39. Clive Wynne, Animal Consciousness, Making Friends With Skeptics (Podcast)

[alextsakiris]

Guest: Dr. Clive Wynne, on animal behavior research, our tendency to anthropomorphize animal behavior, and whether animal consciousness is an illusion:

??
to me, consciousness is

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[David Bailey]

Alex,

Clive Wynne should know of my experience with a former pet cat (that I have mentioned before).

Our cat parked himself in a neighbour's house (dogs don't usually do that!) and our neighbour knew when we were coming home because he would get up and ask to be let out. All your guests theories about animals picking up on routines were off the mark - our neighbour did not know when we were coming back, and neither did we when we left in the morning.

I think doubting animal consciousness is totally absurd. It implies that whole areas of behaviour - such as courting - had to be totally re-vamped for humans because we obviously need to be conscious for these activities.

I suspect it makes scientists that perform unpleasant experiments on animals feel a little better.

David

[Venom]

Once again, your discussion about skeptics not beeing able to change your mind was plain silly.

And sorry, but your friend Tim with his "core beliefs" is not at all a skeptic then (core beliefs and beeing skeptics are not compatible).

I remember changing position for a lot of stuff. For exemple, I choosed to study psychology because I read Freud and I tough psychoanalaysis was great. After studying psychology for a few years, I consider now psychoanalysis to be a philosophy at best, and maybe even complete pseudo-science.

I'm an atheist, but I tough it was most likely that an historical person named Jesus has existed. After listenning to a lot of arguments about this question, I now lean toward the Jesus-as-a-myth hypothesis. At least I think that if there ever was an historical Jesus, it's completely lost in history.

Well, I can go on and on about this.

But hey, I know that Alex has all his core beliefs. He knows that Psi do exist, that "dogs that knows..." because of Psi, and he knows that skeptics are close-minded bastards. He's never going to change is mind. So why wasting my time writting all this...

[David Bailey]

Venom,

I would say that science has benefited over the years by individuals following their hunch regardless. Incorrect hunches unfortunately waste time, but you can't pick the correct hunches ahead of time!

Even if your view of reality turns out to be correct, you absolutely need people like Radin, Sheldrake, and Alex pushing forward awkward data.

BTW, from what I have read, Jesus probably did exist, but his views and life story seems to have been utterly scrambled over the decades/centuries before they were written down.

I made the transition from Christian to non-believer, and also from total skeptic to cautious supporter of Ψ - for reasons that I have already discussed on this forum. Alex came off the fence at some point for reasons that I can well understand. Interviewing skeptics who criticise work that they turn out not to have read properly no doubt leaves its impression.

David

[Venom]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Even if your view of reality turns out to be correct, you absolutely need people like Radin, Sheldrake, and Alex pushing forward awkward data.

I do agree with that. Well, if I didn't at least agree that fring scientists play a role in the dynamics of scientific inquiry (even when they are wrong), I wouldn't be listening to skeptiko...

By the way, about the interview, once again Alex tricked the skeptic. I mean, Alex, could you please tell those guys beforehand that you're a pro-Ψ and that you think that Sheldrake's dog experiments are proof that Ψ do exist?

And not coming to that while you're talking to them during the interview, and so taking them of-guard?

(Well, thanks to you I now know that if I agree for an interview I MUST listen before to at least a few previous episode just to know where the host stands... In that regard, listening to Skeptiko has been a learning experience.)

Especially here, you're doing that again, and on top of that, you give to the guy a paper to read for the next week, but when he's criticising the paper you gave him, then you switch to other papers. Come on. That's just not fair play. Tell him: "I expect you for next week to know by heart every single papers Sheldrake published on that or I will say that you're a close-minded skeptics".

Thanks in advance.

By the way, that beg the question: why didn't you give him the best experiment Sheldrake did, the one without any flaws? Oh, yeah, I know, all the researchs are just so messy. He didn't control everything in any single experiment. He just control one thing in one experiment, and then an other thing in another one, and so on. Make sense.

Come on. If you really think that what Sheldrake did is perfect, please send to your guest the best experiment, without any flaws (according to you).

Also, about giving cues to the dogs, did Sheldrake ever do an experiment (a) without only an owner (and nobody else in the house at that period), (b) controlling for the clothes (simple: that person has to put the same clothes every time he/she goes out, and can't take anything with he/she - no bag, no umbrella, and so on, (b) true randomization (the owner could come back at any time, even during the night...) a lot of time?

Well, we know he didn't.

You're claiming that Sheldrake protocole prevents the other people to know at what time the owner is coming back, but as it was pointed out in this interview, it's not because Sheldrake says that he controlled that that it was really the case. The best way to deal with that issue is to have nobody else in the house. You need an owner who is living alone.

[Open Mind]

Edited to fix errors ....my usual bad habit of clicking 'post' before reading

I disagree with Dr Clive Wynne on .....

(1) He claims language is the cause of consciousness? I think this is nonsense. Consciousness must proceed language. A word points to a conscious experience, it does not create consciousness. One does not drive the word 'car', one does not feed the word 'dog', words only point to a conscious experiences , therefore must proceed language.... words do not describe colours they point to conscious images of these, words are meaningless unless one has conscious experience of what these represent.

(2)Unconscious emotion? What does he mean? How can one know one has an emotion without experiencing it? One can of course have unconscious habits but if emotional, these must be conscious to at least some degree or we would be unaware of them.

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Venom,

I would say that science has benefited over the years by individuals following their hunch regardless. Incorrect hunches unfortunately waste time, but you can't pick the correct hunches ahead of time!

When something like "morphic resonance" is a grandiose non-theory-of-everything with no evidence then you really can pick the bullshit from the start.

Even if your view of reality turns out to be correct, you absolutely need people like Radin, Sheldrake, and Alex pushing forward awkward data.

I've heard this line from ID proponents and HIV denialists. It was vacuous then and it is vacuous now. Frankly, I get tired of hearing about "science at the tipping point" or "evolution/plate tectonics/HIV is a paradigm in crisis" or "a new science". I'm still waiting for the promised revolution that never comes. It is just a lot of hot air from a bunch of whingers.

What actual science have Radin or Sheldrake contributed? I asked this about the Journal of Scientific Exploration. What contribution has it made to science?

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by Venom

Once again, your discussion about skeptics not beeing able to change your mind was plain silly.

And sorry, but your friend Tim with his "core beliefs" is not at all a skeptic then (core beliefs and beeing skeptics are not compatible).

I wonder if Tim knew he was going to be set up in this way.

I would also add that changing your mind a lot, as Alex implies, does not make you a skeptic either.

If Alex has changed his mind about religion and stem cells does not make him more of a skeptic than someone who has always been skeptical of religion and who has always had a moderate view about stem cells.

Skepticism is not about making your mind up. If anything it is about reserving judgement. That doesn't mean that some theories are not more likely to be true than others. There are some things that have a large body of evidence to support them which I believe to have an extremely high probability of being true. The theory that HIV causes AIDS is one of these. I am still open to disproof. There are some things that have very little evidence and are extremely unlikely to be true. "Morphic resonance" is one of these. There are a lot of other thing in between that I refrain from taking a position at all because there simply is not enough evidence either way.

While we are talking about "Morphic Resonance" - when are we going to see Sheldrake change his mind on this one? The grandiosity of Sheldrake's claims are in complete opposition to the strength of the evidence. The field of developmental biology continues to provide evidence that shows "morphic resonance" to be completely vacuous and superfluous. When is Sheldrake going to say "whoops I got it wrong"?

Sheldrake has changed his mind - not about "morphic resonance" but about its critics.

http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_11.html#sheldrake

This is really pathetic. Sheldrake has invested so much in his pet theory that he will never, ever admit to being wrong. He then projects his "true believer" status onto the critics who are patiently waiting for the evidence that would justify the grandiose claims that he makes.

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by Venom

Especially here, you're doing that again, and on top of that, you give to the guy a paper to read for the next week, but when he's criticising the paper you gave him, then you switch to other papers. Come on. That's just not fair play. Tell him: "I expect you for next week to know by heart every single papers Sheldrake published on that or I will say that you're a close-minded skeptics".

I'm also left wondering what the point of asking for peer-review if you are going to ignore it.

Dr Wynne gave constructive criticism that should be welcome. It is the exact same criticism that would have been obtained if the paper were submitted to a relevant high status peer-reviewed journal.

A real scientist goes back and does more experiments to answer constructive criticisms. Crackpots whine about Big Science.

I find it hard to believe that the parents were completely blind to the comings and goings of their daughter. For a start her return times were not randomly spread throughout the day.

In some double blind controls when there is a possibility that blinding is lost it is cutomary to test to see how well blinding is maintained. For example you can ask the patients whether they think they are in the mahnet group or the sham magnet group in a study testing the efficacy of magnets for treating arthritis.

Why not ask the parents what time they think their daughter is going to come home to test to see whether they really were completely blind. It is simply not good enough to simply assume that they were. If the trials were truly randomised then this would not be necessary.

[David Bailey]

Venom,

Don't you think that if we know the nature of Alex's broadcasts, so do his guests? Would you agree to appear on an arbitrary US show without even looking up what it contained?

David