here ya go: temple grandin at her finest.

you might also have been thinking of songs of the gorilla nation: my journey through autism by dawn prince-hughes. she seems to make a bit more sense to me.

primates, and gorillas particularly, are notorious for not respecting "contracts," in spite of their linguistic capabilities. i've dealt with a couple with badges and uniforms: one apparently interpreted a seizure as an act of aggression, and consequently beat the shit out of me; the other berated my girlfriend for asking him to do his job, and then beat the shit out of me for informing him that he was behaving like an asshole.

honestly, i don't know. sometimes i think i've just gotten proficient at reading people, and lack "real" empathy--at least with respect to humans. still, i think anymore few--excepting those with considerable knowledge and those who know me well--would immediately discern autism; rather, they just think me odd (i think).

and i think that a lot of autistic folk (hfa and asperger's), like temple grandin, are inclined to be dismissive of notions like intuition. i mean, even moreso than the general population even--and "mirror neurons," being not "proven" and all that (though i think they might actually have been identified in another species) might be too contentious an idea. so even if they've got 'em (or they "work"), they might dismiss the very idea that any such thing is going on anyways.

for me, it's the other way round: heightened fight-flight response and reading was learned--consciously. that former (fight-flight) may have more to do with epilepsy though.

someone--thomm hartmann, or something like that--proposed that hypersensitive/alert types, autistics, and those with adhd may be a sort of "throwback" to earlier humans and hunter-gatherer types. i don't think this as ridiculous as it may sound, as it's not unlike anthropologists' notions of field dependent and field independent perceptual modalities.

as far as the canon of "detective literature" goes, i still hold conan doyle's sherlock holmes stories in the highest regard; but as to methods, i'm more naturally inclined to those of, say, tom baker's depiction of doctor who: "solving" matters through sheer buffoonery. honestly, it just works for me in so many contexts; of course, my occupations are pretty far removed from the sciences.

when i think tuition in this sense, i am also reminded of group improvisation in music. i occassionally do that sort for which there's a wealth of "rules" and information layed out (knowledge of theory, player's propensities, etc.) to draw upon subconsciously; but i'm more inclined towards the varieties for which there are few "givens":

i recorded an album with a couple of finns some time ago which was pure improv, one take. we had never played together before, and our only commonalities were they we had each spent a lot of time in india (separately, of course), we were all quite lanky, and we all wore blue corduroy pants. moreover, my instruments were harmonium, oscillators, and pedals (which i had designed and which were quite unpredictable)--and i don't even know what the hell they were playing! (sundry percussion, reeds, electronics, and a guitar, i think?)

in spite of so much uncertainty and so little material to build upon, it turned out well and garnered favorable reviews--even from the snooty english. amongst the interminable, pretentious rambling of one was this: "In his essay 'Death of the Author,' Roland Barthes celebrated the idea of abandoning the search for meaning, describing this refusal as 'revolutionary, since to refuse meaning is, in the end, to refuse... reason, science, law.'" (also seems the essence of gelassenheit, incidentally) of course, i'm sure that as many (probably most) would describe it as "random crap."

and that other sort of reification: confusing a concept for a thing. i think we're all prone to this at times, but i'm frustrated by those who are so insistent upon maintaining that those whom they consider "nutters" meant what they said in this sense and not that sense.

And the reverse also that they think they themselves are being literal when they are not - see my comment about psychotic episodes reference to 'rights of individuals' in the thread on indoctrination. He thinks when a religious person is having religious experiences they must be hallucination and their interpretations are at best metaphorical. While his reference to rights blightly slips out as if it were literal - now I am not saying rights do not exist, but if the criterion is scientific verification, well, they don't stand a chance. With what device can we measure them?

We are all nutters.

the fallacious appeal to authority: well, "we hold these truths to be self-evident..." i see that going on an awful lot (occam's razor, etc.), but seldom is anyone called on it--unless, of course, one defers to...

even as far as "hallucinations" go: so what? the complex partial seizure often manifests in the form of the classic "religious experience." (see aldous huxley, william james, et al) for years, prior to being diagnosed with epilepsy, i was having them all the freaking time; and i would read/impart certain "meaning" in/to them. after i was diagnosed: i continue to experience them all the freaking time; and i continue to read/impart... bugs the hell out of some people.

i used to have a book written by a japanese buddhist for a western audience on the particulars of a variety of soto zazen meditation--a thorough and comprehensive "how-to" guide (zen practice, i think, by ??? sekida). in the introductory chapter, the author attempts too convey the experience of satori in a manner which the "western" reader can readily grasp: he likens it to the seizures experienced by dostoevsky, which he articulates upon in his fiction (the idiot, the possessed, and brothers karamazov). the author had few qualms about drawing this parallel.

And, of course, a epileptic seizure can cause a person to hear music. We cannot therefore conclude that hearing music is always hallucination. Nor can we even conclude that what is heard during the seizure is hallucinated since seizures can also lower sensitivity thresholds to phenomena scientists DO think exist.

So if your girlfriend is sad or scared you do not (ever?) feel a sudden emotional response?

I agree with this. Engineers mating are much more likely have Aspberger's children.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/...-genes-collide

I would guess that the prioritization of thinking in engineers is nearer the center of the Bell Curve, but in the direction of that prioritization in people with AS. There also is a strong distrust of intuition.


Proven is too strong, but they did find differences in the neurons that relate to imitation of the movements of others. When we imitate and when we see others move the same neurons 'fire'.

Interesting, but strange. I see the hypersensitive/alert as having rather different skills and deficits than the autistics.

I enjoyed the finnish musical experience as story. I have experienced similar fallings togethers into pleasurable patterns is a few different settings: improv, sports, dance.

one of the more common simple partial seizures is the olfactory "hallucination," but such may very well not be an "hallucination" but rather just a heightened sensitivity to an odor which may very well be present, but not discernable to most.

science often tells us things we already know: dogs have 80 times as many olfactory cells as do humans. well, i think most anyone who has had a dog or worked with tracking dogs has known this for quite a long time. they may not have known the particulars, but they've had the gist of it nonetheless.

i think i do, but it still could just very well be that i've gotten good at reading. moreover, i've also made some extraordinary claims about having exceptionally heightened olfactory senses: i smell fear, i smell attraction, etc.

from a personal perspective, i've always found this odd--but then again, autism is merely a category (and a spectrum) and i, as per other thread, generally do regard such as heuristic devices: useful and illustrative tools, but they will inevitably fall apart under close scrutiny and tend not to stand up in court.

i think that autistic behaviors and temperaments may very well be a reaction to the state of heightened sensitivities and alertness, and the correlated inability to, well, intuitively and immediately abstract: most react by gravitating towards a rigid, logical, and ordered fashion of navigating--and perceiving--their world; a minority react by throwing themselves into the paradoxical: it's clear to me that others do not perceive or experience the world in a way that is even remotely parallel to the way that i do, so i work with what i've got, accept all the incongruities (that which i experience which seems to contradict with the consensual, and the claims of science), and i'm constantly aware that so much simply doesn't make "sense" and there is so much i can't know, never shall know, and likely can't even be known, so i adopt the enlightened attitude of "whatever."

i recall having read about such occuring interspecies in certain instances--if mine are "working," i'm inclined to say that they work better with dogs.

i do think there are significant differences, and enormous variance amongst individuals, and many autistics seem to lean towards the antithesis even--that is, hyposensitive/hypoalert. such may also be a factor in the "extremes" of the autistic personality: those who are not unlike, say, spock or data (st: the next generation) on one hand; and those who are more like syd barrett (r.d. laing, of whom barrett was a patient, later described barrett as autistic), nico, and perhaps wittgenstein (whom i have always maintained was anything but a positivist).

i've known extraordinary musicians who couldn't improvise for shit; and then i've known those who, completely lacking in knowledge of "theory" or training, could mimic the most technical bits and improvise like a master. there's something in that barthes' quote above: sometimes, searching for meaning or trying to account for a phenomenon is simply a pointless and futile endeavor. and in improv (of any sort) the question of "authorship" is equally pointless. [and for that matter, it's like those who read philosophical investigations and try to identify which of the "voices" is the "real" wittgenstein--i'm fairly confident that even wittgenstein didn't know which was his "true" voice, and that he "intended" for it to be read in this fashion.]

which brings me to this observation: there is entirely too much agreement in this thread--where is our interlocutor? glaucon? someone, please throw in a wrench.

yes, the intuitionists who are social with animals are dominating.

Yes it amazes me that us human beings with our huge brains much derived from all the talking we have done are able to invent such impressive things as flying machines but are unable to negotiate with each other in conflict situations using the 'language' that helped us to develop such contemplative brains in the first place.

How can a creature with a such sophisticated palate as ours still resort to killing each other with (ever more) remotely operate and (ever more)deadly weapons!!

Even dogs sniff and nibble before they resort to biting!



Mysticism, hmm, would there have been any of the following without it?

philosophy
art
literature
music

Would there ever have been 'science' without it?

Mysticism, though, is such a loaded term these days. When invoked it does tend to bring out the nutters

I therefore prefer 'curiosity' to 'mysticism'

Great thread. All intelligent like.

On the contrary, all that's being done here is a narrowing of, or putting a limited/ populist meaning to, the word "intuition".
Engineers have, use and trust (to an extent) intuition.
It's simply not a social/ people-related version.

well, maybe welsh engineers use intuition, but in the rest of the world... eh, i don't even know where i'm going with that.

but as regards the colloquial sense of "intuition," and a more refined definition: are the definitions of "intuition" offered by cognitive sciences and philosophy adequate? or are they incomplete and exclusive, in the sense that they disregard certain possibilities or instances in which "intuition" may apply?

and, are there "things"--by which i mean the, heh, non-physical sort: concepts, ideas--which can only be "grasped"/grokked intuitively? and were one to apply reason and calculative thinking, one would get nowhere.

here i am reminded of the disdain, held by so many, for certain continental thinkers, i.e. the derridas, deleuzes, agambens, etc. detractors argue that such individuals are prone to obscurantism, fabricate conundrums, lack rigor, and employ terminology and notions from the sciences inaccurately--do they do all of these things? of course they do. BUT, i think they do so for a reason. as for the misuse of science: they borrow notions and use them as metaphors--of course they're going to fall apart under critical examination, but as illustrative tools such are useful. as for rigor: i think most are quite capable of being "rigorous" when such is demanded, but there are times when one must throw reason to the wind. sometimes, they are simply talking about things which really cannot be talked about, at least with any satisfactory degree of clarity or precision; in a sense, they are pointing towards the godhead (in the judaic and apophatic sense).

in short: i think there are certain things which cannot be understood by thinking about them--like the pictures (can't recall the name for such) which look like an old woman at first, but turn into naked ladies if one refrains from concerted focus: you're not going to see the naked ladies if you think about it too much.

interestingly, language (in this narrow sense) and a tendency towards abstraction (which, as is noted elsewhere, is inevitable, as "words" are themselves abstractions) is very often what impedes understanding, and our ability to negotiate. my dog, daisy, is uncommonly sociable and gregarious for a cattle dog (who are prone to condescending towards humans). knowing that i sometimes get bored with throwing a frisbee, she seeks out other people in a park whom she will encourage to throw her frisbee: she'll run up to person with frisbee in mouth, throw it at his feet, and dance about expectantly before the person, darting her glance back and forth from frisbee to the person's eyes. she's remarkably talented at finding the "right" people, but on rare occasion she'll encounter someone who just stands there with a confounded look. i'll walk over and the person will respond to me, "i don't know what she wants." wtf?! you honestly can't figure out what she is asking of you?

my favorite linguist, von humboldt , occasionally fouled:
sure we do, but is he so certain that others do not? i honestly don't know how one could be (but i know that many are). still, for the sake of argument, assume the others do not combine "ideals": they seem to get along perfectly fine without. but throw in the "ideals" and the interminable abstractions--and the fact that hardly anyone seems to be one the same page where "words" are involved--and one gets both the flying machines and the deftly executed massacres. and while abstraction (and the necessary confusion) lay at the heart of many a confontation, abstraction makes it a whole lot easier to sort out: why tear someone apart with your bare hands (it's messy, time consuming, and sometimes a conscientious objection from within will interrupt), when one can take out a village with the push of a button?

still, i think many object to mysticism even when denuded of it's connotations--although those who object seldom get that far anyways: they assume, and seem to abandon the rules and methods to which they are beholden in so doing.

Parmalee,
Your example of musical improvisation made me relook at intuition, to try to get a handle on it.

I began thinking about fields, interconnectiveness and the scientific ‘distance bias’. When in a group musical improve situation – a situation I have been in, but my limited skills with intruments keeps me from saying much about this, I prefer singing – you get locked in with the other people. You start, at the very least, picking up very subtle cues from the other people – unconsciously – that allow you to ‘predict’ where things are going and arrive at the same time over even ahead of those you are following. I do believe that we will find that some people are what would be called psychic and that these kinds of interconnective experiences cannot be reduced to visual and auditory cues. But we can set that issue aside for a bit.

Intuitive experiences are where one is allowing causal dynamics to take place where most people would not. Most people would stay disconnected – either not picking up subtle cues, or not participating in the fields of other (things, people, creatures, environments, sensory experiences, etc.) The belief that one is disconnected can affect one’s ability to participte intuitively in the world.

In fact we have all been trained from a fairly early age to think we are limited to Newtonian kinds of causal chains: something over there, separate from me, sets in motion a chain of causes and effects – compresses air by expelling it at a certain tone from their throats, or casts a ball toward me, etc. IOW distance and disconnecting is seen as the primary state and interconnection is seen as the exception and something that must overcome distance – with all sorts of entropic drag on the message or causal chain.

I don’t think that distance is fundamental. I think interconnection is and that intuition is a leaning into this end of the spectrum of relations to others.

I had a dog who knew when I was coming home, despite the fact that my work as a consultant gave me different arrival times each day – with no pattern week to week – I did not drive a car, and was arriving at a busy apartment building. She, despite the sensory obstacles, would hide behind the sofa a couple of minutes before I arrived at the building. I was burned out and generally cranky when I arrived. After a while she would come out and we got along peachy, but her intuition that it was best to leave me alone for 15 minutes of decompression was right on the money. It took my spouse longer to figure this out.

See Sheldrake, Dogs who know when their owners are coming home
(or something close to that)

It also seems like we must mention, given your references to seizure and our habit of bringing up dogs, the fact that a number of dogs can sense the onset of their owners seizures and can be trained to warn the owner and get them to sit or lie down and relax.


Yes, I dislike how it somehow become a fact owned by a scientist in these situations. Perhaps the phenomenon in question even gets the scientist's name.
“ ”
Well, good at reading is all mirror neurons are really supposed to be doing from the science side of things. I am not sure how one would distinguish this from empathy, as long as you have feelings in synch with the other person.
”
That’s because they cannot be universalized – though actually courts go on intuition all the time. Is a witness trustworthy, was the evidence likely to have been untampered with given___________, how might the state of the defendent affected___________. Things are broken into hard evidence and the other stuff is some Platonic court room, but on earth......

Well, certainty about what will experience will limit experience, so some slack seems rational and no slack, however grounded in the latest scientific research, seems a little nuts to me.

“ ”
If the person can connect to the emotions of others consciously – iow they are aware of the other person’s emotions and can communicate this accurate awareness – the term autistic and especially Asperberger’s seems based on family relationships – a la Wittgenstein – that are rather remote – 23rd cousin completely removed.

“ ”
Maybe that’s why I could never see the forest for the trees with that book. Has someone done a dialogic analysis of Wittgenstein? Bahktin that is.

I think you have a good point. In a very restricted realm engineers - at least the skilled ones, will use intution and be good at it. With shapes and strengths and certain kinds of patterns and possible lateral thinking solutions. But a wide range of what often gets batched under intution, including the social intuition as you say, they will be skeptical about, at least they have been in my experience.

Not so much "sceptical about" as "What the hell are you talking about? How did you make that connection?" and "If you say so but I can't see how you got from A to C."
People don't work the way steel and machinery does
We don't so much deny it exists as that we can't follow it...

Er, maybe the same way non-engineers can't follow our intuition? Things are blindingly obvious to US, but explaining them...

Lovely.

Absolutely.

and autistics are often very much focussed upon things, as opposed to relations with others.

i know exactly what you're getting at. i'm very much mechanically inclined, in spite of a general lack of knowledge about the specifics: i can look at most anything mechanical and figure out how it "works." and i invent curious mechanical objects (a pedalboard for an indian harmonium, so that one can free up both hands and operate the bellows with one's feet) and make modifications/improvements upon many things. it never ceases to astonish me that so many others simply don't "get it," and i'm--given my lack of knowledge--at a complete loss for explaining it.

i agree that some people are psychic in this sense that the cues, and the given knowledge of theory, technique, etc., simply aren't enough to go on--i think there are many things that simply cannot be explained, or at least, cannot be explained with "words." but the "opposition"have it that everything can be explained: it's simply a matter of time (of course "time," as a "given," is problematic for me).

interestingly, in real world settings (outside of the lab; well, sometimes even in the lab, i.e. behavioral studies) it often seems the more "intelligent" (in that narrow sense) people who are disconnected--and so many are prone to getting hung up on the "entropic drag" (if they acknowledge such in the first place), and perceiving that as something which must not simply be accounted for, but overcome ("explained" in the most laborious detail).

bertrolt brecht encouraged people in the audience to smoke cigarettes during his performances, in order to create a veneer, of sorts, between themselves and the action on the stage, IOW the disconnection. but for many, it's already there--in their real relations as well--and, as you remark, it is assumed that this is the natural state. and the efforts people make to achieve interconnectivity are both amusing and kinda sad--remember the "wild man weekends" inspired by robert bly, in which a bunch of men would go out to the woods, crawl about naked on hands and knees, and sniff each others' asses?

i don't believe the distance is fundamental to our relations with things (and "nature") either. i once had the opportunity to perform on the largest wurlitzer pipe organ in north america--and even for an organist, performing on a pipe organ for the first time is like a high school biology student attemting to perform surgery. it was supposed to be a silly, "avant garde" sort of thing, and i was expecting the audience to be a few dozen devotees of such; instead, the audience was also comprised of a few hundred old people who were clearly expecting some sort of "pops" thing, i.e. "the sound of music" on pipe organ (it was free, and old people like free things). moreover, i was improvising. after several others did their thing, and the old folk grumbled, i got up there and somehow "melded" with both the organ and the audience, and managed to churn out 15 minutes which somehow managed to please the old folk immensely. it was just... weird. there are just so many variables with a massive pipe organ, and the entropy factors which comes with both age and simply the nature of the beast--i think one could knock down a wall through careless fiddling wth the bass pedals.

attempts to explain such can be pretty amusing: the different times rule out the circadian account, but perhaps your dog could smell you from afar--through concrete, steel, and enormous distance? or she could hear your footsteps--again, through concrete...? i just don't see how the ordinary senses alone could account for such.

likewise, when you're sitting in a chair seemingly doing absolutely nothing, but you're actually quite "busy" thinking (at least that's what i like to tell myself)--a dog can figure this out, but seldom a person.

i think the problems with that "paradox of language" thread might be in the framing and semantics: the idea of thinking "abstractly" about "concepts" without "words." a dog not bugging you is more than just conditioning--favorable and aversive stimuli, and whatnots--it's about respect, and even about notions of what is proper(ty).

parmalee became a service dog after he saved my life following some sort of seizure in which i took a MASSIVE dosage of an anticonvulsant (7 times the ld50): i had fallen asleep, and parmalee had somehow sensed that my sleep just wasn't quite right; he managed to awaken me by barking loudly directly in my face and biting me all over the place very hardly--he drew blood in several places. i managed to get myself to the hospital, and for three days during which i was profoundly fucked up, the doctors were telling me that they weren't sure just how much i would recover, i.e. how much neurological damage i would sustain (as it turned out, none apparently). BUT, had i not been woken up, they told me i would either be dead or profoundly damaged. so i deemed parmalee a "service dog" (there are no strict guidelines for such, funnily enough).

he mostly responded to seizures, rather than anticipating them. as most of my seizures are of the "acting very strangely" variety, a lot of people don't catch on until i fall unconscious to the ground--parmalee alerted people as to what was going on, and managed through ferocity to keep the idiots away from me ("oh, you've gotta stick something in his mouth so he doesn't swallow his tongue.") that parmalee was never on a leash, he always ran alongside my bicycle, and all that kinda strained credulity a bit, so the "official service dog" gig was mostly confined to necessary contexts: airports and such ("you don't appear to be blind...") my friend got him a special service dog vest so that he could at least look more "official," but he seldom wore it as it made him look like a cop.

i saw an episode of criminal minds (a tv program about the fbi's behavioral analysis unit: serial killer profilers) the other night, and a profiler was talking about the sort of evidence which one simply cannot gather from a crime scene: the fear, the rage, the passion, etc. and how profilers "intuit" through conscious and subconscious compiling and synthesizing of the "hard evidence" and the vast knowledge gained through experience and research, and then sometimes they just take a stab in the dark.

funnily, another character mentioned that the unit was formerly named the behavioral sciences unit--why it was changed to b. analysis unit is anyone's guess...

and also r.d. laing i think--this also seems to relate somewhat to the notion of a "private language."

the tractatus is pretty straightforward, but the later stuff (p.i., blue and brown books, zettel) doesn't lend itself to that sort of reading. many read p.i. as though they're reading plato's dialogues, but the "voices" just aren't that clear--for me, the beauty of it is that it's very much like the voices in my own head: it's never all that clear to "me" which side "i" am arguing for. also, with later wittgenstein, i think good biographies are essential (like ray monk's); though this is obviously a controversial notion.

the notion of polyphony (ala bahktin) has become more popular fortunately--i think the extreme readings wind up reflecting the interpreter's agenda more than anything else. morris berman (who's kind of a nut, but still...) reads later w. as a sort of proponent of a counter-tradition of "paradox" ("truth" emerges when it is not pursued), opposed to the dominant tradition--logic and form--and other counter-traditions which emphasize either the primacy of spirit, or the primacy of matter. that seems to work for me.

I think the sense of what we know should have very hazy boundaries, but when discussing ideas with people it often seems like we are not in a particular historical moment, language is not causing any confusions, and nothing could come along to really shake things up. I cannot think of a period of the past where this was true by I suppose the present could be an exception.

I think the whole I am encased in a sack of skin with sensory organs analagous to periscopes and radar being used from inside and you or it is 'over there' separated by series of atoms through which all causes must be traced is going to be laughed at heartily by future scientists and religious alike.

I know it can mess up things like golf swings, love and creativity.

I can't understand wanting to do that with a bunch of strangers, but otherwise, I suppose I have done it. I even think he had some good insight into 'nice guys' and what they needed. In general I think we should tone down the way we are like cats and be more honest like dogs.

And imagine if you had tried to think your way through the potential obstacles.

I noticed how one dog would walk past me like I was not there when I was reading the newspaper. I took this as accurate criticism - if unintended - and tried to cut down.

Dogs definitely have a sense of fairness and due process. With cats it seems to be about entitlement. Having said that I suppose I need to learn more from cats. Not that I should think myself royalty, but a couple of steps in that direction - towards the feline - might offset my opposite tendencies to seeing myself as slave or serf.

Wonderful. Read an article yesterday about a woman whose dog performed the Heimlich. She was choking, tried to do the H herself. Failed, staggered around in the room. The dog, a Golden Retriever, knocked her to the floor by crashing into her and then proceeded to leap onto her chest and belly until the food was dislodged. When she came to the hospital she had bruises all around her solar plexus.

Even I, who believe just about anything is possible, have some trouble with the causal chains - which, really, had to be considered by the dog. But then, the dog had never done anything like this before. Maybe he imitated her. Ah, who knows. Good boy, is really all one can say.

Have you read Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia? I have a feeling you would like it. Stories about how various brain abnormalities affected people's relationships to music. Quite fascination neurology porn. By porn I mean that one does not really come away with a deeper understanding of that much, but one does get some rather amazing stories. Perhaps some vague impressions of what brains are.......
Although I think one can detect these things, but not yet with devices.

Or truth emerges not when it is described but rather when it is evoked. Sort of like via koans. Language pointing away from itself, rather than demanding it be displayed on the best shelf in the brain.

i wonder though. certainly science seems to be going in this direction (away from rather), but resistance is strong: the persistence in establishing human exceptionalism, the prioritization of reason and logic, etc. and of course, that thorny issue of the "i". i think that the varied dualisms have yet to run their course.

it just seemed so ... unnatural and contrived. one can take honesty too far, as i have learned from many an experience; but still, as sniffy remarked, dogs generally elicit a warning before they bite--whether it's heeded or acknowledged is another matter.

such would have been impossible--and this brings in the matter of (authorial) intent. one could say that there is the intuitive reading and then there is the intuitive response: but in certain "chaotic" and high-paced contexts, i.e. group musical improv, how does one intend? wittgenstein suggests that the intent may exist prior to the utterance/response--but certainly one cannot consciously intend in such contexts. subconsciously? or perhaps a flat out rejection of meaning (in the intending sense).

well, i think dogs have a sense of both: rights are very much about entitlements, and dogs--when dealing with reasonable people--will operate under assumed reciprocal transactions ala the "contract."

the bolded part is interesting. not suggesting that dogs don't often expect something in return, but there is something in their mannerisms that reminds me of aspects of certain human cultures, i.e. islamic cultures, navajo culture, certain cultures of south and southeast asia (and, ideally, many other cultures; but i have not encountered such so much in practice): one performs and act of kindness simply because that is what one does. when traveling through the world, people would often invite me into their homes, feed me, give me a place to stay if i needed such, and they never expected any sort of outpouring of gratitude in "return." and in many parts of the world, i've encountered amusement and perplexity over excessive "thank yous": they're just doing what they do, what does a "thank you" really mean?

notions about dogs and unconditional love and whatnots are sheer nonsense in my not so humble opinion--every bit as nonsensical as the notio that "dogs only wish to please their 'masters'." (nietzsche and w.s. burroughs just didn't get dogs.) but, i do like helene cixous' formulation:

"meeting a dog you suddenly see the abyss of love. such limitless love doesn’t fit our economy. we cannot cope with such an open, superhuman relation."

there is something to this, and this is by no means the same as "unconditional love." it involves a leap of sorts, and one which few humans are willing to take--or if they do, they are inclined to vacillate. also, well frankly, i simply don't believe it can adequately be described with "words."

i read that one, and many of his other books. he is really quite amazing, though i had a disappointing encounter with him a few years ago: he lectured at a university (and surprisingly few were in attendance) and took some questions afterward. i think mr. sacks is somewhat hard of hearing and he completely misconstrued my question, turning it into something which was frankly kind of woo-woo. it was both embarassing and a little disappointing.

it is also somewhat like porn in that curious voyeuristic sense: i think a lot of people are drawn to his books for purely the "freakshow" aspect, and they regard the individuals as "objects" and, sadly, not worthy of respect.

on the matter of interesting books: for obvious reasons, i am obsessed with epilepsy. eve laplante's seized is quite fascinating (albeit, a bit far-reaching at times): she explores the controversial notion of the geschwind-waxman syndrome, a personality type that emerges in temporal lobe epileptics after years of untreated seizing. there is a constellation of attributes, sometimes limited to 5 or expanded upon to 12: hypergraphia, aggressivity (not necessarily of the physical variety), viscosity or "stickiness," "atypical" sexuality, and religiosity. the "syndrome" is not wholly unfamiliar to me.

exactly. again, i think that language often impedes our understanding; yet for many, this proves an insurmountable paradox--and therein lies the problem: "insurmountable"--something to be "overcome." this is where our relationships with animals can yield to a sort of "enlightenment"--and it is one of the many messages of the voice from the whirlwind.

Well, we also deal with the slow trickle down of ideas and lay science hangers-on are probably the worst. For me the list of problem areas are the assumption of distance/disconnection, the assumption of deadness and ignorance of the profundity of 'observer' creation.
I just realized it might be good for me to issue clearer warnings. A keen observer would have noticed a reduction in movement, shallower breathing and a more intense focus, but keen observers or willing ones are few and far between. And why shouldn't I save myself the bother by letting some more clear signals come through early?

which is why I think we tap into connections that do not fit the atom hitting atom or wave traversing atoms causal models. I think we overlap with others and things and we can participate in this connection if we choose.

But they do like praise. Praising cats meets a blank stare. Rewarding a cat can work.
I wouldn't say unconditional love either. Too much pouting and sitting in the corner and refusals to perform task have I seen to believe this. But they certainly don't need to be told to forgive.

I will own up to it being this for me, but not solely this. The vast majority of problems or differences he describes seem familiar to me. That I am lower down on whatever bell curve is being discussed, but there in any case. Imagining those homoculi drawings of nerve use by body part, it is easy for me to see how stretching here on mine would make me like case 24.

Thanks I'll look for that one.