[FRIAM] Few of you ...
Steven A Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Thu Jan 17 12:56:47 EST 2019
Nick -
I can acknowledge your point "it is what it is", but still hold that
there is a reason there is a never ending nature/nurture debate.
Regarding dogs (and other domesticated animals), I don't think it is an
illusion that "breeding matters" in behaviour and temperament as much as
it does in physical characteristics.
The distinction between "learned" and "instinctual" behaviours in this
context, as a practical matter, seems to be how malleable the behaviours
are. While a "hot blooded" horse *can be* made to be manageable by a
trained rider/handler, there are bloodlines/breeds which need only the
lightest amount of conditioning/training to become good companion/trail
horses. My Akita is unusual in some ways for his breed but will always
and forever show an aloofness found only in cats otherwise among
housepets. My doberman mix came from the shelter at 6 mos and was
indistinguishable from a chocolate lab in every way (and was in fact
labeled such by the shelter). As she grew, her legs and nose got
longer and longer until we could no longer recognize much if any lab in
her. We puzzled over her appearance but also her temperament. As a
puppy she was full of boundless energy and Labs are generally thought to
be slow maturers, continuing to be a bit puppy-like for the longest
time. She fit that description, but rather than transforming her wild
friendliness into an energetic/curious friendliness, she transformed it
into a much more territorial/aggressive full-grown dog than i've every
experienced. Among the many dogs I've had in my life, I've never had
one as A) subservient to me; nor B) as aggressive toward strangers.
Early on she began to exhibit a "love of heights" which indoors
exhibited as a desire to spring to the top of a couch-back (at 50 lbs)
and outdoors as a desire to climb the trunks of partly downed trees.
This was reminiscent of the famed catahoula hound but she had none of
that appearance. She also developed a habit of barking three times,
turning in a circle, barking three times, turning in a circle, etc.
when excited. Soon after i noticed there was a traditional doberman
guard-dog in a yard in Santa Fe near 2nd street which exhibited exactly
the same friendly/aggressive move. It was not until someone dumped an
older full-grown doberman on our property (uncut ears/tail) and I took
a picture of the two sitting side-by side, that i realized my "chocolate
lab" had the precise profile of a doberman. Soon after, I saw a
red-doberman in the back of a truck and realized mine was the spitting
image of this one excepting she didn't have the lighter-colorations of a
full red-dobey and her coat was one shade browner than the reds.
I'm probably missing your point as an opportunity to compulsively reel
out "yet another" anecdote. Re-reading your note, I guess I can just
say "sure", some of these things can be nurture as easily as nature and
for many practical purposes it doesn't matter. Perhaps the only
difference, using your language is that the resulting "behavioural
automism" would seem to be more fragile when the result of nurture. I
doubt that my dobey-mix was taught the spin-bark or the hyper (by my
standards) aggressiveness by her mother (or others in her pack) since
those behaviours didn't present for well over a year after we got her...
they seemed to come on with her adolescent maturity.
- Steve
On 1/16/19 6:06 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Steve,
>
> As a good friend, I would like to gently chide you for the implicit assumption that a the assignment of any behavioral automism to a particular physiological cause makes it more plausible as an automism. It is what it is however it comes to be, isn't it? Could it not have been imprinted in the few minutes after the puppies first opened their eyes and later transferred from Mom to owner as part of a normal developmental process? Either way, it now is a behavioral automism, and like all behavior is the result of a physiological machine operating in a physical environment.
>
> Nick
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
> Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2019 4:20 PM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Few of you ...
>
> I appreciate the point:
>
> It's not the result of a dynamical system that occurs has occurred on the timescale of her life.
>
> There may be psychochemical dynamical systems inside her body involved in maintaining "sight of you" and there likely *were* complex feedback loops in the intentional breeding of her ancestors as well as the natural selection environments that lead her first ancestor (whatever that is) to be chosen as "good stock to start a herding breed from".
>
>
> On 1/16/19 4:07 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> I think of the "experience being with other people" as sort of like how my herding dog follows me from room to room. There's a knob in her head that is set to keep a visual distance with her people. It's what she expects and it comes from her breed. It's not the result of a dynamical system that occurs has occurred on the timescale of her life. It is a reductionist/thin/flat explanation for the dog and the basketball player and the choir singer.
>>
>> On 1/16/19, 3:56 PM, "uǝlƃ ☣" <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> That's fine. But it doesn't directly address the point. Is experience-being-with-other-people really an "attractor" in the sense we usually use that term? I don't think so. I think the normal (complexity fanboi) sense of "attractor" is at least somewhat reductionist/thin/flat and not commensurate with phrases like "experience being with other people".
>>
>> If we simply decided these things are not attractors, then I think my problem dissolves.
>>
>> On 1/16/19 2:45 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> > Some people participate in intramural sports or sing in a choir. Such participation isn't about being the best at the sport, or aspiring to be the most talented musician. As far as I can tell, they just like performing with other people. It is about experience and participation. It is an excuse to get together. It is about being around people they recognize as similar to them. (I feel like Commander Data observing the behavior of humans here..)
>>
>>
>> --
>> ☣ uǝlƃ
>>
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