“Revolution in Thought: A new look at determinism and free will"

[pood]

Your entire conclusion that the experiment with beagles proves that they actually recognize their human is utter bullocks. Training a dog to recognize visual patterns is not the same thing as true recognition. You will have to think again before telling me that he needs to eliminate the observation that dogs can identify their humans. Show me a dog that has not seen his human for months and gets excited (by a wag of a tail or a happy whimper or something of that nature) when you stick a picture of his human in front of his face, close up. Show me where a dog recognizes his human from a computer screen when no other cues are present, such as movement or sound. When you do, please post it so everyone can see this for themselves.

We have already done this.

There is typical peacegirl, dismissing as “utter bollocks” stuff about which she knows absolutely nothing. Just like her father, astoundingly confident in her total ignorance.

 

[steve_bank]

Regurgitating the pseudoscience in the book is pointless.

Debating whether philosophies of free will and determinism can have an affect on humidity is worthwhile..

 

[steve_bank]

Being able to read body language of one's own and other species is part of the fight or flight instinct. A survival mechanism.

 

[peacegirl]

Why does a mirror reverse left and right, but not up and down?

A mirror doesn't reverse left and right. It reverses front to back. Mirrors are interesting, but I don't see anything here that disproves his claim.
-------------------------------------------

A mirror does not actually reverse left and right in the way many people think. Instead, it reverses front-to-back — the direction toward and away from the mirror Science ABC+1.

What a mirror really does​

When light hits a mirror, it reflects back at the same angle (law of reflection). The mirror doesn’t rotate or flip your image sideways; it simply shows you what you would see if you were on the other side of the mirror sciencebehindlife.com+1. This is a front–back reversal, not a left–right or top–bottom flip.

Why it looks like left–right reversal​

Because your body is roughly left–right symmetric, the brain interprets the front–back flip as a left–right swap. For example, if you lift your right hand, the mirror image lifts its left hand — but this is just the mirror showing you from the opposite depth perspective Science ABC+1.

Why top–bottom stays the same​

Top and bottom don’t reverse because you don’t turn upside down when facing a mirror. Your head stays at the top, your feet at the bottom. The mirror keeps your orientation in the vertical axis the same sciencebehindlife.com.

A simple analogy​

Imagine writing “HELLO” on a transparent sheet. If you look at it from the other side, the letters appear backward, but the top is still the top and the bottom is still the bottom. A mirror works the same way — it reverses depth, not vertical orientation sciencebehindlife.com.

In short: Mirrors reverse front-to-back, which, due to your body’s symmetry, makes it look like left–right reversal, but top–bottom stays unchanged.

I was hoping you might think about the question, rather than just typing it into Bing.

I'm not on trial, and I'm not your student. The bottom line is that mirrors work front-to-back, not left-to-right, and this has no bearing on his claim.

 

[peacegirl]

Dogs have eyes. They are not only able to recognise people, but understand body language and read moods.

Abstract
Emotions are critical for humans, not only feeling and expressing them, but also reading the emotional expressions of others. For a long time, this ability was thought to be exclusive to people; however, there is now evidence that other animals also rely on emotion perception to guide their behaviour and to adjust their actions in such way as to guarantee success in their social groups. This is the case for domestic dogs, who have tremendously complex abilities to perceive the emotional expressions not only of their conspecifics but also of human beings. In this paper we discuss dogs’ capacities to read human emotions. More than perception, though, are dogs able to use this emotional information in a functional way? Does reading emotional expressions allow them to live functional social lives? Dogs can respond functionally to emotional expressions and can use the emotional information they obtain from others during problem-solving, that is, acquiring information from faces and body postures allows them to make decisions. Here, we tackle questions related to the abilities of responding to and using emotional information from human expressions in a functional way and discuss how far dogs can go when reading our emotions.

Dogs functionally respond to and use emotional information from human expressions - PMC

Keywords: Canis familiaris, dog–human relationship, emotion perception, emotion regulation, social cognition

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Show me a dog that has no other cues (such as smell, sound, or gait) and sees his human from a picture, a computer, a cardboard replica, a statue, or anything similar, indicating true recognition, and I'll rethink his words. A dog could see another dog at a distance and recognize it as another four-legged animal, but this is unrelated to his claim. You have to make sure the controls are in place to weed out false positives.

A false positive is an error in which a test or study incorrectly indicates the presence of a condition, effect, or relationship when it does not exist. This is often referred to as a Type I error in statistical hypothesis testing. False positives can occur in various fields, including medicine, psychology, and software testing.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

 

[peacegirl]

His condition demonstrated very clearly how much he needed extrinsic images to function.

An excellent example. A perfect example sufficient to establish that there is afference with regards to vision.

WTF??

If sight causes an interruption to an otherwise pure instant vision, then sightless people would have a universally and profoundly more positive sense of self worth than sighted people

I think that a proponent of the Lessans position would object saying that it is not afferent vision which interferes with pure and true vision. After all, so far as I can tell, the Lessans position denies that there is light-afference which contributes to vision. Instead, the Lessans proponent would say that it is other afferent information - such as from hearing - that conditions an exclusively efferent product or result. For example, a blind person could be conditioned to think (rather than see) that a particular sort of voice is ugly - not just ugly but really, not merely subjectively ugly.

Of course, if vision is only afferent, and if a person is conditioned to think that a particular countenance is ugly - not just ugly but really, not merely subjectively ugly,

what do you mean by subjectively ugly? That is the very thing that he is disputing because the 'subjective" reference is due to conditioning. You're all mixed up, Michael, with your logic.

then the Lessans proponent has need to explain how essentially the same effected thought of there being real and not merely subjective ugliness is produced in both cases where there is no efferent vision.

He actually does prove that both cases regarding what we see are based on a conditioning that would not occur otherwise.

 

[peacegirl]

That does not disprove his claim of dogs recognizing their human. Why are you bringing this up as if it's a disproof? It is not. Dogs see movement on television. What in god's name does this have to do with his claim?

 

[DBT]

Dogs have eyes. They are not only able to recognise people, but understand body language and read moods.

Abstract
Emotions are critical for humans, not only feeling and expressing them, but also reading the emotional expressions of others. For a long time, this ability was thought to be exclusive to people; however, there is now evidence that other animals also rely on emotion perception to guide their behaviour and to adjust their actions in such way as to guarantee success in their social groups. This is the case for domestic dogs, who have tremendously complex abilities to perceive the emotional expressions not only of their conspecifics but also of human beings. In this paper we discuss dogs’ capacities to read human emotions. More than perception, though, are dogs able to use this emotional information in a functional way? Does reading emotional expressions allow them to live functional social lives? Dogs can respond functionally to emotional expressions and can use the emotional information they obtain from others during problem-solving, that is, acquiring information from faces and body postures allows them to make decisions. Here, we tackle questions related to the abilities of responding to and using emotional information from human expressions in a functional way and discuss how far dogs can go when reading our emotions.

Dogs functionally respond to and use emotional information from human expressions - PMC

Keywords: Canis familiaris, dog–human relationship, emotion perception, emotion regulation, social cognition

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Show me a dog that has no other cues (such as smell, sound, or gait) and sees his human from a picture, a computer, a cardboard replica, a statue, or anything similar, indicating true recognition, and I'll rethink his words. A dog could see another dog at a distance and recognize it as another four-legged animal, but this is unrelated to his claim. You have to make sure the controls are in place to weed out false positives.

A false positive is an error in which a test or study incorrectly indicates the presence of a condition, effect, or relationship when it does not exist. This is often referred to as a Type I error in statistical hypothesis testing. False positives can occur in various fields, including medicine, psychology, and software testing.

There is no false positive. You are wrong. It has been established that dogs are able to see the world around them, that they have the ability to recognise people and objects, act on visual cues, etc.

 

[steve_bank]

Pg by her postings and arguments along with our responses demonstrate why Lessan's philosophy will not bring about the predicted utopia.

Conflict and differences are unavoidable. Even if people have what they need to live.

Social and political factions arise. Power struggles. People who do not like the status quo.

Russian and Chinese communism tried to eliminate hierarchical power and level the socioeconomic structure. It failed.

There seems to be Marxism in there somewhere. The end of excising economics and politics. Distributed power.

Power to the people.

 

[steve_bank]

An example I posted before.

There is a city where a group of dogs meet, get on a subway, and get off at stops where they know there is food.

Watched a show on it.

AI Overview
Stray dogs in post-Soviet cities like Moscow have famously learned to navigate the transit system to scavenge for food, successfully associating PA announcements with specific station stops. Similarly, viral stories feature stray dogs riding independently to Subway franchises for meals.

I have seen dogs reacting to TV video. Heads move tracking critters on the screen.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

That does not disprove his claim of dogs recognizing their human. Why are you bringing this up as if it's a disproof? It is not. Dogs see movement on television. What in god's name does this have to do with his claim?

There was not always movement and I already disproved that claim with a scientific link, so this is just added support because dogs can discern objects inside images on a television.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

The look of love – dogs recognise their owner’s faces - Hanne Grice Pet Training & Behaviour

A new study led by the University of Padua in Italy has shown how much dogs rely on seeing their owners’ faces in order to recognise them. The study also measured how much dogs prefer to gaze at and follow their owners, rather than a stranger. This latest research reported in the latest Animal...

www.hannegrice.com

^HERE

 

[Rhea]

Your entire conclusion that the experiment with beagles proves that they actually recognize their human is utter bullocks. Training a dog to recognize visual patterns is not the same thing as true recognition. You will have to think again before telling me that he needs to eliminate the observation that dogs can identify their humans. Show me a dog that has not seen his human for months and gets excited (by a wag of a tail or a happy whimper or something of that nature) when you stick a picture of his human in front of his face, close up. Show me where a dog recognizes his human from a computer screen when no other cues are present, such as movement or sound. When you do, please post it so everyone can see this for themselves.

Interesting. We did. Several people did. The exact thing Lessans claimed was not possible, shown to be possible.

And your reaction is so interesting. Not “oh? Let’s look at that and see if it fits,”. But rather, “no! I did not see the thing that was clearly there.” End of discussion, dismissed. Without looking at the test parameters and whether it’s a good test or bad test. No examination of the test set-up and it’s implications, just dimissal.

Also interesting is

Training a dog to recognize visual patterns is not the same thing as true recognition

I mean - isn’t it???????
Truly. Isn’t it?


I have a very VERY hard time recognizing faces—remembering them. I train myself very hard to remember the students in my classes so that I can recall which one is who just for the day. I have to work very very hard at this. I pretty much cannot tell grey-haired white men apart from each other. I love name badges. They are my rescue devices. I love when people have colored hair and weird piercings and birth marks and tattoos because they are much much easier for me to remember than faces.

It’s one of the reasons I love this community because I can remember who you all are so much more easily.


I am human and I have to train myself on pattern recognition to identify people. I feel like we all do, some people are just better at it than others.

Ironically, I am outstanding at other types of pattern recognition and that has made me a good manufacturing process troubleshooter. I can detect and exploit some pretty subtle pattern observations to correct a drifting process setpoint or disturbance. But I cannot recognize the face of a person I worked with for five years when I come back from a year away at another site.

You will have to think again before telling me that he needs to eliminate the observation that dogs can identify their humans

So you should read the links and examine the tests and see if you can identify the flaw in the tests before you claim that the many many MANY examples, including formally designed studies, of dogs using pictures to recognize their humans, fail to prove the point.

Your dismissal is really interesting to me. I love examining studies, and if I don’t believe them, I like to definitely pinpoint why they failed to be a good study. It’s like the NYT crossword for me, like finishing a 5000 piece jigsaw, like solving before Columbo can.

You seem to react very differently. Just handwave and walk away.

 

[peacegirl]

Regurgitating the pseudoscience in the book is pointless.

Debating whether philosophies of free will and determinism can have an affect on humidity is worthwhile..

You never understood that there is an answer to this long-standing debate. You just chalk it up to there being none. That's a lack of understanding on your part that an answer doesn't, in fact, exist.

 

[peacegirl]

Your entire conclusion that the experiment with beagles proves that they actually recognize their human is utter bullocks. Training a dog to recognize visual patterns is not the same thing as true recognition. You will have to think again before telling me that he needs to eliminate the observation that dogs can identify their humans. Show me a dog that has not seen his human for months and gets excited (by a wag of a tail or a happy whimper or something of that nature) when you stick a picture of his human in front of his face, close up. Show me where a dog recognizes his human from a computer screen when no other cues are present, such as movement or sound. When you do, please post it so everyone can see this for themselves.

Interesting. We did. Several people did. The exact thing Lessans claimed was not possible, shown to be possible.

And your reaction is so interesting. Not “oh? Let’s look at that and see if it fits,”. But rather, “no! I did not see the thing that was clearly there.” End of discussion, dismissed. Without looking at the test parameters and whether it’s a good test or bad test. No examination of the test set-up and it’s implications, just dimissal.

Also interesting is

Training a dog to recognize visual patterns is not the same thing as true recognition

I mean - isn’t it???????
Truly. Isn’t it?


I have a very VERY hard time recognizing faces—remembering them. I train myself very hard to remember the students in my classes so that I can recall which one is who just for the day. I have to work very very hard at this. I pretty much cannot tell grey-haired white men apart from each other. I love name badges. They are my rescue devices. I love when people have colored hair and weird piercings and birth marks and tattoos because they are much much easier for me to remember than faces.

It’s one of the reasons I love this community because I can remember who you all are so much more easily.


I am human and I have to train myself on pattern recognition to identify people. I feel like we all do, some people are just better at it than others.

Ironically, I am outstanding at other types of pattern recognition and that has made me a good manufacturing process troubleshooter. I can detect and exploit some pretty subtle pattern observations to correct a drifting process setpoint or disturbance. But I cannot recognize the face of a person I worked with for five years when I come back from a year away at another site.

You will have to think again before telling me that he needs to eliminate the observation that dogs can identify their humans

So you should read the links and examine the tests and see if you can identify the flaw in the tests before you claim that the many many MANY examples, including formally designed studies, of dogs using pictures to recognize their humans, fail to prove the point.

Your dismissal is really interesting to me. I love examining studies, and if I don’t believe them, I like to definitely pinpoint why they failed to be a good study. It’s like the NYT crossword for me, like finishing a 5000 piece jigsaw, like solving before Columbo can.

You seem to react very differently. Just handwave and walk away.

Rhea, I am not going through this garbage again. The tests that you are depending on have flaws. Aceept it, or move on. Show me a dog that can recognize his human in a real-life observation. These studies mean shit if they can't back it up.

 

[peacegirl]

He did not say light was not afferent. He said the eyes were not afferent. ... To the degree that light is our visual connection, it is 100% necessary for the biological vision process to occur because it allows the object and its reflection to be at our photo-receptors in real time, which the brain then uses to think, categorize, and integrate into a form that can be used to understand the world around us.

He needn't have bothered saying the eyes are not afferent, because the eyes are not inwardly traveling. That means the eyes are as afferent as are the ears. The issue with afferent vision regards the light and whether it travels inwardly to contribute to the process which results in vision. You admit that the light travels inwardly to contribute to the process which results in vision; you admit that the light is afferent, and you admit that it is necessary for light to be afferent in order for vision to occur. Therefore, you admit that vision is not (only) efferent.

Your "in real time" addendum contributes nothing to the understanding about how vision occurs - as will now be discussed.

The fact that light energy travels inwardly, the fact that light energy travels into the body, means that the identical light energy is not at the photo-receptors and at the brain for processing at the same time - if there is any distinction at all between the photo-receptors and the brain. Even if you regard the photo-receptors as part of the brain, it is not the photo-receptors which do the processing which produces thinking, categorizing, etc. The photo-receptor processing is prior to the processing which occurs deeper within the brain to produce the related thinking. This "prior to" fact means that there is some amount of delay associated with light afference. No reason has been provided for thinking that the delay necessarily associated with light traveling inside the body is absent with regards to light outside the body. Indeed, if light travels without delay, then it is in no way sensible to say that light travels at all. And we're right back to the presentism according to which nothing travels since there are no delays because time is necessary for there to be a delay and there supposedly is no time, there is only the present timeless-space.

All that being said, we have progressed with your admission that light traveling afferently is absolutely necessary for vision to occur.

Now the issue switches to the matter of there being a delay, what would be described as a time lapse, during the process which effects, among other products, vision. As is the case with all processes, that vision-producing process occurs non-instantly, but how can that be if there is no time? If light travels non-instantly within the body, what reason is there for thinking that light does not travel non-instantly to the body?

The brain uses what it sees, through the eyes, in real time ... the same way the brain would use what is reconstructed in delayed time.

That would indicate that seeing "in real time" and seeing non-instantly are indistinguishable - except for the fact that seeing non-instantly is far more explicable. This means that with regards to seeing, the "real time" version of seeing neither presents nor solves previously unrecognized problems with the non-instant understanding, nor is the "real time" version more complete than is the non-instant version. Consequently, the "real time" version does not present a reason for why the non-instant understanding should be either abandoned or modified to incorporate insight from the "real time" notion. Without providing such reason, the "real time" contention fails to be presented as possibly true. Such reason need not be proved to be actual in order to be considered possible, but, absent any such reason, the "real time" notion has not yet achieved the status of being possible. To be possible, it is not sufficient that a notion be a concept or a contention.

It is very much supported that these two models of sight --- afferent and efferent --- are defined in a way that makes them incompatible when it comes to rational thinking. ... In regard to his claim, it can't be both afferent and efferent. It has to be one or the other. We see in delayed time, or we don't.

If afferent and efferent are necessarily incompatible, even if only as a result of some asserted definition(s), then, when you agreed that afference is necessary for vision to occur, you concurrently denied that vision is a matter of efference. Since you also rightly associate vision as a matter of afference with delayed time, and since you hold that vision can be only afferent (delayed) or only efferent (non-delayed), you necessarily believe that a delay is associated with vision.

Your posts are way too long and convoluted. If you have something to say, get to the point without an entire chapter to explain it. There are too many posts for me to respond to than just yours. I'm sorry that I've lost patience. Just shorten your responses, and I'll do my best to respond.

 

[steve_bank]

Rhea

I tend to recognize voices before faces. Visual art has never made an impression on me, music does.

 

[steve_bank]

Regurgitating the pseudoscience in the book is pointless.

Debating whether philosophies of free will and determinism can have an affect on humidity is worthwhile..

You never understood that there is an answer to this long-standing debate. You just chalk it up to there being none. That's a lack of understanding on your part that an answer doesn't, in fact, exist.

Repeating unsubstantiated claims and not responding to issues I raise with the alleged solution to war and crime.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Written to Rhea:

Rhea, I am not going through this garbage again. The tests that you are depending on have flaws. Aceept it, or move on. Show me a dog that can recognize his human in a real-life observation. These studies mean shit if they can't back it up.

Your request isn't very smart. Dogs rely on smell, hearing, sight--and all of the senses as do humans. In order to show how much a dog relies on sight in recognition of its owner, you have to isolate sight from those other potentially confounding variables. That means a NON-real-life observation, it means apply the scientific method to isolate the variable. This is the third time I am posting this link:

The look of love – dogs recognise their owner’s faces - Hanne Grice Pet Training & Behaviour

A new study led by the University of Padua in Italy has shown how much dogs rely on seeing their owners’ faces in order to recognise them. The study also measured how much dogs prefer to gaze at and follow their owners, rather than a stranger. This latest research reported in the latest Animal...

www.hannegrice.com