A child learns to crawl, stand, toddle, walk and run without stopping to wonder how they are capable of manipulating their arms and legs in order to move about. They do it because they can do it. It just happens. Apparently all a child has to do is want to crawl, stand, toddle, walk […]

    http://www.whole-dog-journal.com/issues/19_6/features/A-Dogs-Theory-of-Mind_21468-1.html#.V1RHaXToVto.facebook The Whole Dog Journal in the link above provides an excellent summation of a series of experiments which purport to show that dogs are capable of adjusting their behavior by virtue of being aware of another beings’ point of view. I’ve written about this research before but the subject keeps popping up […]

I’m the object of a regular beat-down on the site of the Unknown Scientist and I return to these “discussions” because they so clearly demonstrate the internal contradict at the heart of modern Behaviorism. {Of course these are the same theocrats who criticized me in the seventies, eighties and nineties when I argued that wolves […]

CRITICAL THINKING IN DOGDOM ”Many theories have been advanced but there is a mass of confusion about social signaling among animals,” Dr. Weldon said. ”Mimicry of age, alarm calls and other characteristics, as well as sex, often cause misperceptions among observing researchers.” http://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/19/science/guile-and-deception-the-evolution-of-animal-courtship.html?pagewanted=2   Another SPARCS conference on the canine mind is being held 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 […]

http://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com/2013/07/21/5-tall-tales-from-1-small-mind/ “Natural selection favored the dogs that did a better job of figuring out the intentions of humans.” We run across this kind of statement all the time in the discussion on dogs. It’s supposed to serve as a powerful locomotive hauling a long logic train up Argument mountain, but it always stops me dead […]

I didn’t attend either the conference linked below or log onto its streamed content Society for the Promotion of Applied Research in Canine Science (SPARCS). but Eric Brad wrote a good overview of his experiences there– http://lifeasahuman.com/2013/pets/dogs-the-best-friend-we-hardly-know/ Since I’m familiar with the work of the various speakers I feel qualified to make the following comments. […]

“From his previous research, Dr. Hare has argued that dogs evolved their extraordinary social intelligence once their ancestors began lingering around early human settlements. As he and his wife, Vanessa Woods, explain in their new book, “The Genius of Dogs,” natural selection favored the dogs that did a better job of figuring out the intentions […]

The interpretation of the experiment linked to below, claims to have discovered that dogs understand human perspective. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21411249 Does this interpretation make sense? One entertaining and enlightening exercise through which students are taught about Operant Conditioning and its power to shape behavior, is through the game of “Hot and Cold.” A student is asked to […]

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 […]

Friday’s broadcast of Radio Lab is of note. http://www.radiolab.org/2010/aug/09/new-words-new-world/ This episode of Radio Lab is important because it indirectly sheds light on the animal mind. A linguist travelled to a South American village that housed a school for deaf children because the children had invented a new language in their unique manner of signing. The […]