“Movement is the only way we have of interacting with the world, whether foraging for food or attracting a waiter’s attention. Indeed, all communication, including speech, sign language, gestures and writing, is mediated via the motor system.” Daniel Wolpert Phd. http://cbl.eng.cam.ac.uk/Public/Wolpert/WebHome To repeat, full emotional conductivity is moving without restriction. This kind of movement is […]

“Movement is the only way we have of interacting with the world, whether foraging for food or attracting a waiter’s attention. Indeed, all communication, including speech, sign language, gestures and writing, is mediated via the motor system. Taking this viewpoint, the purpose of the human brain is to use sensory signals to determine future actions.” […]

http://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com/2013/07/21/5-tall-tales-from-1-small-mind/ “I am an occasional visitor to the Natural Dog Training (is there such a  thing as Supernatural Dog Training?) blog authored by snake-oil salesman and new-age mystic Kevin Behan. Reading the blog is amusing and infuriating. I find it painful to see him lie to readers and distort the latest science story to support the sales his […]

While I do not expect an interesting dialogue to emerge from this post/counter-post exchange with the Unknown Scientist, http://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com/2013/07/21/5-tall-tales-from-1-small-mind/ I nevertheless welcome the opportunity to rub my theory up against the mainstream in order to render some important distinctions that can help bring the emotional dynamic into sharper relief and hopefully make the effort worthwhile […]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/21956798   This experiment featuring robotic ants illustrates how a simple principle of conductivity can elaborate into intelligently adaptive behavior without the benefit of advanced hardware or software. An ant-bot’s “mind” is organized around a principle of flow through which collectivized action spontaneously emerges as the solution to a foraging problem. Here again science demonstrates […]

  <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/science/ may-britt-and-edvard-moser-explore-the-brains-gps.html>.             A husband and wife team of neuroscientists, May Britt and Edvard Moser, have discovered “Grid cells” in the brains of rats, and these cells undoubtedly exist in all animals. As a rat moves, these cells track its movement and create a grid like pattern as a […]

“nothing besides the laws of nature are needed to explain intelligence” http://www.insidescience.org/content/physicist-proposes-new-way-think-about-intelligence/987 Excuse my caps but THE ONLY THEORY OF COGNITION THAT DOES NOT NEED TO BE REVISED…..is NDT. Emotion makes organisms feel just as if they are gravitationally and electromagnetically charged particles of consciousness (through the interplay of the Central Nervous and the Enteric […]

My profound gratitude to Joyce Miller, Scott Hamilton, Dr. Jean-Marie Thompson (and of course “Romeo”) for introducing Natural Dog Training to the academic community. Our talk was well-attended and I was gratified to see more than a few light bulbs going off in the eyes of the audience. As always, my challenge was not to […]

Part Three (17:05) At this point in the interview the subject of the brain reward system comes up and Panksepp points out that this was an unfortunate term because it should actually have been called the “seeking system.” Panksepp’s research discovered that this system elaborates in higher cognitive processes into creative impulses and makes enjoyment […]

Panksepp, Natural Dog Training, correlations and distinctions. The interesting thing about writing this article which I initially thought would be pretty simple and straightforward, is that in order to make correlations, I have to at the same time draw distinctions. I hope this doesn’t detract from conveying how much I respect Panksepp’s work. Step by […]

Great article below about slime mold and its capacity to time its actions, navigate a maze, retain a record of where it’s been, all of which happens without a nervous system. http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/4/9/why-my-slime-mold-is-better-than-your-hadoop-cluster.html So in my view an overarching template composed from the basic energetic principles of nature, organize its behavior to be in correspondence with […]

It was quite an amazing night of viewing the other evening on PBS with Nature and Nova and their respective reports on animal bonding across species lines, and animal cognition. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/animal-odd-couples/full-episode/8009/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/horowitz-dogs.html What is so obvious from watching the behavior of the various animals profiled, but at the same time was abjectly missing in the […]

In this article the author conjoins two studies which demonstrate that wolf hunting behavior is analogous to the mass flocking of starlings. This is an interesting article because these studies demonstrate the exact opposite of what this author is arguing in the article entitled: “To Hunt, Cooperation Is Not Needed.” The evidence the author cites […]

I’m surprised, as a matter of fact stunned, that modern behaviorism isn’t taking notice of the Constructal law as articulated by Adrian Bejan in his book “Design In Nature.”  To me the implications of the Constructal law are overwhelming and yet no behaviorist or biologist is taking note. So about a month ago I had […]

Also on Dog Star Daily is an article by Roger Abrantes on how to resolve the controversies about training methods. http://www.dogstardaily.com/blogs/dog-training—lets-end-fighting Abrantes divides the debate into the moralistic, the naturalistic, and the scientific camps. However what’s missing is an understanding of flow, a serious omission given that flow is the organizing principle of  nature. I suggest we […]

Adrian Bejan has just published an important article in a scholarly journal. He’s resolved the question in biology as to why large animals tend to live longer than small ones. It’s for the same reason that they are able to move more mass farther. http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120821/srep00594/full/srep00594.html Thanks to Russell below is an article that explains the […]

“On this day of July 7, 2012, a prominent international group of cognitive neuroscientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists and computational neuroscientists gathered at The University of Cambridge to reassess the neurobiological substrates of consciousness.”   “We declare the following: “The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent […]

“Empathy & Evolution: How Dogs Convert Stress Into Flow” Guest Blogger Kevin Behan Explains the Evolution of “Empathy” in Dogs Published on August 6, 2012 by Lee Charles Kelley in My Puppy, My Self “I’m proud to present this guest post by my mentor and colleague, Kevin Behan, originator of Natural Dog Training, which views […]

An unknown scientist has a website with an article entitled, “Kevin Behan: A Legend In His Own Mind.” http://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com The Unknown Scientist (US) purports to be a researcher and a competitive dog trainer, and I’ll take them at their word since he/she is indeed very intelligent as he/she is able to take complex research and […]

I think I was very nicely voted off the island and not wanting to persist over time if it doesn’t increase the flow, I will post my follow up remarks here.  My main point is that disagreeing with Operant Conditioning and using a term such as energy is not necessarily unscientific, which is how Eric […]

I think Roger Abrantes is the best expositor of the new version of dominance, and so I’ve focused on his writings in a number of articles in order to draw contrast with the model I’m promulgating. Recently a reader brought my book to his attention on his Dog Star Daily blog and so in the […]

We’re in the process of revamping our NDT site so that the theory can be segregated from the practical regards of living with a dog. Toward that end, I would like to call your attention to the address below if you’re interested in reading how the laws of physics are the organizing principle of the […]

I can understand how the dominance concept seems reasonable because it does seem self-evident. Nature does seem to be a struggle between individuals over scarce resources with dominance seemingly a cost-effective way of keeping friction and violence to a minimum. I started out in dogs believing it myself. As an apprentice trainer and then early […]

“Design In Nature” Zane, J. Peder; Bejan, Adrian (2012-01-24). Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization (Kindle Locations 1560-1564). Random House, Inc.. DIN: “One of the most powerful insights born from the constructal law is that social systems are natural designs that emerge and evolve to […]

Chapter Six   “Why Hierarchy Reigns” I think chapter six will prove to be the most critical chapter as in how the constructal law intersects with animal behavior. Today we find a reinvigoration of the debate over dominance. The last several decades the positive, learning theorists have been arguing there’s no such thing as dominance […]

“To underscore this observation, let’s return to the circulatory system. It is one of the marvels of nature that this system is so exquisitely complex that no cell is far from a life-sustaining capillary. It transports blood from the heart to this vast volume by reconfiguring its design through branching. The same with the lung: […]

“The verb “to design” has been monumentally unproductive in our quest to understand design in nature for three main reasons. First, it led to the common view that the things humans design are “artificial,” in contrast to the “natural” designs that surround us. This is wrong, because we are part of nature and our designs […]