tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547886101764404344.post4216694036588939922..comments2024-03-24T20:50:06.083-04:00Comments on Lessons in Psychology: Freedom, Liberation, and Reaction: Through-Lines and Dogs. Significance in Dog Psychology.Wynn Schwartz, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/03689137521075228568noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547886101764404344.post-52403990168689072852016-05-29T13:13:27.163-04:002016-05-29T13:13:27.163-04:00Yes, thanks. When I say dogs are family, I mean to...Yes, thanks. When I say dogs are family, I mean to me and mine. I've edited the posting to reflect your other comments. They seem correct to me. Wynn Schwartz, Ph.D.https://www.blogger.com/profile/03689137521075228568noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547886101764404344.post-43677056333030698722016-05-29T00:11:54.408-04:002016-05-29T00:11:54.408-04:00PART 2
It's important for you not to conflate...PART 2<br /><br />It's important for you not to conflate significance and importance. What the dogs find important is a comment on their values, a comment on what's in the Want parameter. It is not a comment on the content of the Significance parameter. The significance of catching your eye and looking away is "engaging you in play". That's what he's doing by doing that. We can deduce that play is important by the frequency with which this "engaging" behavior takes place. But even if he only "engaged" once per year, that would still be the significance of the relatively unimportant behavior.<br /><br />(I see that "important" is a concept we need to bring out in the DP structure of concepts, parallel to the Values concept.)<br /><br />"Having values means being able to want some state of affairs over others. " This is subtly awry. First, the ability to want one SoA over another is different than the ability to *achieve* one SoA over another. I can have many wants and completely lack the ability to achieve them. Example: someone in a supermax prison. Values is an Observer category. After you have achieved your wants, those achievements are *ranked*, and the results are your values—the observable rank of wants. From that, I might set expectations for your achievements because I understand the order in which you express your wants. (You essentially correctly state this a couple paragraphs later.)<br /><br />"Intentional action has significance, grounded in the actor’s intrinsic, done-for-it's own-sake values." Significance is not by the very fact intrinsic. Intrinsic significances are candidates for stopping further descriptions and saying, "This is what P is doing." But there can be further intrinsic significances that are also *simultaneously* candidates for what P is doing; and P can be doing all of them at once. Similarly, P can have orthogonal intrinsic significances that are also candidates for what P is doing. So P can be doing many things at once, and the many things don't have to be related in any other way than that P did them. Example: P marries Q, princess of Petelvania. By doing so, he 1) marries the woman he loves; 2) bests R, his rival for Q's hand; 3) fulfills his father's command to marry within a year or lose his inheritance; 4) wins "The Bachelor: Petelvania" TV show; 5) becomes prince of Petelvania. I think you state it correctly a couple sentences later, but you are at odds with yourself with both sentences in the same paragraph.<br /><br />When dogs are doing the sharing, they don't use the concept "fair". The top dog gets the most, and lower dogs get less until there is none. Certainly no dog likes that, and that's why they fight for the top (or higher) positions. But we will never see dogs as we have them sharing out with equity; and I think that's in reality, a boundary condition on their behaviors, because they cannot choose any other social structure. From this view, if the dog gets less it *ought* to be less cooperative, as that is a way of fighting the top dog (the human who's passing out the food). <br /><br />That's all I've got time for tonight.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8547886101764404344.post-83354570034875145752016-05-29T00:10:56.657-04:002016-05-29T00:10:56.657-04:00CJ Stone here. I can't tell how your blog is s...CJ Stone here. I can't tell how your blog is seeing me and if my name will appear.<br /><br />PART 1<br />Pretty good DP and descriptions.<br /><br />"The dogs are family." Human status assignment. Dogs have a society that doesn't include family statuses. Xtine's dogs didn't know what to make of me at first. When one of them tried to dominate me, I cut that off. Now I'm offered a belly to rub, so I have a status of greater rank than theirs but below Xtine.<br /><br />"I think no one in their right mind doubts dogs have personalities." We can be more specific and describe them in terms of the Dispositions. You have done a little bit of this in your profiles of them.<br /><br />"... we come to know what they find significant..." Careful—I think you mean "important" here; that is, what they value (their rank of wants). On that topic, it might be interesting to see if your dogs would choose you over your lunch, but we'd have to find a way to convince them you were genuinely under attack while a sandwich was being offered them. Not impossible, but not easy, neithers.<br /><br />"I am certain dogs are intentional actors, aware and deliberate." Again, careful—Deliberate Action is a special case of Intentional Action. I agree they are intentional; I think they are sometimes deliberate; but this points at my hypothesis that persons are very densely deliberate by comparison, densely enough to make the Dramaturgical Pattern. If the dogs don't have a dramaturgical pattern, or if it is a weak one, we have a way to look at them. (For more on this, read the DPP edition of *Personality and Personality Theories*, where Pete has not yet committed to Deliberate Action as the distinction that marks a Person...and muses about it.) <br /><br />On "aware", that's not a term we use in DP, so we must proceed carefully. They dogs are conscious of and conscious as, otherwise they couldn't assign you the alpha role and themselves subordinate but ranked roles; they couldn't act from those roles. But they can; therefore, etc.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com