About animals

He gave four of them to me. I think if he had someone to give them to, he would. I never actually saw him burn them and I didn't ask him for details. I assume he killed them first but I don't even know that. He was not cruel. I don't think he enjoyed killing them, but I can see why he had to sanitize the barn and surrounding area.

Here the one called "Aurora": http://www.online-literature.com/for...t=#post1331800
Here is "The Path to my Home": http://www.online-literature.com/for...=1#post1330548

Thanks, Yes/No. I didn´t remember about this second thread, I was looking for them in the other one. I was going to suggest that you linked them to this thread, because here they may have more visibility.

This chicken burning story is terrible, but I don´t see what I or you could do about it. I fear it is a common practice under farmers. The question is why produce so much chicken that they have to be exterminated afterwards? And that while there are a lot of people everywhere that suffer from hunger.
But my contact with chickens always was very reduced. When I was a teen my family lived in a smaller town which was rural in many aspects. In some of the houses, they had chicken and roosters and they lived in the garden or in the yard together with the dogs, the cats and whatever other animals were there. They were sort of part of the family. I think sometimes the family ate one of them. but they probably had them mostly because of the eggs.

In Yes/No´s post above one can read the two first haibuns of his new story about a dog and four chickens.

Posting a poem by Richard Wilbur that came up in another thread.

The Death Of A Toad

[I]A toad the power mower caught,
Chewed and clipped of a leg, with a hobbling hop has got
To the garden verge, and sanctuaried him
Under the cineraria leaves, in the shade
Of the ashen and heartshaped leaves, in a dim,
Low, and a final glade.

The rare original heartsblood goes,
Spends in the earthen hide, in the folds and wizenings, flows
In the gutters of the banked and staring eyes. He lies
As still as if he would return to stone,
And soundlessly attending, dies
Toward some deep monotone,

Toward misted and ebullient seas
And cooling shores, toward lost Amphibia's emperies.
Day dwindles, drowning and at length is gone
In the wide and antique eyes, which still appear
To watch, across the castrate lawn,
The haggard daylight steer.

[I]Richard Wilbur

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-death-of-a-toad/

http://www.online-literature.com/for...=1#post1336175

Wilbur's poem brings out the inhospitable nature of lawns for wildlife. Mowers "castrate" the lawn so it looks nice to us and in the process other creatures suffer as collateral damage. I am all in favor of minimal lawns leaving them to public places and parks. I also think sport hunting should be eliminated. Of course, that means farms will produce meat. So I might as well promote vegetarianism, which I prefer also.

There were thousands of chickens in that barn. That only a dozen might have missed getting into the truck seems like it could be viewed as a small transportation loss. I think you are right that chickens are often used mainly for eggs. At least that is what I've heard. I had no intention of eating mine. Eventually they would die. Mine eventually did, but sooner than I thought they would.

Here is a video about hatcheries. The farmer received chicks from these peoples, grew them, and then sent them to their final destination as either egg producers or meat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN5H9audCRQ

I wish I was vegetarian, Yes/No. After this video it will be difficult to look at chicken meat again. Behind the world created for humans there is so much destruction, most of it unnecessary.
Here probably things are done in the same way. Sometimes the chicks are sold and donated to some people that dye them in several colours and then they are sold on the market or in the streets to people for thematic birthday partys for children, for example. The children loved them, as long they are cute, but the problem is when they grew up, because nobody wants hens and roosters running around in the drawing room.Then they probably abandon them somewhere or kill them. There may be videos about it, but I don´t have the courage to look for them.

I almost didn't post the video, but it is part of that business in the US. I figure I gave those hens a better life than they would have had if they made it on that truck although their end may have been less traumatic if they stayed on the truck.

It is good that you posted the video, one has to know this things. This thread is not only about the positive aspects of animal life.
When I had a twitter account there were lots of ativist videos about the bad treatment of animals, things you don´t imagine before you see them.
As for your chicken, they had a bad end but it is also true that they also harassed the dog until he hit back. Otherwise he probably would have left them alone or even become friendly with them. Anyway they had a life of their own.They certainly were better of as if they had been sent to a furnace or a grinder.

Cats... http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2...News+-+Main%29


Dogs... http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2...News+-+Main%29

Gorgeous animals, Tailor, halfway between the wild and the domestic cats.

Interesting dog experiment, it would help proving the thesis that animals plan their actions in advance and are able to deceive humans. But it is not so easy to know the animals motives for acting as they do.
I remember my cat guiding me to his empty bowl. He pushed me gently with his head if I was engrossed with something else and made sure I followed him to the bowl. I interpreted it as:"See, it is empty. Please do something about it"

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tailor STATELY

Dogs... http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2...News+-+Main%29

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This one about dogs fits the behavior of the dog I had. It also corrects a misconception I had. I assumed the breed of the dog might have had something to do with Fred's abilities, but apparently the breed is not relevant. All dogs are pretty smart.

Well, it seems the idea was to produce a cute video. I got the feeling the dogs got a bit nervous at the sound. They possibly noticed that the distress was shamed. I have the feeling that cats and dogs respond as much or more to the intonation of the human voice than to the actual words.

Here's an account of an experiment done on a dog who knew when his master was returning home suggesting psi abilities between humans and dogs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA5wAm2c01w

It´s an interesting experiment, however I miss a very important information here. What is the usual time for Pam coming home? Some animals have a very good feeling for what we humans call time. Cats, for intance seem to have an inbuild allar clock which tells them when it is breakfast time.
What about this film? I´m sure you have seen it already. Iwanted to post the whole film, but You Tube is making all the former free versions of films unavailable. I suppose you have to pay now to watch them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP-ZtvjhOJc

The interesting fact here is that the dog seems not to realise that his owner has died.

I have heard of Hachiko. I don't think the dog realized that the owner died, but just kept going to meet him. It shows that memory can last a long time in dogs.

In the experiment, Pam didn't know when she was coming home nor from where. It was not a routine schedule. The experimenter knew those things. The dog however sensed she was going to return remotely after the decision was made to return home. This is not saying that all dogs can do this or even want to do it. Not all humans have or develop unusual psychic abilities. It just shows the possibility for this to happen which makes it anecdotal in a sense but repeatable for that pair enough that the experiment could be conducted.

The film about Hachiko is very moving. I watched it years ago. You are right about the memory in dogs. It accounts partly about the Lassie story too.

The experiment in the video shows that the dog is expecting Pam. My doubt is about knowing "remotely". As the real routine of Pam isn´t known, is it difficult to know if the dog really sensed something remotely or if she just came home after her usual time, when the dog would surely expect her.

"As the Deer"/ David Nevue (one of my current fave pianists)... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMOAmTtoa9A

Loved it, Tailor. For me the music has a soothing quality that goes well with the innocence of deers.

Nice music by David Neveu. It has a soothing quality.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Danik 2016

The experiment in the video shows that the dog is expecting Pam. My doubt is about knowing "remotely". As the real routine of Pam isn´t known, is it difficult to know if the dog really sensed something remotely or if she just came home after her usual time, when the dog would surely expect her.

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Pam was trying to find ways to fool the dog. At 0:53, there is this text: "I did not tell my parents where I was going or when I would be back." The dog still knew. This doesn't work for all dogs. If it did one would be able to use a mechanistic model to predict future behavior.

Yes/No. You probably find me very stubborn, but the fact is I am really sceptic about the scientific value of this kind of videos (even admiting that the story is cute.). You have to basically rely on what they tell you and show you. I suppose it is not difficult to mount this kind of videos. It must be like filming animals for the cinema. For example, one in fact sees the dog waiting at the window or at the door. But how one could be sure that he is really waiting for Pam? He may be waiting for someone else or for a bowl of food. It may all be an illusion or it may all be true. But from a more scientific point of view there are not enough proofs.

It could be all fake. One has to be careful about what people report, including what skeptics assert. If it doesn't convince you, that is fine.

Ok, Yes/No.
I found this video. Couldn´t follow every single word because the lady speaks very quickly but the explanations are very clear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqjdRAERWLc

That is a good video. I will look at others in the series.

I like the Pyrrhonian skepticism position. In going further than the Academic skeptics, they not only doubted and thereby implied that knowledge was impossible, but they also doubted this "knowledge was impossible" knowledge. Knowledge might well be possible. Our views of reality might contain some truth. I assume they would not insist that we "prove" that we know what we know.

I kind of like the situation that we cannot know things "for sure". Our specific perspectives on reality suggest to me that this is what we should expect. We should expect to know things about reality, but not for sure. Pragmatically we accept what we want to accept as evidence.

To get back to the psi experiences with Pam's dog, Rupert Sheldrake did some experiments related to this phenomena. There are people who call themselves "skeptics" who doubt Sheldrake's results. There are other people (such as myself) who also call themselves "skeptics" who mistrust these skeptics and think of them as "pseudo-skeptics" or "dogmatic skeptics". Who's right? Given the Pyrrhonian skepticism no proof is possible. We just have to make a choice, which of the various positions we will accept and which reject.

Here is a video of Sheldrake answering a question about James Randi, one of the skeptics who doubts his work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB3SAD-gHTc

I listened to the video and I also had a look at Rupert Sheldrake himself. Here is the Wikipedia article for who else might want to follow this discussion as I suppose you did your own research on him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake
I found out that the man has a very solid university background (Cambridge);on the other hand as a scientist he is a very controversial character. That in itself is not necessarily a problem. Quite a lot of the greatest scientists were criticized and some of them even pursued before they were accepted and celebrated by the mainstream. Ironically in the university where I studied 40 years ago they were addept of a strict US behaviorist pattern with variables control and so on. An experiment like the one with Jaitee wouldn´t be considered complete. One would have had to register his complete behavior story with Pam, and specially the coming home routine. But the scientific parameters are changing as everything else is. But I think it is still too early to say if this man is really inovating science (the dog experiment is only one of his inovations). Only time will tell.

I think one needs to make sure experiments (of all kinds) are blinded: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinded_experiment This is especially true given evidence of psi. I see the experiment with Jaytee as mainly documenting the phenomena, a case study, while the results could be reproduced. There isn't any theory being tested by this documentation. Sheldrake has a theory of morphogenic fields that I don't understand. Fields seem to me to be spatially constrained and require a numerical value at each point of space. Psi seems to transcend space.

I've been watching the Wireless Philosophy videos on epistemology that you showed me earlier. At the moment I suspect all the solutions trying to go beyond skepticism have some problem with them. They should be looking for the good that is in skepticism rather than trying to resolve it. There is this "brain in a vat" fantasy that comes from AI dreaming, however, if one looks at "social mood", that would behave in a similar way influencing our knowledge from outside of us as individuals. It is a better metaphor than Descartes' demon or brain in a vat for influences on what we claim to know, and is very likely real. I think a general solution around the problem of knowledge is not to put "knowledge" and "belief" against each other, but to use these as degrees of confidence on what we think is true where we are more confident of knowledge than beliefs and there being some falsity in each. The series of videos clearly explain the various positions.

Blinded experiments are often used, to my knowledge to test new medicines. In this case, if the experiment was performed in the way we are told, it was blinded inasmuch as neither Pam nor Jaitee were informed, when Pam was coming home. I think, with psichological experiments you have to have some fixed parameters so that you can repeat the experiment and compare results. My concern with this idea of the animal sensing when his/her owner comes back is atributing certain powers to animals (or to humans for that matter) without being sure about it. As all things are handled today with both eyes directed to the media, these dogs would be taken to talk shows and similars to demonstrate their abilities.
I watched only one of these videos, in fact in didn´t know there were more. My idea was to find a didactic definition of skepticism for our discussion. I didn´t quite get this idea of "brain in a vat", the rest seemed easy to understand.
"I think a general solution around the problem of knowledge is not to put "knowledge" and "belief" against each other, but to use these as degrees of confidence on what we think is true where we are more confident of knowledge than beliefs and there being some falsity in each."
I think you are right there and that it is a very occidental dicotomy where "knowledge" stands for science and "belief" for religion. I hope there are systems of thought where both can exist together.
My skepticism goes mainly against people and methods who want to play with the good faith of other people.I am Brazilian and the patron of my astrological sign is St. Thomas.

Funny impression just now when looking after many days at
http://nutiminn.is/kattarshians/
The cats were asleep as usual, but I couldn´t spot Thor (the yellow one)immediately. But then he woke up and put his head up looking as if in my direction and went to sleep again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Danik 2016

Blinded experiments are often used, to my knowledge to test new medicines. In this case, if the experiment was performed in the way we are told, it was blinded inasmuch as neither Pam nor Jaitee were informed, when Pam was coming home. I think, with psichological experiments you have to have some fixed parameters so that you can repeat the experiment and compare results. My concern with this idea of the animal sensing when his/her owner comes back is atributing certain powers to animals (or to humans for that matter) without being sure about it. As all things are handled today with both eyes directed to the media, these dogs would be taken to talk shows and similars to demonstrate their abilities.
I watched only one of these videos, in fact in didn´t know there were more. My idea was to find a didactic definition of skepticism for our discussion. I didn´t quite get this idea of "brain in a vat", the rest seemed easy to understand.
"I think a general solution around the problem of knowledge is not to put "knowledge" and "belief" against each other, but to use these as degrees of confidence on what we think is true where we are more confident of knowledge than beliefs and there being some falsity in each."
I think you are right there and that it is a very occidental dicotomy where "knowledge" stands for science and "belief" for religion. I hope there are systems of thought where both can exist together.
My skepticism goes mainly against people and methods who want to play with the good faith of other people.I am Brazilian and the patron of my astrological sign is St. Thomas.

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That dichotomy between "knowledge" (science) and "belief" (religion) is what bothers me also. The video prior to the one you linked to showed a difference between the two. One has to add onto belief stuff in order to get to knowledge. Although I disagree with that view, it is good to hear the position summarized in those videos with the key ideas expressed clearly.

I just watched another of those videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xehTcQeqDWs
What I like about the two I watched it´s that they are very clear. Very complex issues appear in a simplified form.
I read Descartes famous demonstration way back but I can´t remember him mentioning the evil genius. The funny thing is that the way to overcome skepticism seems to be to revert to the every day experience of your senses.

The most resistent animal of the world?

Meet the tardigrade:

http://www.sciencealert.com/new-stud...indestructible

The tardigrade radiation protection is impressive.

They did mention that it might help us avoid radiation poisoning once we left the magnetosphere around earth. That is one of the main reasons to claim that we never sent humans to the moon.

I don't see any way for us to overcome skepticism. We might think we have achieved it as Descartes did or Russell but then problems arise. True for everyday experiences we can have near 100% confidence in what we experience, enough to allow us to function reliably, but for the big issues our knowledge is just a belief system we are deluded into thinking is more than a belief. I don't see anything wrong with that.

If things go on as they do, what with inventing and using new methods for killing people, we all need to become tardigrades to survive. I remember the to do when the American astronauts arrived at the moon and I never had a special reason to doubt it, but if you do, who live nearer NASA one would have to look better into it.
I think skepticism is sound where it helps us to examine better dubious statements(wheter they are news, propaganda or cientific truths). It is not sound if it goes so far that it disturbs our every day reability on our senses.
I think one of the major chalenges to our thinking systems will happen, if we discover or are discovered by developed creatures of other planets, which have different thinking systems.
It is a pity that there are no posts on the "astronomy thread" any more.

I still follow Universe Today, learn quite a lot about recent developments.

That´s nice Dreamwoven!

I didn't doubt that human beings landed on the Moon until I read about it right here on Lit Net and then checked the sources. I am no expert, but the fact that we do not have bases on the Moon today but we are able to have space stations within the Earth's magnetosphere suggests to me that we did not go to the Moon in the early 1970s. We may also need the magnetosphere not only to protect us from radiation, but also to keep us sane. I may bring up that idea in the astronomy thread.

Skepticism breaks down when it becomes solipsism, a view that our individual existences is all that we know and all that we know can be gained only through physical senses. However, if one gets rid of that individualism, which is a form of reductionism, and includes other form of empirical evidence such as psi, skepticism becomes the only way that a spiritual view of reality is possible.

If we were able to download our subjectivity into individual propositions that can be logically manipulated then our subjectivity, our consciousness, is an epiphenomenon arising from unconscious matter. Skepticism, at least as I understand it, says this is impossible to achieve. The reason to attack skepticism is to find a way to justify materialism.

This gets a little far away from animals, so let me bring it back to them. If we view animals as machines without subjectivity, or subjectivity that can be reduced to an epiphenomenon on their machine bodies, we are part of a culture of materialism. The Cartesian view of reality turns animals into machines, but leaves us intact with something special. Then we observe that we also are animals. This is not a problem except that animals have been reduced to machines. Seeing ourselves as animals is then the same as seeing ourselves as machines. To complete the dehumanization our culture dreams of making machines to simulate us and demonstrate that our consciousness is insignificant, a mere epiphenomenon on top of the AI machine.

This is why animals are important. They are a way to correct this cultural change that has lead to our own dehumanization. At least that is how I see it at the moment.

I have to think more about that.I´ll come back to it tomorrow. Anyway I´m glad we got back to animals.

I do drift away in threads. Basically I say whatever comes to my mind. Isn't it amazing that there are so many different kinds of animals around us? We don't have to go to another planet to find strange life forms.

I don´t know about the Moon landing, but today everything seems possible and the fake news weren´t invented in 2017.
I am not sure that I quite follow your argument on skepticism. I am a skeptical person, but in my country skepticism is self defense, apearances count much more than essences and specialy in political matters you have to be on the allert. But I also believe that those people who have a religious faith are happier than those that don´t.
I think the teory of behaviorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism fits the idea that animals and humans are a kind of natural machine that acts by using its reflexes. They don´t believe in the existence of a soul. But I think every more developed creature can prove this theory wrong, although in therapy form it may be sucessful in some situations.
I think there are different forms of dehumanization. The idea of humans=machines would be one of them. Another one would be this massive loss of feelings and the growing indiference towards the fellow humans and the present and the future of humanity.
Although animals restore in me the belief in a better nature, I don´t think they are here necessarily to correct anything, least of all the deviations of humanity. They are here for themselves, because they were created, like the plants and the other wonders of nature.

I agree with all of that.

I am looking at skepticism differently from the way it is normally presented here in the US. A "skeptic" here is usually someone who likes to disparage the beliefs of other people, but thinks he (and occasionally she) is rational in some mysterious way and above belief. They look for a knowledge that is superior to belief. My skepticism hopefully mirrors this back questioning the validity of such alleged knowledge.

To change the subject, there is a story about mice who refuse to accept food if they realize that by accepting it by pressing some button it will cause another mouse to receive pain. This shows empathy. I am looking for some video describing that experiment, but here is one about rats helping each other which also shows empathy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofpZoqD1_X0

Interesting video. It shows that the rats help other rats or similar animals if they are familiar with tem they have good sense.

This video is a very interesting lecture about animal morality including experiments.
It´s a bit long (about 16 minutes)

My link doesn´t work, please use the one Yes/No posted below.