https://aeon.co/essays/the-feedback-loop-is-a-better-symbol-of-life-than-the-helix “We appear to have come to a threshold. The more we know about the molecular processes, the less sense the gene-centric perspective makes.” Sooner or later behaviorism will recognize the thermodynamic nature of animal behavior as the current gene-centric theory (random variability of gene encoded traits filtered by natural selection) makes less and less […]

I recently became involved in a discussion on a Facebook Dog forum. Although these probably aren’t a good way to make friends and influence people I nevertheless persist in order to practice interfacing my way of seeing dogs (emotion) with the other way of seeing dogs (thinking). And who knows, perhaps some reader will begin […]

When a dog is looking out, what’s going on within? Modern behaviorism and ethology claims it leaves that question aside and only considers observable behavior, but a close study of their terminology and usage shows that not to be the case. A discussion of a dominance hierarchy in dogs brings this into view.         In […]

Any theory that attempts to account for the animal mind and which doesn’t incorporate an energy dynamic as its organizing principle, will always contradict itself after it inevitably ascribes thoughts (as in comparing one moment or point of view to another) to the mind of the animal in order to hold their theory together. As […]

System: 1) A complete exhibition of essential principles or facts, arranged in a rational or organized whole, or a complex of ideas or principles forming a coherent whole. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary   When a personality theory (one animal relative to another animal as in a dominance/submissive interaction) introduces a principle of energy in order […]

It’s my premise that whenever one tries to explain a natural system (such as the animal mind) with a personality theory (the animal as a self-contained entity of intelligence) one will always generate self-defeating logic loops and this will require more and more complex rationales to keep these self-annihilating principles from running into each other. […]