By “inorganic systems” I mean systems (and processes) of lifeless nature.
Sense exists exclusively as the sense of the operations that use it, i.e. only at the moment in which it is determined by operations, and neither before nor after. Sense is therefore a product of the operations that use it, and not a world quality that owes itself to a creation, a foundation, an origin.
I speak here as a system theorist, if you will.
It is helpful not to think so much in terms of behaviorism. That does not lead very far.
When I speak of signs, I mean everything that those who have signs and thus meaning (see: semantics) or sense in their operations. Seen in this way, everything is language, e.g. in the semiotic, in the purely linguistic, in the strictly logical, in the mathematical sense.
Non-human creatures do this only on the semiotic level. They can, however, understand a little of the other systems, but only if they can “incorporate” it into their language system, i.e. assign it semiotically. Conversely, humans can also have access to the system of the non-human creatures, but not 100%.
It is interesting that you mention the bell ringing. I mentioned this above, in passing.
Pavlov’s famous experiment is an example of hopeless reductionism. His conclusion was a that a dog upon hearing a bell had become conditioned to salivate; this was a conditioned response. The bell causes the salivation.
However, he failed to recognise the more obvious fact that the dog had learned that a bell meant food, and that as the dog IMAGINED the phenomenon of food with its mind, this thought made the parotid gland respond, because the dog could think.
Pavlov deleted the role of the mind and the imagination.
This conditioning is common enough, and we all do it. Next time you see an advertisment for a favoured food stuff on TV check your mouth. I submit that you too can make your mouth water by imagining chocolate. Why would that be any different from a dog?
I recently watched a video of a dog saving a man from drowning. The dog actually pulled the man to dry ground. What was that dog thinking? One clever scientist noted that the animal mind is confined to the four Fs—feeding, fighting, fleeing and sexual intercourse. I think they think more than those categories allow. A fifth F could be friendship.
Try to reduce a complex living thing to four or five words is absurd is what I think.
Sculptor :
Reductionism as a cognitive process is axiomatic, it happens across the board,
that is a penomenon prevy to man and
dog alike. Such general simplicity may strengthen
the argument for interlocking intrinsic processes
In most cases it stops just this side of absurdity.!.
FIve words: says more about the observer than the observed; it probably indicates the instrumentality of the observer in how the obsevred is to to used.
Then, we’d be back to the dead/ alive cat in the box, the observer unsure to open the box for fear of a sense that the observed would depend on his sense of it.
Reductionism did not just happen, it’s involved in anticipating diminishing verity, and it is probable that the observed acquires this sense on another level.
Does an animal has a sense that soon it is to die on way to the butcher? Even apart from the bleeting which is probably understood by the herd.
I am not pulling this stuff out of a bag, for instance, the dog senses something, that is on a very general level , like pain, bunger, affection, need for someone to takce care of it’s needs. That corresponds to a similar human link, where specific objective correlations have some sense with it.
The logical types differ , but their sense link, connecting the levels of appreception.
The dog can infer man’s actions through learned behavior of various responses, but the human must identify the causally linked response through the chain of relevant cues given.
So the relationship between the observer and the observed can not be quantufied, except maybe a long chain of inputs and responses, as they rise slightly in complexity and subtleness.
Both have to learn from one another, the owner of the dog has to gage the learning in accordance.
Chose your five words, and use them to answer the thread.
Sculptor said:
“Chose your five words, and use them to answer the thread.”
Walkies.
Dinner/food/eat.
Treat.
Get it.
Fetch.
My girl would not be happy without “Pig’s Ear”, which she knows in French too.
“Cats and Rats” gets her highly excited too.
Interestingly I have found that there is plenty of absurdity in the generalization process and absurdity stops this side of the interlocking processes.
Due to again: a number of related processes that have already produced the most accurate and most useful judgments.
Some absurdity may be correlated between geeralization in human beings and lack of.
specified processes in the dog brain
Things can go awry in the canine’s brain too, Meno.
Unless this is a double back to human beings, in which case you already know my thoughts on that…
.
Did you ever really say what you meant by “think phenominally”
The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.
Charles Darwin
It may work both ways retroactively and may not, depending on the beginning of the inqury,.
You are right Meno
Because of this, sometimes we have to step back…
Let things run their course and then consider. Lucky for all of us who are alive we have already made enough useful and accurate judgments to stay on course.
Where would we be if this were not the case?
A phenomenal knowledge depends on no reduction to a previous level of learning.
For instance, if I suppose a logical basis to the acquisition of knowledge, then the sense of the meaning of that learning may not yet be codified in any language signal other then the awareness of action and reaction corralates to spatial recognition. The phenomenon by this elementary arrangement may not adapt to higher configuration, until the lower is codified into memory.
The instinctual behavior in dogs has not been codified into learning, because it is based on a level, which has no configured pre set code within the measurable codified cycles between generations presupposing some such awareness on a differing time lines.