intended to murder the other dog. This therefore means that a dog can’t be unconditionally loving. A dog’s love is conditional on thinking.

  29. Heather says:

    I am going to get the book today, I would like to join in the more theoretical discussions but need to get a better understanding of the principles.

    From my experiential point of view, I see that humans are more like dogs than dogs are like humans. We humans have the same basic senses as dogs (albeit some of them, like smell and hearing, are more limited), and we are able to sense “true reality” (energy shifts) within our environment via our senses. We then use our “intelligence” (it is a wonderful gift but ironically doesn’t serve us very well!), i.e., our emotions and then our thoughts about our emotions, to filter what we perceived into basically one of two bucket (e.g., “this is good/safe for me – I like it”, “this is not good/unsafe for me-I don’t like it”) and then we react to itin a manner that encompasses all whatever strategy we have developed from our individual “flaw.” (Kevin’s term). Then we create lots of stories about all of it in our minds and the whole thing becomes a memory we refer back to as some sort of truth. Most of the time we are completely unaware of any of it and think we are reacting to the true reality of every situation.

    Dogs go from sensing true reality (energy shift) to reacting to it in a manner that is free from all of that nonsense. Then once the reaction is done, they move on and respond completely appropriately to the next situation – each response is perfect. They don’t know it, however. That is their gift to us, just reflecting this state of energy to us.

    I think learning responses to commands is different from all of that. They have some receiptive language ability that we normally associate with thinking, and that is great because it is one way we can communicate with them and makes living together easier, but it is not the only way we can communicate. And it doesn’t mean that we don’t have more to learn from them than they have to learn from us – I think we have far more to learn from dogs.

  30. This is in response to Christine Randolph’s earlier posts (in italics):

    Lee, I think if you do exact terms, and stuff, does it not have to be repeatable as many times as one wants ? like the alarm clock thing, I do not think is very repeatable ????

    There’s a difference between observation and experimentation. Sometimes, particularly with wild animals, observation is all that’s available. Since the phenomenon I described in my article (The Debate Between Emotion and Logic)
    happened every single time I needed to wake up, that’s a repeated behavior. Yes, it’s a small data set. But since it’s something that both Kevin and I experienced with our dogs, and this happened without either of us knowing about the other’s experiences until long afterward, it strongly suggests that this is something worth looking into. I don’t think Kevin and I are equipped to set up an experimental protocol that would satisfy mainstream science. And that would be the next step. But there’s nothing inherently unscientific about observational (or anecdotal) data. Much of what we know about many of the behaviors of many species of animals — from jellyfish to whales — is observational, not experimental in nature.

    i mean, a lot of scientists work with dogs/wolves.coyotes.dingos ? to find out what they do, repetitively as a species. not to hypothezise about it.

    In actual fact, they do hypothesize. Quite a lot. Marc Beckoff is a key figure in ethology based on his scientific observations of how coyotes, wolves and dogs play. Some of his conclusions (or hypotheses) about the nature of play were groundbreaking at the time, but were quite anthropomorphic as well. One of the key questions about animal play is how are non-thinking animals capable of pretense or “deception,” the ability to “make believe” they’re fighting when they’re really not. The question was, how do dogs know it’s a game and not real aggression? After all, pretense is a high-level function of intellect. But Beckoff also has written that he believes dogs can smell fear. And since real aggression is based on fear, it’s not much of a stretch to postulate that dogs don’t need to differentiate between real aggression and “make believe” based on a function of intellect; it’s built-in to their olfactory systems. (That’s an explanation which seemed to satisfy Beckoff when I suggested it to him a few months ago, but Kevin’s explanation would probably rely more on his concept of a network consciousness.)

    i.e. if a dog can remember tricks and have them on cue, that means they can remember the past, no ?

    Can a computer remember the past? Deep Blue, IBM’s chess computer, was able to beat Garry Kasparov at chess. How? It was programmed to recognize patterns. That’s it. In fact, all chess masters rely more on pattern recognition than long-term memory. For an animal in the wild, the amount of time it takes to first remember a past experience like the one they’re experiencing in the now moment, then put the two together and devise a plan on how to react, takes much more time than the animal has. They have to rely on either pattern recognition or a kind of instant, energetic memory overlay, or they’re going to end up dead. Even for human beings — who are capable of reminiscing at will about past events, pleasant or not-so-much — most behaviors that happen in the moment are a result of this kind of energetic overlay, with no conscious thought attached,

    and if a dog can scratch the door because they have an expectation that the owner will let them out to the bathroom, that is a prediction the dog makes of the future, no ??

    Not necessarily. The dog has a desire to go out. That desire is a form of energy. And stored in the dog’s data banks is an energy overlay of that feeling mixed with the behavior of going outside, and the owner opening the door, etc. The dog isn’t predicting the future so much as he’s reliving the past. (And that doesn’t mean he’s remembering the past; he’s actually re-living it.)

    anyway, how do you know that Freddie had not turned over and remade his bed 5 times during the night, and those times you did not wake up ??

    Statistically speaking, the only relevant piece of information is the fact that he would always turn over at the exact moment I needed to wake up. It doesn’t really matter how many specific moments during the night he did it (unless the number were overwhelmingly huge). It only matters that he always did it within a precise range of the exact moment necessary. That’s pretty phenomenal.

    btw my dog is also called Freddie is it not the coolest name

    Mine came with the name “Fred,” which I disliked initially. I tried to change it, but none of the alternatives I came up with took. I was stuck with it. But, yes, I grew to love it quite a lot.

    “weird things” I call things that a dog is not genetically programmed to do…
    of course dogs cannot verbalize or conceptualize like humans, but IF they could, their thoughts would be SOMETHING like what I said, I think.

    And that’s part of the problem. You can’t fill in the thought balloon that Kevin talks about without getting into areas that the dog’s brain isn’t equipped for.

    we know that on a very basic level they can work goal oriented and communicate their intent in a group (hunting, herding, what not)

    In order for dogs to have an intent to communicate they would have to have what cognitive scientists refer to as a “theory of mind.” In fact, for that kind of communication they would have to have the highest level ToM, which is only found in humans and members of the dolphin family. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind

    what about imitating ? dogs sort of imitate, as do cats. apparently cats do not make noises with their mouths unless they are exposed to humans (or parrots.or the TV???) because apparently, they are trying to imitate our speech. like parrots…so, even if this is all about wavelength, what kind of intent would an animal have other than thought, albeit very basic, to imitate human speech ?

    The idea that parrots imitate human speech is probably based more on human projection than reality. Dogs aren’t “imitating,” but they are “mirroring” us. They’re probably one of only a few species that have mirror neurons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neurons

    this is why pet animals change when they are with humans (if the humans spend time with them and get them involved with stuff), they can no longer be Super Wild they become “sophisticated”

    You’re absolutely right. I read somewhere that the brain of a domesticated dog (or cat) has more folds in it than the brains of wild dogs or cats. However, the brain is only part of the puzzle. Dogs are here to reflect our nature back to us. In the process of becoming human we’ve forgotten how to be wild and free and connected to the simple wonders of the natural world. Dogs are our connection to that primal and primeval part of ourselves.

    LCK

  31. christine randolph says:

    Lee,

    here’s another hypothesis for you:

    what if ….there were too much genetic and behavioural diversification resulting in too many unclassifiable dogs’ mental processes,

    (by the way i like the way you defend “whom”. I have always liked “whom” and feel very sad that no one uses it. (in How to Collar a Killer) I am assuming you feel the same about Conditional Tense in IF clauses, such as the one I just used ???))

    …in dogs, there might be a lot more mental diversity than phenotypical diversity…seeing that we cannot see it…we can see that a dog has black spots and another dog does not.

    That is probably trivial to what a mind can do to diversify itself…

    so how can one find enough commonality in dogs’ minds to warrant any globalizing statements about them as a species ?

    look at humans…we know precious litte about the human mind.

    …still we try to overgeneralize what we know to see if we cannot apply it to the population at large….but does this really do justice to the human mind ? currently, I do not think so… equally, we cannot get into a dog’s head without a bag of super-tricks…

    I think it would be good to get dogs into those brain scanners that they have at House,M.D. where you can see brain activity that results from external stimuli.

    like if the person is happy, a certain area lights up on the screen, the doctors look at the image of the patient’s brain and they are able to tell that the brain’s Pleasure Center or whatever is in use…

    ….then it might be possible to distinguish brain activity resulting from a previously learned mental movement from something they are in the process of learning.

    Or maybe there is a creativity area, and separately, various emotional areas. or, if your theory were true, only emotional areas ?????

    …i mean Lizard Brain… dogs have more than that, right ! they are higher up in the evolutionary food chain…

    but what is the likelyhood of that ?

    I think it more likely that dogs have a theory of mind.

    …In the dog,animal (yeah why should dolphins be so much more ToM than dogs?????) i see intent and mental processes called up into the brain stem, executing behaviours, body movements that are designed to get intended results.

    we do not have to call them thoughts, yeah you could call them “pattern recognition” but i think they are separate from emotions…

    ….emotion might come in when the dog has scratched 5 times and has not been let out and slowly, the urge to pee is getting more urgent…?????

    these mental processes might be less deliberate, less voluntary than those of us who treat our dogs as people, might want to accept, but a good chunk of volition is undeniable in my mind…

    i wanted to tell you, about dogs getting up to re-make their beds,

    In the book by Gary Paulsen about his participation in the Iditarod, he was a novice musher so he asked another musher how he could tell that his dog team had had enough rest, so he could go on the next stage.
    he was told when his weakest animal gets up to remake their bed, they have had enough rest…

    (maybe this was just a way to have a practical joke with a guy who did not know any better?)

    so he was watching his dogs all night (too excited to sleep)and when Murphy turned around he would get them all out and run another few hundred miles…

    so maybe Freddie had a phenomenal cicadian rythm that would make him feel all rested and ready to roll at the same time every morning, regardless of your idea of when to get up ?? …might have been coincidence…?

    anyway, I have been told by many friends that their dogs can read their thought and act on them, or, to express it less anthropomorhpic, they can pick up waves and patterns that humans do not even know they are sending out. and behave accordingly….

    Hah our dog was called Dodge before we got him.(as we found out much later) but someone made that into Laker by mistake (dodge stadium, LA Lakers) , so we thought he was called Laker.

    we made that into Sir Freddie Laker, the founder of a low cost airline in the 60s in Great Britain.

    so our dog was not even called Freddie, we added that on… haha.

    now we call him Moby quite often because he has such a wide open mouth and makes this huge smacking noise when we give him a treat.

    Merry Xmas !

  32. Donnie O. says:

    I don’t think that I can add anything to the psychological portion of this conversation (I think Lee and Kevin are better-equipped), but I did want to mention something about Christine’s last response. The thing that I really like about the NDT emotional model is its’ simplicity. All dog behavior comes back to the need for emotional balance. In a mental-intellectual model of dog behavior, the explanation gets more and more complicated when behaviors which cannot be explained by the basic premise occur. This is similar to the layers and layers of complexity in the geocentric model of the universe that existed before Galileo’s work to prove that the earth was actually revolving around the sun. To paraphrase Ockham’s Razor, the simplest explanation that satisfies all variables of a problem is most likely to be correct. Though the Natural Dog Training theory has many intricacies, it is a very simple formula and does in fact explain various dog behaviours without adding any complexity to the theory.

  33. christine randolph says:

    Donnie,
    so if a dog is on one side of a fence and the owner on the other side with a treat, the motivation to get to the owner is emotional ??
    and the problem solving the dog is performing is happening how ? like how does the dog figure out to go to the side to get to the owner who is straight ahead ? via mental processes or emotional processes ? I would say mental processes would have to be a part of this…maybe we need to say the need for emotional balance provides the motivation for mental processes, similar to what we see in humans…???? I think it would be nice if more people came forward with their own theories of dog psychology, not just Kevin and Lee…
    I still think dogs’ brains have to be a precursor to human brains, and if a dog’s brain had no mental component, that would be counter intuitive to me.

  34. seb says:

    @ Christine Randolph:

    This is a pretty good question, because I think a lot of dog owners see interesting things that their dogs do all the time, and using the mental process explanation, they can’t explain it.

    For instance, our house has two entrances – one in the front and one in the back. Come feeding time, our dog gets excited and goes from the front to the back hoping to get outside to where we feed her. There used to be only one route she could travel due to the layout of the house. However, probably two years ago we knocked out a wall and opened up a direct line from the front of the house to back. Guess what our dog does? When she gets excited, she STILL takes the first — and longer — route. Even though there is a clear, visible and direct line between the two entrances. And even though when she’s not excited, she goes that direct route all the time!

    Kevin’s theory explains this because when she’s getting excited and there’s a lot of energy going into the system, she can only reference that physical memory of how she felt the last time there was that much energy in the system. So that’s what’s influencing her behavior.

    Perhaps the hang up may be that when we say there is no mental process, it sounds as if we’re saying there is no brain activity. Of course there’s brain activity, but dogs, as Kevin says, “go-by-feel”.

  35. “I think the ability to use reason — to see cause and effect, to put two-and-two together, etc. — is dependent on three cognitive abilities: 1) the use of language, 2) a sense of oneself as being separate from one’s environment, and 3) a clear sense of linear time. When studied in their natural state, dogs show no signs of possessing any of these abilities, so they can’t have reasons for their behaviors, which means we have to examine their unique form of consciousness (or dognition, if you will) in terms of emotion not reason, and in terms of desire not intent.”

    From From Pavlov to Pauli: What Dogs Can Tell Us About the Nature of Time and Consciousness

    LCK

  36. A few more points (from another article I wrote for PsychologyToday.com):

    “The human mind is designed to find reasons for things, even things that don’t have reasons. And dogs don’t have reasons for their behaviors; they can’t. The dog’s brain is designed primarily to process sensory data and emotional information in real time. It would not have been advantageous, in evolutionary terms, for dogs or wolves to take time out to “think” about their circumstances and then use logic to make decisions. In the wild a logical animal is a dead animal. That’s because logic is a slow, high-energy, top-heavy mental process. Even chess masters don’t use logic to win matches; they rely on pattern recognition and working memory. Yet whenever we see a dog stop for a moment to make choices about which action he wants to take, or pause to ‘feel things out,’ we automatically (and mostly unconsciously) believe the dog is ‘thinking things through,’ i.e., using an innate ability to reason.

    “There are several ‘reasons’ for this. One is that dogs have faces. And one of the primary social circuits in the human brain is designed to recognize not only the faces of people we know but to ‘intuit’ what the expressions on those faces ;mean.’ These circuits are equipped with a lot of dopamine receptors, making face recognition a kind of natural high.

    When we see footage of wolves hunting together, for example, our analysis of what we think is going in their minds (which probably goes back to the Darwinian idea of species having adaptive ‘strategies’) is that the wolves are planning their attack; they’ve got a ‘game plan.’ We see it in their faces. Yet when we see a spider go into a hole and pull a leaf over himself to ‘hide’ from his prey, do we believe the spider is thinking this through logically? Does it have a game plan? Of course not. And one of the reasons we don’t do that is that a spider’s ‘face’ is expressionless.

    “Another ‘reason’ we believe dogs use logic and reason may be that dogs don’t feel themselves to be separate from us, and on a certain level we don’t feel separate from them. Many pet owners report that they grieve more over the loss of a favorite pet than they do over the loss of a parent, a close friend, or a spouse. These owners say that losing the pet is like losing a part of themselves. That may be because parents, spouses, and friends have ego boundaries. Dogs don’t. As a result it becomes easier for us to see our dogs as indivisible from our own thoughts, making us susceptible to the belief that they think more like we do than the size and shapes of their brains would suggest or support.

    “Another anomaly is that dogs are much smarter than wolves in terms of being adaptable to new environments and in terms of their social intelligence. And yet a wolf’s brain is at least 25% larger than the brain of a dog the same size. Where does the dog get its extra brain power?

    “I think they get it from our brains. I think they literally hijack parts of our brains and use them to think with. I borrowed this idea from the philosophy of embodied embedded cognition, written and hypothesized about by Daniel Dennett, Andy Clark, Susan Hurley, and others.

    “Here’s how I think this happens: Dogs read us and react, read us and react, read us and react, over and over. And we project our own emotions and thought processes onto their reactions, based in large part on our personal beliefs and identities. As a result, our reactions, in the moment, reinforce whatever small behavioral changes the dog exhibits in response to us in an almost continuous loop. This happens repeatedly, countless numbers of times every day, even when we’re not thinking about it. And as a result, the dog begins to reflect back to us many of the same things we’re unconsciously projecting onto them.

    “That’s what they do. That’s what we do.”

    How Man Creates Dog in His Own Image.

    LCK

  37. christine randolph says:

    well, you know…women also have a smaller brain than men and, guess what….

    hahaha

    I LOVE the term Dognition, that is one cool word.

    also, the hijacking of our brains, that gels with a lot of what people have told me.

    i will try to work on opening my brain to make sure the dog can get access….

    it is very “trekky”… like spok merges his brain with some guy at some point.. i think vulcans can do that… forget which episode.movie…..

  38. word ! they are doing this even as I speak, MRIing a dog’s brain….

    I like genotype and endophenotype….

  39. http://www.dogstardaily.com/blogs/%E2%80%9Cinside-dog%E2%80%99s-brain-it%E2%80%99s-too-dark-read%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%A6-no-more#comment-3492
    arr sorry i put the link in the wrong spot, i am hoggin all the new spots now sorry sorry sorry a thouuuusand apologies. i am just kind of excited about this brain scan thing

  40. A Few Noteworthy Points on the link posted above:

    The changes in the posterior hippocampus of London cab drivers was not explicitly related to memory, per se, but to navigation. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/677048.stm

    And this is only one study. More need to be done before we can start jumping to conclusions about what the increased hippocampal mass means in terms of Hebbian learning and where memory is or isn’t stored.

    Oftentimes increased electrical activity detected in certain sections of the brain while subjects are given a mental or emotional task only means that the brain is active during such a task. This doesn’t mean that such an area of the brain is where this or that ability is explicitly or permanently located, just that such abilities seem to be processed in those areas. For example, there is no proof in any study I’m aware of that memories actually are “stored” in the hippocampus, let alone how that storage takes place, or in what form those memories are stored. We just know, or surmise, that the hippocampus is active during the processing of memory-related tasks. Yes, the increased size of the posterior hippcampi in London cab drivers suggests that memories are stored there, but it there also other alternative explanations, i.e., increased navigation skills, another function that the hippocampus serves.

    Dr. Dodman and others involved in the positive training movement strongly believe that there is a “right way” to train animals. This strongly suggests that if any researchers using this new fMRI technology share Dodman’s ideological leanings, it may very well lead to heavy confirmation bias in how research and experimentation is structured, leading, in turn, straight to the kind of conclusions that Dodman has already jumped to here.

    I’m not a scientist. I’m a dog trainer and mystery novelist. But what I see in this new research confirms my own personal bias, which is that all behavior and learning is a function of energy, not positive reinforcement schedules. For example, nowhere in this one, limited study done on London cab drivers, is there any mention of how each cabbie went about learning “the knowledge.” They seem to have various mnemonic tricks up their sleeves. But the one thing that’s clear (or should be clear) is that increased mental energy can theoretically be converted into increased mass. This suggests to me that a 21st Century model of learning and behavior as a function of an energy exchange with the environment is likely to be more scientific than the one currently held in such high esteem by Dodman and others. After all, behaviorism got its start at the turn of the 19th Century. It was fine in its time, but its time has passed.

    Anyway, that’s how I see it.

    LCK

  41. Correcting a garbled sentence:

    Yes, the increased size of the posterior hippcampi in London cab drivers suggests that memories are stored there, but it there also other alternative explanations, i.e., increased navigation skills, another function that the hippocampus serves.

    Should read:

    Yes, the increased size of the posterior hippocampi in London cab drivers suggests that memories are stored there, but there are also other, alternative explanations…

    LCK

  42. Sang says:

    Christine, it’s interesting that you made mention of the fact that women have smaller brains than men. Because as we all know, women tend to go more by feel, and seem to have a higher level of emotional intelligence than men. Whereas men tend to live more in their heads, with an inherent need to find reason and logic in everything, women tend to find satisfaction when something just feels good or right to them.

    Anyway, just thought that was an interesting comment.

    I could go on and on about how the dynamic between men and women is so similar to the dynamic between human and dog. But that would take way too long for this one comment. Not to mention it gets a bit off topic for this discussion:)

  43. kbehan says:

    Christine is asking the right questions, and in addition to the good points that have been made in response, I would add the following.

    CR: So if a dog is on one side of a fence and the owner on the other side with a treat, the motivation to get to the owner is emotional??

    KB: Yes, emotion is a “force” of attraction. A dog cannot prick an ear or take a step forward without first becoming energized via emotion as a virtual force of attraction. But the next leap that is necessary is to equate emotion with energy, which is logical since all energy works according to a force of attraction. What then follows is that energy doesn’t move at random but according to a principle of conductivity so that various media block, resist or refract the movement of various energies through them. You might then be able to entertain that the wide variety of behavior, even those things which we think of as highly intelligent and therefore as a function of thinking, might in fact be expressions of refraction, deflection, or the absorption of “heat” due to the resistance inherent in any media and which then accords a time-delay aspect to behavior, which we could easily misinterpret as an animal being aware of consequences over time.
    In addition to all of this, we can also entertain the notion that emotion is simultaneously a calculus of motion, i.e. how much momentum is required to connect with a desired object of attraction. For example, if one wants to go to California from New York, one must first feel how much “force” is contained within that desire, its internal momentum, and then hold that in mind relative to all the resistance (time, money, effort) inherent in completing the journey before one ends up with a determination that they do indeed want to go to California. We can note that underlying every moment of such a journey even though it spans thousands of miles, is the exact same feeling of momentum that is consistent ten minutes after having left home to being ten miles outside L.A. It’s sort of like the navigation, turn by turn guidance system that no matter where you are or what you are doing, has an energetic circuit relative to connecting two points on the grid that remains consistent until reaching the terminus. This is the steady state apprehension of momentum that is intrinsic in every feeling relative to connecting with an object of attraction.

    (((and the problem solving the dog is performing is happening how ? like how does the dog figure out to go to the side to get to the owner who is straight ahead ? via mental processes or emotional processes ?)))

    Emotion is not only a force of forward momentum, but its calculus also computes for deflection or angular momentum. Notice that when a dog is corrected for going straight at something, he doesn’t learn to desist in one fell swoop rather he simply learns to stop going AT THAT PARTICULAR ANGLE of approach. As soon as he gets blocked with straight ahead momentum, he then immediately feels a shift into angular momentum, i.e. an angle of deflection and so then the dog looks for a new access channel from another cardinal point on the compass. It’s akin to feeling pressure when the road ahead that leads to California is blocked by something, and then you immediately feel a pull to the first available exit that might circuitously lead to the objective. Forward momentum becoming angular momentum is built into the nature of emotion, I call these access channels and when one is blocked I called the subsequent pattern of deflection, “searching for a new negative.” I cover it in my eye contacting technique that’s featured on “Quantum Canine.” So the dog feels a pull toward another angle of approach when the straightforward one is blocked. It can do this because of a two-brain makeup so that the front-end-isn’t-connected-to-the-hind-end which means that the hind end can go faster than the front end. In other words the little-brain is energized with the physical memory of some preyful aspect, but it has nothing tangible yet for actual digestion and so it vibrates and arousal transcends balance because of the strong physical memory. This is the behavioral means of deflecting a dog from the straight ahead to an alternative access channel. Note that cats can’t do this with the alacrity that dogs can, and that every breed of dog is in fact a highly stylized variation on this phenomenon. When the hind-end-goes-faster-than-the-front-end it’s just as if the dog is an electron that has been magnetically charged which deflects its trajectory.
    The body/mind via a two brain makeup that enables a bipolar emotional battery is so composed in order to implement the principle of emotional conductivity, just as the bipolar makeup of a water molecule implements the principle of viscosity and all its life giving properties. So dogs innately pool together and align with each other and this compels and allows coordinated action toward a common goal and accords their nature its intelligence rendering properties.
    Also, what I find wanting in the kind of brain studies you’ve referenced, although I’m all in favor of every possible avenue of investigation, is its reductionism which ends up missing the proverbial forest for trees. For example, Drs. Dodman and Fogle go to such great length in all this brain research and imaging but to what end in understanding the dog? Dodman uses drugs to sedate dogs and late in Fogle’s book “The Mind of the Dog” after chapters on brain research and neurology, he actually recommends throwing a book at an aggressive cocker. They don’t understand the fundamental principle of animal consciousness; everything is a function of attraction not intention.
    I believe that studying behavior as energy is more enlightening because when you filter out human thoughts, this reveals a universal operating system for all animal behavior, far more fundamental than the so called imperative to replicate genes. Furthermore, because energy can move freely between forms and because it doesn’t move at random, I believe that a proper study of behavior can bring us inside the animal mind much more than can a brain scan.

    CR I would say mental processes would have to be a part of this…maybe we need to say the need for emotional balance provides the motivation for mental processes, similar to what we see in humans…????

    KB: The fundamental motive in emotion is motion rather than balance. If nature was in a state of perfect balance, it would be stagnant and dying. Emotion keeps nature unbalanced, in flux, constantly in transition, but always in accord with the principle of emotional conductivity by which every organism is organized to implement a network. In animals, the motive is always the basis of the behavioral process, rather than simply a trigger, and it is the overarching principle of intelligence.

    CR I still think dogs’ brains have to be a precursor to human brains, and if a dog’s brain had no mental component, that would be counter intuitive to me.

    KB: If organisms shift in accordance with the network expanding as a whole, then there wouldn’t be a linear tree of life so that the simpler brain of an organism such as the dog could be called the precursor to the more complex brain of the human. The network shifts, and all organisms shift to greater or lesser extents to maintain a steady state formula across the entire spectrum. (This is why even mainstream biology is moving toward emergence theory, although not seeing that it is eventually going to overturn neo-Darwinian gene-centric logic.) The network always becomes more complex, but in some cases this may mean some organisms simplify much like a computer programmer refines the computer’s output and efficiency by simplifying code and getting many lesser computers linked together (Internet) to execute functions beyond any mainframe, supercomputer’s capacity. This I feel is why Boskoff hominids became extinct even though their brains were far bigger (50 to 100%) than homosapien. I also feel this is why Homosapien triumphed over Neanderthal which also had a 1/3 bigger brain and was physically far superior, but, it was less network-enabled. The simplicity of the canine as a network-enabled body/mind is what renders its behavioral plasticity, a heightened emotional capacity rather than a heightened mental capacity.

    Remember what has to be jettisoned if dogs can think. It means that they are not creatures of the immediate-moment and cannot be called unconditionally loving. This also means they are not a perfect emotional reflection of their owner because they have their own independent mentality immune to external overwriting. Also, if we use thinking to account for what we interpret as mental smarts this causes us in my view to miss what’s really going on and so it terminates the inquiry. Just try to write down the if…..then statements that would be required for a dog to think its way through the simple problem of going around a fence to get to its owner, or even sitting for a cookie. What you will find is that step by step you are transposing a human psychology onto an animal while you simultaneously are losing the capacity to compare one animal’s behavior to another in a meaningful way. You’re going to end up with thousands of “drives” to account for variable behavior between species and within canines as well. Dogs end up being “smarter” than cats, Apes are too smart to be domesticated? And yet man’s big brain is called the key to our evolutionary success? There will also not be a coherent model for the phenomena of emotion, personality, learning, sexuality. It’s going to get real messy.
    My premise on the other hand is that just as physicists realized that mass is an expression of energy which unlocked the quantum revolution in our understanding of reality, once behaviorists/biologists realize that behavior is also an expression of energy, we will realize a similar revolution in our understanding of animal consciousness.

  44. christine randolph says:

    well I am glad you all still have time to write with all the turkey and egg nog distracting everyone this time of year

    no I was not thinking about the cab drivers although froom my time that I spent a long time ago training to be a cab driver (in munich) I can say this:

    to me learning city streets is a form of pattern recognition,

    for which I have been wanting to say, if we say dogs have this, it can be VERY sophisticated and require stuff that I as a lay person would call thought/cognitive processing.

    I find it interesting to hypothesize about not needing such a BIG brain, if one engages emotional energy for problem solving. I would say, then, the process is fuelled by mixed energy sources, like 2 stroke engine fuel or something ??? I do not want to hypothesize about a dog that does phenomenal thinking, and do not think most people’s explanations for what their dogs do is useful or correct, anthropomorphic or otherwise. but then to me, most people do not think very much about such things, they just try to go through life with minimal Need to Know…a bit like dogs who are genetically primed not to spend too much energy…they can still be good dog parents or even human parents, but of course they miss out on the subtlety of the approach.

    I think despite popular assumption, men employ more intuition than women. especially, when they are the best in their field, they already KNOW everything have SEEN every constellation of a problem several times over. they develop a feel for what is not right and how to fix it. just think CHEF, (Iron Chef if you like) how can they possibly operate without intuition ? men, mostly, unfortunately, are the best in their field, women, second best etc…this is why i think more men employ intuition.

    (but they still have to remember patterns of the problems they have already solved, how they solved them etc.like cabbies need to remember the streets, but the brain seems to be able to access these patterns faster than other memories, which is a case in point for the theory that dogs use it because for their survival, they NEED the SPEED…yes …

    this is not a game for alzheimer patients…by comparison, last year I saw a dog that had most likely suffered a stroke lost all ability for orientation, I think the sensory organs were working but nothing was processed in the brain any more..not sure about emotion, It seemed as though she was seeking emotional contact to other beings, in a very tentative way…walking up to people slowly and putting her head on their laps, so she would be petted…she was very affectionate when healthy…she was running into doors and walls a lot…no more cabbie skills !!!!!)

    I mean what could pattern recognition be used for ? many many many things !!!!

    i like garbled sentences ! that’s what blogs are for !!!!?

    I was just excited that someone tried to get pictures of dogs’ brains. Mostly I was thinking, NOT SEDATED !

    maybe someone can build better MRIs where the subject does not have to keep so still.

    anyhoo…if this particular scientist working on this research right now, might use his research to prove a specific (potentially useless) theory, basically ignoring a large part of the outcome, then someone else can pick it up later and do better….

    i think throwing out wild theories is OK, and drawing conclusions tentatively, running them by other people, as sounding boards, is OK too.

    this is not an official scientific forum after all. plus, if you look at the amount of junk that people have to put up with if they want at the good info in things like Scientific American…what can you expect ?

    My friend who has been living with sled dogs for 33 years, often says that dogs think in pictures, what he means, visualizations.he thinks they can visualize events, actions and thus communicate with other dogs. they can also pick up what we visualize, i.e. if the handler visualizes a dog nicely heeling by his side, the dog is able to pick this up and put this into reality.

    (btw. to me this is strongly reminiscent of what Cesar M does when he tells people to keep their shoulders up and not expect failure when they walk down the road with their dogs.)

    unfortunately, humans do not seem to be able to pick up others’ (dogs and people’s)visualizations very clearly. maybe this was lost when evolution gave us language instead…

  45. christine randolph says:

    so let me paraphrase the theory some more in my own simplistic language

    …emotion is generated in the brain just like thought,

    .. in dogs/many animals is used for cognitive / dognitive processes, learning, pattern recognition…

    …this is where humans would use thought…but our brains are wired differently…instead of thoughts, animals have instincts which are separate from their emotions??? are they ? i am making this up a bit as i go along.

    however, it is all electricity in the end, via the nerves it leads to behaviours which are designed to produce desirable results, similar to humans.

    …emotions are working for humans too. they can be enlisted to help them to perform cognitive processes….or they can get in the way when they get so intense that they exclude thought…

    the dog is never consciously invoking any emotions…they are a slave to their emotions…but they also survive by them, and by their instints.

    if any emotion is not translated into activity, it is stored in the emotional battery, until such time that the battery is full, when the animal experiences intense emotional “outbursts” which need to be managed by the handler, not by correcting but by understanding the phenomenon and using it to both dog’s and handler’s advantage. i.e. great learning can take place with a full emotional battery.

    so IF THIS were all a given, my next question would be, how do you all figure that pattern recognition in dogs works, step by step.

    I would say, step one is, the dog is in waiting for a sensory stimulus that has meaning – then, a stimulus arrives,
    this stimulus may be either categorized as new or recognizable as deja-vu…

    if it is new- how is it processed in the emotional brain ?

    if it is recognized as previously experienced, how is IT processed.. etc?

    for instance, …is it that the pattern has to be recognized first to trigger an emotion which then triggers the rest of the dognitive chain reaction… ?

    i.e. if I say the name of a toy that my dog has learned – but I say it in a full fast long sentence to my husband and …

    …nonetheless the dog goes off and rummages about in an adjacent room and comes back, gives me that toy, (to my total surprise, i barely remembered that i had mentioned “horsie” in a previous sentence)

    …is the dog listening for any word that has meaning to them, when i or anyone else for that matter, talks at all ? or do they only do so if the emotinal battery is pretty full, otherwise, too tired ?

    …or would there be an emotional energy GENERATED by the fact that I talk at all ? so that this energy can then be used to figure out that this word has been said by a human, and therefore there is an advantage in looking around for the toy, retrieve it from somewhere in the room.house and take it to the speaker ?

    …it seems as though emotions are generated in the subconscious part of the brain…

    so are you saying that emotions can create all learning and problem solving in animals such as dogs – and all the while this animal is not conscious or aware of the fact that there are cognitive processes going on inside their brains ? because it happens too fast ? or is the dog aware but it happens so fast that this awareness becomes irrelevant ?

    however the dog has an ongoing consciousness, unless they sleep I guess, does it not ?

    what kind of things do you think go on in that consciousness ? emotions instincts genetic programming…i guess that is already a lot…

    awareness that they are an entity separate from their “Umwelt” ? maybe not…how would one test that ?

    btw i tried my Kevin-Behan inspired carpenter dog treat pouch (cheap from ebay) for the first time today and I LOVE IT.
    question is, will it eventually reek of decomposing dog food remnants ? I am sure the dogs would love that, the reekier the better..

  46. It might help to know that certain computer programs — voice recognition, character recognition, and many others — run on pattern recognition software. And computers aren’t conscious beings who are able “think” about the patterns they’re “recognizing.” By the same token, in both dogs and humans, pattern recognition is an unconscious, reflexive, knee-jerk type of process that requires no cognitive awareness.

    In terms of how dogs “recognize” patterns in speech, that comes through a kind of emotional layer of the dog’s past experiences placed over whatever the current context is. In other words if I say “Get your ball,” and the dog goes and gets his ball, it’s not because the dog is consciously remembering what the word ball “means” or even “stands for” or even that it’s a word. The sound of the word triggers a physical/emotional response, a feeling of having the pleasure of interacting with me and the ball at the same time. Since the ball isn’t in his mouth at that moment, he goes to get it. He does so in order to, in effect, complete the circuit (of if you like, complete the pattern). It’s not conscious and it’s not rote memory. It comes from a need to feel connected.

    And no, dogs don’t see themselves as being separate from their environment.

    (Another reading assignment:) Tuning In to Your Dog’s Emotions

    LCK

  47. kbehan says:

    CR: so let me paraphrase the theory some more in my own simplistic language

    …emotion is generated in the brain just like thought,

    KB No, emotion is the release from tension that is generated by the dynamic conflict between the two brains that make up every animal.

    CR …this is where humans would use thought…but our brains are wired differently…instead of thoughts, animals have instincts which are separate from their emotions??? are they ? i am making this up a bit as i go along.

    KB Emotion is displacement of the body/mind and is a virtual force of attraction. Instincts are the genetically hardwired reflexes triggered by the sensations affiliated with the collapse of an emotional state of attraction.
    Feelings result from the emotional induction when projected p-cog releases stress reserves in the body/mind as an emotional battery.
    Thoughts are the capacity to compare one moment to another moment, one point-of-view to another pov.

    CR however, it is all electricity in the end, via the nerves it leads to behaviours which are designed to produce desirable results, similar to humans.

    No, the displacement of the Body/Mind at every level of elaboration of emotion/feeling goes through a progression of virtual energies, from gravity, to electromagnetism, to nuclear fusion and then quantum mechanics.

    CR…emotions are working for humans too. they can be enlisted to help them to perform cognitive processes….or they can get in the way when they get so intense that they exclude thought…

    KB Emotion/feelings are an auto-tuning/feedback dynamic and can never get too intense for Heart, but can for the central nervous system at which point an instinct kicks in. Most thoughts are predicated on instincts, not emotion and feelings. For example, the theory of a dominance hierarchy and a mental model of animal learning is a reflexive judgment against the nature of emotion. This is why it’s critical to make the distinction between emotion/instinct, thoughts/feelings.

    CR the dog is never consciously invoking any emotions…they are a slave to their emotions…but they also survive by them, and by their instincts.

    KB A dog is not a slave to emotion any more than a plant is a slave to light, a dog craves emotion just as a plant craves the light. If a dog goes by feel, it flourishes, if a dog goes by instinct, it survives but only in the wild. In man’s world it will likely be euthanized.

    CR if any emotion is not translated into activity, it is stored in the emotional battery, until such time that the battery is full, when the animal experiences intense emotional “outbursts” which need to be managed by the handler, not by correcting but by understanding the phenomenon and using it to both dog’s and handler’s advantage. i.e. great learning can take place with a full emotional battery.

    KB: Exactly right except the outbursts are instincts and/or habits. Emotion always gets blamed for the problems created by the higher faculties of the nervous system.
    But you’re right that the full emotional battery if taken in toto, i.e. as a lump sum emotional mass that is then projected into complex objects of attraction, is a source of new information. This is a true feeling and is using the past to create new code in the present moment so that the future will conform to the power of desire.

    CR so IF THIS were all a given, my next question would be, how do you all figure that pattern recognition in dogs works, step by step.

    KB: Every feeling is a circle and so when the dog apprehends the (+) and (-) polarities so that energy can move from one pole to the other, this then creates a magnetic field in its perceptual field with a N,S,E,W cardinal points and a center, and now there is a template on which the dog’s feelings can generate a coherent response to the situation.

    CR: I would say, step one is, the dog is in waiting for a sensory stimulus that has meaning – then, a stimulus arrives,
    this stimulus may be either categorized as new or recognizable as deja-vu…

    if it is new- how is it processed in the emotional brain ?

    KB: Things are categorized in terms of arousal relative to vulnerability and so have a prey value relative to a predatory aspect. If hunger outweighs balance, then the stimulus or situation is emotionally conductive, if not, then coping mechanisms take over. The body is constituted with a vast series of O Rings which control every orifice, gland function, vessels of all sorts and so on, and when the situation is conductive I believe these rings dilate and the dog feels a releasing sense of freedom and then is informed by a calculus of momentum and angular momentum.

    CR if it is recognized as previously experienced, how is IT processed.. etc?

    for instance, …is it that the pattern has to be recognized first to trigger an emotion which then triggers the rest of the dognitive chain reaction… ?

    i.e. if I say the name of a toy that my dog has learned – but I say it in a full fast long sentence to my husband and …

    …nonetheless the dog goes off and rummages about in an adjacent room and comes back, gives me that toy, (to my total surprise, i barely remembered that i had mentioned “horsie” in a previous sentence)

    …is the dog listening for any word that has meaning to them, when i or anyone else for that matter, talks at all ? or do they only do so if the emotinal battery is pretty full, otherwise, too tired ?

    KB The status of the emotional battery would be a powerful filter on the moment and so can override weakly conditioned training signals, but basically, every word we speak carries an emotional charge and this can be decompressed into a momentum and angular momentum, so that a dog will be excited to an extent that only that precise stimuli can terminate, and then the dog will feel a pull in the direction of its strongest feeling in terms of that memory triggered by that word/charge. When you say the word, it’s just as if you’re pointing to the toy with your finger if this is a finely conditioned trigger in your dog’s battery. The dog actually sees you (via feel) pointing toward the toy in the other room.

    …or would there be an emotional energy GENERATED by the fact that I talk at all ? so that this energy can then be used to figure out that this word has been said by a human, and therefore there is an advantage in looking around for the toy, retrieve it from somewhere in the room.house and take it to the speaker ?

    …it seems as though emotions are generated in the subconscious part of the brain…

    so are you saying that emotions can create all learning and problem solving in animals such as dogs – and all the while this animal is not conscious or aware of the fact that there are cognitive processes going on inside their brains ? because it happens too fast ? or is the dog aware but it happens so fast that this awareness becomes irrelevant ?

    however the dog has an ongoing consciousness, unless they sleep I guess, does it not ?

    what kind of things do you think go on in that consciousness ? emotions instincts genetic programming…i guess that is already a lot…

    awareness that they are an entity separate from their “Umwelt” ? maybe not…how would one test that ?

    KB: A feeling can unfold in an instant, or over several years, either way a dog has no awareness of this cognitively, it is feeling the feeling. I believe the emotion/feeling auto-tuning/feedback dynamic can account for all animal learning without the need for projecting thoughts into the animal’s mind. A dog has no concept of time or that there are other beings relative to its being. It has no idea how anything happens because for a dog a moment is forever. It projects its “self” into that which it is attracted to and then is compelled to connect with it by becoming its equal and yet opposite in order to connect with its “self.” There is no cognitive process going on whatsoever. The moment has its own internal geometry to which the dog is able to attune or not.

  48. Heather says:

    –all behavior and learning is a function of energy, not positive reinforcement schedules–

    Except that positive reinforcement schedules do create what I think Kevin would refer to as “potential” energy (if potential energy is not the right term, then certainly the tension/expectation of a reward that is released, even partially, upon its receipt, is in fact demonstrating that learning is a function of energy. Maybe to me the better way to think of the issue is that postitive reinforcement is not IT, it is perhaps just one type of evidence that supports the idea that behavior and learning takes place in the larger context of energy exchanges.

    –A dog has no concept of time or that there are other beings relative to its being. It projects its “self” into that which it is attracted to and then is compelled to connect with it by becoming its equal and yet opposite in order to connect with its “self.” There is no cognitive process going on whatsoever. The moment is forever and has its own internal geometry to which the dog is able to attune or not.–

    To me this is really the thing to recognize. People DO have the capacity (maybe not in reality, but in theory) to be like dogs–if we could strip away our self-centered reactions, emotions, thoughts, about everything that happens, we too would lose the “separation” that we artificially create between “us” and “not us” (everything we come in contact with). We’d be all be enlightened beings, the world would be perfect and we’d all live in peace and harmony 🙂 Kids up to a certain age are so open and loving don’t seem to be conscious of “self” the way adults are…then lots of “resistance” happens to kids over time and they learn to cope, and eventually they express themselves only through their coping mechanism, not their “true” selves. Maybe with a lot of work they can lose some of that duality and become one with the environment, but never completely like a dog.

    This is why I am so glad to have my first dog in my adult life – what a fantastic teacher he already has been to me. He has no sense of self to protect, he is such a great gift to have in my life, realizing that he is indeed a mirror is so unbelievably exciting.

    BTW, 3 squirrels were running and playing up ahead on our morning walk – my instinct was to pull back on the leash when my dog pulled forward, instead I approached him and praised him and pulled out my makeshift squirrel (two old socks tied in knots) and we had a great game of tug, which we ended with a sniff of the squirrel tracks and us going on our way in a very relaxed manner. I think shifting my mindset from “controlling” a dog who has some sort of agenda of his own, to merely observing and looking at the dog as a more reliable gauge of what is truly happening in the moment than I can be, is MUCH more satisfying.

  49. christine randolph says:

    KB emotion is the release from tension that is generated by the dynamic conflict between the two brains that make up every animal.

    CR
    ; so the 2 brains are in the location where we would expect the brain to be, i.e. in the head ???
    and what does the part of the dog’s brain do that is more like the human brain ? Lee said pets’ brains get bigger when they are used to learn many new things, when they are with people – as per the London Cab drivers…

    KB the displacement of the Body/Mind at every level of elaboration of emotion/feeling goes through a progression of virtual energies, from gravity, to electromagnetism, to nuclear fusion and then quantum mechanics

    CR: would the way dogs’ body.minds progress this energy, not have left its genetic mark on humans, since humans have all manner of basic dna in common with dogs…

    however we know human emotions are processed in the brain (visible in MRI)

    I found the below on the internet when i looked up pattern recognition
    (not much there….)

    fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a

    sgtrane mnid too.

    I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty

    uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The

    phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mind!

    Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde

    Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the

    ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng

    is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit

    pclae.

    The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll

    raed it whotuit a pboerlm.

    Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed

    ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

    Azanmig huh?

    [This demonstration is food for thought. The psychological

    principles it espouses are only partly correct

  50. christine randolph says:

    Kevin,

    how about this:

    …if you have it, give us your most current best example of anecdotal evidence that shows best that your theory is correct or has a higher probability of being true, than mainstream theories.

    …and also, a simple test we all can perform at home with our dogs, that will show in the most remarkable way, that your theory explains better the dog’s behaviour than mainstream theory.

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Books about Natural Dog Training by Kevin Behan

In Your Dog Is Your Mirror, dog trainer Kevin Behan proposes a radical new model for understanding canine behavior: a dog’s behavior and emotion, indeed its very cognition, are driven by our emotion. The dog doesn’t respond to what the owner thinks, says, or does; it responds to what the owner feels. And in this way, dogs can actually put people back in touch with their own emotions. Behan demonstrates that dogs and humans are connected more profoundly than has ever been imagined — by heart — and that this approach to dog cognition can help us understand many of dogs’ most inscrutable behaviors. This groundbreaking, provocative book opens the door to a whole new understanding between species, and perhaps a whole new understanding of ourselves.
  Natural Dog Training is about how dogs see the world and what this means in regards to training. The first part of this book presents a new theory for the social behavior of canines, featuring the drive to hunt, not the pack instincts, as seminal to canine behavior. The second part reinterprets how dogs actually learn. The third section presents exercises and handling techniques to put this theory into practice with a puppy. The final section sets forth a training program with a special emphasis on coming when called.
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