Motivation.  The reason why: the reason why not.  Anyone whose goal
is to cause, influence or change their dog's behavior will have
greater success once they begin to understand and work with the
animal's motivation.

Such an important concept has more than its share of disagreements
amongst "the experts."  This becomes very clear when one takes a
closer look at the ongoing debates over topics such as learning
theory or which dog training methods yield the best results.  In
simply trying to address and change their dog's behaviour, the
average dog owner risks getting caught in the crossfire from those
deeply divided on the subject.

So, let's begin this exercise with a "why question."  Why did the
chicken cross the road?  The standard answer to this cute little
riddle is, "To get to the other side."  Ask a group of learned
behaviorists the same question and they are likely to expound on the
chicken's reinforcement history coupled with a series of
approximations and tied to various motivators.  I like to imagine
asking the chickens the same question: they'd probably tell you they
do it for the amusement they garner from keeping the behaviorists
occupied.

Behaviourists, despite any claims to the contrary, are not the only
experts on behaviour.  They are, in fact, only representative of one
narrow view of behaviour.  There are many non-behaviourist experts
that understand explain and work with behaviour.  Behaviourists are
reductionist; interested only in breaking observable behaviour into
tiny segments and using S-R (stimulus - response) theory to explain
their observations.

The behaviorist J. B. Watson said, "The rule, or measuring rod, which
the behaviorist puts in front of him always is: Can I describe this
bit of behavior I see in terms of `stimulus and response'?" 
According to the behaviorist view of the world, we are all nothing
more than organic matter interacting with the various stimuli in our
environment.

Skinner, one of the most influential behaviourists and considered the
father of "Operant Coditioning," said in "About Behaviorism," 1974,
p. 213):
"A person is first of all an organism, a member of a species and a
subspecies, possessing a genetic endowment of anatomical and
physiological characteristics, which are the product of the
contingencies of survival to which the species has been exposed in
the process of evolution. The organism becomes a person [i.e., a
unique individual] as it acquires a repertoire of behavior under the
contingencies of reinforcement to which it is exposed in its
lifetime. The behavior it exhibits at any moment is under the control
of a current setting. It is able to acquire such a repertoire because
of processes of conditioning, to which it is susceptible because of
its genetic endowment."

On pg.15 of "Excel-erated Learning" Pamela J. Reid wrote:
"The acceptance of behaviorism went hand in hand with the rejection
of the study of the mind.  B. F. Skinner believed that we could
understand behavior by studying the things that happen to animals. 
There was no need to study what was happening inside the animal's
head. Understanding the laws of behavior and how events affect an
animal's behavior do not necessitate understanding the mind.  In fact
Skinner's form of "radical behaviorism" even rejected the notion that
thoughts, feelings, and emotions could cause behavior."

But is this truly the case?  Are we and our dogs nothing more than
organic matter that only behaves in response to various environmental stimuli?  Thankfully not.  Many in the scientific and academic world have begun to discredit and discard many of the tenants underlying the behaviorists conditioning theory.  More of a focus is now being directed toward understanding internal motivations, cognitive processes,  individual choice and purposeful action.  One could say that while all conditioning is learning, not all learning is conditioning.  Indeed, conditioning makes up only a fraction of learning.

In fact, Koestler wrote this about reductionism:
"Yet throughout the dark ages of psychology most of the work done in
the laboratories consisted of analyzing bricks and mortar in the hope
that by patient effort somehow one day it would tell you what a
cathedral looked like." Arthur Koestler, "The Ghost in the Machine."
NY: Random House (1967), p. 9.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy, said:
"Let us face the fact: a large part of modern psychology is a sterile
and pompous scholasticism which, with the blinders of preconceived
notions or superstitions on its nose, doesn't see the obvious; which
covers the triviality of its results and ideas with a preposterous
language bearing no resemblance either to normal English or normal
scientific theory; and which provides modern society with the
techniques for the progressive stultification of mankind."
"Robots, Men and Minds." NY: George Braziller (1967), p. 6

On p. 10 (same reference) Bertalanffy said:
"The S-R scheme discards a large part of behavior which is an
expression of autonomous activity: play, exploratory behavior, any
form of creativity."

People had been training dogs for thousands of years prior to the
mindless slide into `Skinners World,' the world of operant
conditioning.  Some trainers were effective and some not, some
were "humane" and some not - much as is the case today.  The fact
that dogs (like the rest of us) learn from their experiences and that
pleasure and pain plays a role in that learning, is probably as old
as awareness itself.  Operant conditioning, as a teaching tool, does
not give the practitioner anything new.  It's evolution as a theory
grew out of attempts to explain why us `organic types' behave as we
do.  In that sense then, operant conditioning is a theory of
motivation and while it may be partially correct, it is a seriously
flawed theory.

I watch a four-week-old puppy attempt to climb out of the whelping
box for the first time.  Every unsuccessful attempt is met with
renewed determination.  Why?  The puppy's repeated attempts seem to violate the very conditioning theory that behaviorists hold sacred. 
This puppy seems to hold at least one quality in common with the
likes of folks like Thomas Edison, persistence.  Like the pioneer and
the inventor, their motto is, "If at first you don't succeed, try,
try again."  The greatest accomplishments, it seems, come from those
with the determination to fail their way to success.

Skinner promoted the concept that organisms react and behave simply because of external factors.  He said thought and awareness are nothing more than annoying, meaningless by-products. The result of this is that the concepts of consciousness, awareness, self-control,
will, self-determinism and personal responsibility cannot and do not
exist within the behaviourist's ideological frameworks. They consider
such concepts as minor and of no meaningful significance. They hold
the view that at best all internal subjective states, including
feelings, are nothing more than chemical reactions in the brain or
stimulus-response reactions to evolutionary and immediate
environmental forces.

Skinner didn't believe in the inner world of the mind or that
behaviour could be internally driven by thoughts, feelings, free will
and conscious choice.  Because he didn't believe in these factors, he
had no place for them in his theory.  Because his theory itself is
flawed, what has since flowed from his theory has been both
inconsistent and unreliable.

Here is what Arthur Koestler has to say in "The Ghost in the
Machine." NY: Random House (1967), p. 17:
"Historically, Behaviorism started as a reaction against the excesses
of introspective techniques....At first its intention was merely to
exclude consciousness, images and other non-public phenomena as
objects of study from the field of psychology; but later on this came
to imply that the excluded phenomena did not exist. A programme for a methodology, which had its arguable points, became transformed into a philosophy which had no point at all."

He also wrote:
"Behaviorism is indeed a kind of flat-earth view of the mind." 
Ibid., p. 17.

And on p. 18 he wrote:
"The record of fifty years of rattomorphic psychology is comparable
in its sterile pedantry to that of scholasticism in its period of
decline, when it had fallen to counting angels on pin-heads --
although this sounds a more attractive pastime than counting the
number of bar-pressings on the box."

It is interesting to note that when behaviourism (specifically
operant conditioning) fails to produce reliable responses - when the
actual mind of the dog is never truly engaged, the result is often an
increase in undesirable behaviours which can include aggression. 
Instead of addressing the holes in their training model as the root
cause of the problem, the behaviorist then employs the strategy
of, "blame the subject."  This is often disguised by an attempt to
affix a behavioural diagnosis and along with this fancy label, advise
complete environmental control, employ even more conditioning
strategies and if that fails suggest drugs and then death.  They will
not seek to engage the dog's mind in the training process - it's hard
to engage that what you don't acknowledge.

What is actually at issue is one's belief about motivation.  To the
behaviorist, motivation is an external stimulus.  There are many
others however (myself included) who view motivation more as an
internal event.  Behaviour, especially non-reflexive behaviour, is
more often a choice rather than simply a conditioned response to an
eliciting stimulus.  The stimulus is, in fact, quite peripheral to
the behaviour which, after all, has its origins in the mind.

Alfie Kohn says:
"Few readers will be shocked by the news that extrinsic motivators
are a poor substitute for genuine interest in what one is doing. What
is likely to be far more surprising and disturbing is the further
point that rewards, like punishments, actually undermine the
intrinsic motivation that promotes optimal performance...."  Alfie
Kohn, "Punished By Rewards." NY: Houghton Mifflin (1993), p. 68.

"The first explanation (of why rewards undermine motivation) has an
appealing simplicity to it and seems to make sense on the basis of
our real-life experience: anything presented as a prerequisite for
something else -- that is, as a means toward some other end -- comes
to be seen as less desirable. `Do this and you'll get that'
automatically devalues the `this'." Alfie Kohn, Ibid., p. 76.

In correspondence on the subject of why animals behave, Dorothy C.
Dunning Ph. D wrote (and I am quoting her with permission):
"My major professor, Ken Roeder, was a neurophysiologist interested
in insect behavior. He addressed Roger's plaint in another way.

A little terminology, to make the following comprehensible: Sensory
inputs are the way stimuli get into the nervous system; motor outputs
are the way behavior happens. In between is the central nervous
system or brain, which links and controls input and output. Usually
the behavior is a consequence of the contractions of a bunch of
muscles, in a carefully orchestrated sort of way. Muscles are
controlled by nerve cells called motoneurons.

When fooling around in the nervous system of an insect, he could
reliably get a muscle twitch (or sometimes several) by stimulating
the motoneuron that ran to that muscle, but when he backed off,
further upstream in the neural pathways that controlled behavior, the
less predictable the behavior became. Even in an insect, and even in
one whose behavior and nervous system were simple, he could not
predict exactly what the animal would do.

So he built a mechanical model of the insect he was studying at the
time, a cockroach. He endowed this machine with sensory inputs
qualitatively like those of a roach, and with motor outputs
controlled by those inputs in a way similar to the way roaches
responded to sensory inputs. Even though he had built this "beast,"
he could not control its behavior as precisely as he had expected. It
got into behavioral cul de sacs he had not predicted and had
mechanical "nervous breakdowns." So he built a "time out" circuit
into its "brain," an incandescent lightbulb that lit when the machine
could not decide what to do. That was the signal for us to come watch
or, if the lightbulb burnt out, to replace the thing and rescue the
roach.

Roeder called this unpredictability the "evitability" of behavior,
for no response was inevitable, even given complete control over it.
Roeder was one of the first ethologists, those who explain behavior
in terms of its adaptive significance for the animal doing the
behaving, rather than in terms of stimuli and environmental control.
He was the first neuroethologist, the first to recognize the
significance of the fact that many neurons are not all-or-none
devices, that even the responses of individual nerve cells cannot be
precisely predicted, let alone the constellations of behavior they
control.

If cockroach behavior is evitable, that of more complex animals like
dogs and people is even more so.

Watson and Skinner were guilty of hubris."


Victims of Circumstance?
It seems that for every unacceptable behaviour engaged in by either
man or beast, there is an excuse.  Is the dog that bites his way
through limits simply acting as he must in accordance with his
reinforcement history?  How about the thief, the fighter or the
rapist, are they, like the dog that bites, simply acting according to
their reinforcement history?   Are we all simply displaying the
results of the reinforcement schedules to which we've been subjected
and therefore victims of our conditioning?

Widespread acceptance of conditioning theory during its heyday has
led to a plethora of problems we, as a society, are still struggling
to come to grips with.  In addition to a decline in positive results
in our classrooms, we have witnessed a shift away from holding
individuals accountable for their behaviour.  This should come as no
surprise.  The concepts of consciousness, awareness, self-control,
will, self-determinism and personal responsibility cannot and do not
exist within the behaviourist's ideological frameworks - particularly
those influenced by Skinner.

When we attempt to bring criminals to justice, lawyers, tearing a
page from the behaviourist textbook, will argue, "he's not
responsible."  The excuses run from, "a history of deprivation" to "a
history of excesses."  In most cases it will be the mother, father,
teacher, neighbour or just society in general that the lawyer will
try to put on trial to take the responsibility for their clients
actions.  The poor bugger had no choice but to steal, rape or murder -
after all, his reinforcement history you know.

Does the same dynamic apply to the unacceptable behaviour of dogs?  I believe it does.  In the opening of this article I referenced the
riddle, "Why did the chicken cross the road?"  In that question, one
could substitute dog for chicken and instead of, "cross the road,"
substitute any behaviour.  Why did the dog bite the mailman?  Why did
the dog ignore me when I called him?  In all cases the behaviourist
will not hold the dog responsible but will hold it's conditioning or
lack of conditioning solely responsible.  According to behaviourist
dogma, dogs don't make decisions; they are never contentious and they cannot be held accountable, they only respond according to their
conditioning.  Behaviourists, like lawyers hold that circumstances,
not individuals, are responsible.

There is no question that we all learn from our past experiences, our
history.  That one factor alone, however, cannot account for more
than a fraction of the behaviour we see daily.  We all, dogs
included, are able to act outside the influence of our history.  We
are able to adapt and we can act counter to any conditioning, rise
above it and behave differently.


Anthropomorphism the Final Taboo
Anthropomorphism is defined as the attribution of human form or
qualities to that which is not human. Behaviourists hate anthropomorphism and for the most part have succeeded in making it something horrible, something to be avoided at all costs.  For a professional working with animals, being labelled as anthropomorphic is akin to a government official being labelled as racist. 

Most often it is the motivation being attributed to a particular
behaviour that gets labelled as anthropomorphic.  Examples might
be: "My dog bit me because he was jealous of my new kitten."

Granted, once one starts to attribute human foibles or any motive,
they run the risk of being wrong.  It is also possible to become
totally ineffective because one's assumptions are so far off base.  I
would point out however, I've made similar mistakes in trying to
understand something my wife has done.  Sometimes despite the best of intentions, it is possible to misinterpret.

It seems to me that viewing things in human terms is a perfectly
normal thing for a human to do.  The more experienced and
knowledgeable we are about the subject, the more our hypothesis might be correct. 

I do find it curious that among some who call themselves
behaviourists, we find those who readily anthropomorphize when it
suits their purpose to do so.  Anyone ever wonder what is behind
behaviourist terms such as, "Fear aggression" or "Separation anxiety?"

In was recently doing a little research into the subject of
anthropomorphism because I was curious about the taboos surrounding it.  It came as quite a surprise for me to learn of the religious origin and meaning.

The Microsoft® Encarta® 97 Encyclopedia. © 1993-1996 Microsoft
Corporation. All rights reserved, states:
"In the history of religion, anthropomorphism refers to the depiction
of God in a human image, with human bodily form and emotions, such as jealousy, wrath, or love. Whereas mythology is exclusively concerned with anthropomorphic gods, other religious thought holds that it is inappropriate to regard an omnipotent, omnipresent God as human. In order to speak of God, however, metaphorical language must be employed. In philosophy and theology, seemingly anthropomorphic concepts and language are used because it is impossible to think of God without attributing to him some human traits..."

"Nineteenth-century German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel held that Greek anthropomorphic religion represented an improvement over the worship of gods in the shape of animals, a practice called theriomorphism (Greek therion, "animal"; morphe, "shape"). Hegel also maintained that Christianity brought the notion of anthropomorphism to maturity by insisting not only that God assumed a human form, but also that Jesus Christ was both a fully human person as well as fully divine. Because Christianity incorporates humanity into the very nature of divinity, it has been accused of anthropomorphism by both Jewish and Islamic thinkers."

So how did anthropomorphism become a problem for the behaviorist?  I found the following web article that was quite interesting and makes a connection to Pavlov.

http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:lRrp2ep0fJAJ:www.psychology.
uiowa.edu/classes/31190/behavioris
m.rtf+Anthropomorphism++behaviorism&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

"...But, the problem of anthropomorphism is one that has for nearly a
century vexed scientists interested in animal behavior. No less than
the Nobel laureate Ivan P. Pavlov once adopted an anthropomorphic
approach to understanding the conditioned reflexes that he and his co-workers discovered in their studies of canine digestion..."

"In the 1928 book chronicling his first 25 years of conditioning
research, "Lectures on conditioned reflexes," Pavlov describes this
fascinating story as involving two opposite paths to comprehending
conditioned reflexes: the anthropomorphic approach and the scientific
approach."

"According to the anthropomorphic approach, we should be mainly
interested in the internal or subjective world of the dog rather than
in its overt actions. This anthropomorphic approach assumes that the
internal world of the dog--its thoughts, its feelings, its desires
(if it has any)--are analogous to ours. Pavlov and his colleagues
actually entertained this approach prior to 1903 in order to
understand the then-called "psychical" secretions of their dogs to
signals for food..."

"...This interpretive breakdown forced the researchers to abandon
what Pavlov suspected was an inborn inclination for people to adopt
an anthropomorphic interpretation and to promote a less familiar, but
more productive objective approach. This analytical transition from
anthropomorphic interpretation to a natural science approach was not
an easy one to make; indeed, Pavlov described the process as
involving persistent deliberation and considerable mental conflict..."

"Jennings' appeal for us to limit our consideration of both human and
animal behavior to objective factors underscores the key imperative
of behaviorism: to explain behavior in terms of matter and energy,
thereby rendering unnecessary any psychical or mental implications. 
Mentalism was to play no part in this new behavioral science of the
20th century, a science which remains prominent to this day."

"Nevertheless, mentalism has staged a surprising comeback in the form of `cognitive ethology,' a field founded by the biologist Donald R.
Griffin. The goal of cognitive ethology is `to learn as much as
possible about the likelihood that nonhuman animals have mental
experiences, and insofar as these do occur, what they entail and how
they affect the animals' behavior, welfare, and biological fitness'
(Griffin, 1978, p. 528). To Pavlov, Jennings, and Watson, this goal
of studying animal consciousness falls outside the scope of a
scientific psychology that has struggled for a century to avoid such
analyses of subjective experience."

"This contest between subjective and objective analyses of behavior
is obviously an important one that has yet to be decided. The second
century of behaviorism will have to prove to its many opponents that
a natural science account of animal behavior and intelligence
eclipses subjective and mentalistic interpretations."

"One area where this contest will surely be waged is the study of
more advanced forms of animal cognition, like memory and
conceptualization. It might be easy to dismiss salivary conditioning
as a mindless form of association formation and to grant behaviorists
this narrow realm of behavioral adaptation. But, it is not going to
be so easy to dismiss an objective analysis of abstract conceptual
behavior. The battle is joined. The resolution will have important
implications for our conceptions of animal and human behavior."


An Awakening
In an attempt to gather support for whatever point of view we might
have held, we looked to science, psychology even religion.  Through
this process we have gained but we have also lost.  We have gained in the sense that we have been able to construct certain learning models but in the process we began to see the dog in two dimensions only and we have lost sight of the fact that maybe dogs have a higher purpose.

Looking back at my earliest memories of dogs, I find myself full of
wonder and joy.  Here were creatures we could commune with, play
with, at times would protect us and who seemed to understand what we
were about.  The dogs worked beside us, hunted with us, and played
freely.  We knew nothing of anthropomorphism, reinforcement
schedules, Premack principles, Thorndike laws etc.

After I began training, I wanted to learn as much as I could and
began studying the "science" of training.  I learned that we
shouldn't ascribe "human" qualities to dogs.  I learned that dogs are
the ultimate opportunists and are only interested in "what's in it
for them."  I learned dogs have no desire to please, can't develop a
sense of responsibility, are amoral lemon brains, and certainly have
no higher purpose beyond survival.  I am really sorry I journeyed so
far down this road before I realized that the sick feeling I had in
the pit of my stomach was my reaction to the broad brush with which
we were painting our "best friend."  What I may have gained in the
techniques of training, I more than lost in the spirit of training. 
Behaviourism is very two dimensional and doesn't recognize its own
limits but tends to place limits where there should be none, if it's
not measurable on our instruments – it doesn't exist; if it can't be
reproduced in the lab – it's not valid; biology is the only valid
motivation – spirituality is not.

Adopting a "scientomorphic" attitude (a term used by Vicki Hearn) we
run the risk of losing sight of the dog.  Science would, I believe,
have us view dogs in only a very primitive state (only as biological
specimens).  I believe dogs are capable of developing a basic moral
sense, can show altruistic motives and can enjoy meaningful
relationships.  I believe these factors are also important in
understanding motivations behind certain behaviors.

When it comes to training, I believe we are responsible to teach the
desired behaviour BUT once it is learned we can hold the dog
responsible and ultimately I believe the dog can develop their own
internal sense of responsibility.  You see, I also believe dogs have
a sense of dignity and can take pride in getting the job done
properly.