Nightjar

Amelia Lewis (Author) (2021)

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the way humans interact with domestic companion animals, with a focus on 'positive reward-based training' methods, particularly for dogs. From a biosemiotic perspective, I discuss the role of animal training in today's society and examine what binary reward- based reinforcement schedules communicate, semiotically. I also examine the extent to which reward-based training methods promote better welfare, when compared to the more traditional methods which rely on aversive stimuli and punishment, if and when they are relied upon excessively. I conclude that when used as the primary means of communication, they have the potential to be detrimental to animal welfare, because the underlying social signal is control and resource dominance. As an alternative view to behaviourist-based learning theory and conditioning, I outline how enactivist theories of cognition support a semiotic approach to interspecific human-animal communication. I therefore propose a move toward a dynamic semiosis and mutual understanding based upon Peirce's phenomenology, resulting in a more balanced merging of Umwelten. The aim is to create rich and more complex semiospheres around humans and domestic animals, which allow for individual agency and autonomy.

Conclusion

Whilst undeniably, basic training using lures and rewards is necessary, the focus on "positive reward-based' training paradigms when interacting with domestic animal species gives little, if any, room for more complex communication or signaling to take place. Moreover, they reduce individuals of other species to little more than automata, responding to binary inputs. In these circumstances, how can the animal's human companion, or the animals themselves, achieve a true bond and interspecific relationship? The most logically unsound argument commonly proposed to support these paradigms is that because physical force is not used, they are 'humane' and 'kinder'. However, the comparisons with coercive control and psychological manipulation are striking. A more innate, complex, and dynamic interspecific means of communication should not be supplanted by repetitive conditioning and 'commands', which are fast becoming a widespread misapplication of a genuine, but misunderstood and overutilized, biological principle. Nor is it possible to quantify and 'proscribe' communication, as though it were a simple recipe which can be reduced to pre-determined steps. Thus, positive reward- based training has a place as a technique in animal management, but it is not without risks, and it should be understood as what it is; manipulation and coercion (with threat of loss of resources or social interaction) focused on maintaining control. Substantive arguments that as a training technique, it is preferable to fear-based methods and physically aggressive practices, do not alter this statement. As a means of communication, it should not be relied upon as the primary modality, and consideration should be given to more appropriate interactions alongside methods such as 'clicker training', which should not be used without vocal or tactile communication and guidance from the trainer, as described by Fugazza and Miklósi (2015). Perhaps, in moving away from "The Five Freedoms' model of animal welfare, toward a quality-of-life based assessment scale which emphasizes positive welfare rather than the absence of poor welfare (Mellor, 2016), we should begin to change our thinking about how we interact and communicate with domestic and captive animals. This may ultimately lead toward an acceptance that training is not the most enlightened way of communicating with other species, alongside an accompanying paradigm shift toward complex dynamic semiosis, mutual understanding, 'Total Umwelten', and ultimately, a more balanced semiosphere.

Glossary:

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

This torches everything. And I do mean everything.

A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):

ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives

allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason

preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies

requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.

What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.

Toni Morrison and James Baldwin

The thing you're saying.

That that thing is worth saying.

That is, speech/writing has a cost to it, in the form of energy and time expended doing it, in the energy and time taken by others to listen to/read it, and the thing you are communicating is implied to be sufficiently valuable to worth that trade-off.

E.g. if you meet a woman and she says, "Hi, I'm Becky, I was born on a Thursday," it would be an odd experience because even if 1 applies, 2 clearly doesn't (unless you are running some kind of day-of-birth study or something ig). There is a hidden meaning of, "you should be aware of the weekday of my birth because it is important," that seems to make no sense.

And yet people will often defend something they have said on the basis of it being strictly true, which is unsatisfactory because it only justifies half of what was communicated by the act of saying it.

If Becky comes along to a queer event and says "Hi, I'm Becky, I'm AFAB," you have to understand that that is not just a neutral statement of fact, it also communicates something like this: "I am aware that if I looked and sounded the same but my sex assignment was different I would be treated differently. I am informing you of my sex assignment right now so that you treat me appropriately hereafter."

And that is just straight-up transmisogyny, both in displaying uncritical acceptance of how prevalent transmisogyny is in queer groups, and in demanding exemption from it. It sounds absurd on the face of it that a cis woman describing herself using entirely true statements can be doing transmisogyny, even in the absence of any transfeminine person or any mention of transfeminity at all. But it's true all the same.

I saw this when running newpipe. But wait, it gets deeper. I clicked on the details buttons and it said as of today,we have 83 days left until Google rolld out this new requirement for apps inside and outside of the google play store. If any developer disagrees with their new terms and fees, they will be blocked!

I'll share some of the info below:

Looks like they're trying to nuke the remaining privacy and freedoms we have left on the internet.

What to do?

-Get your developer friends to not comply to their new guides

- Sign the open letter on the site and take action by checking out thwir full resources list on their website as well!

To summarize, this is all daunting especially when you feel all alone with unfair and inhumane regulations comming out faster than improvements ut we got this working together!

Share the link with your friends,family and anyone who will listen!