SEMINAR
     
                          Understanding Dogs and Dognition:
                             A New Foundation for Design
     
                                Garrison W. Cottrell
                              Department of Dog Science
                Condominium Community College of Southern California
     
     
               There is a  crisis  in  Dog-Human  relations,  as  has  been
          evidenced  by  recent  attempts to make dogs more "user-friendly"
          (see Programming the User-Friendly Dog, Cottrell 1985a).   A  new
          approach has appeared (Whineandpoop and Flossy, 1986) that claims
          that previous attempts at Dog-Human Interfaces have floundered on
          a  basic  misunderstanding of the Dog.  The problem has been that
          we have approached the Dog as if he  was  one  of  us  -  and  he
          certainly   is   not.   Their  perusal  of  the  philosophies  of
          Holedigger  and  Mateyourauntie   has   led   them   to   a   new
          understanding: A West Coast Understanding.  There is no Objective
          Reality[1] that we  form  internal  representations  of,  rather,
          organisms  are  structurally coupled[2] to their environment, the
          so-called  "seamless  web"  theory  of   cognition.    Thus   the
          inside/outside dichotomy that has plagued AI researchers and dogs
          for years is a false one[3].  This has led them to  a  whole  new
          way of understanding how dogs should be programmed.
     
               In the past we have assumed some internal representation  in
          the  dog's  head  (see  Modelling the Intentional Behavior of the
          Dog, Cottrell 1984b).  In this new view, the reason dogs  are  so
          dense    is    not   that   they   have   impoverished   internal
          representations,   but   that   they    don't    have    internal
          representations.  Instead, the dog is structurally coupled to the
          world - he moves about embedded in the ooze of  the  environment,
          and  naturally,  it slows him down.  Not only that, but it is the
          wrong  environment  -  the  human  one,  leading   to   continual
          breakdown[4].  Thus our problem is in forming a consensual domain
          with another species.  We have to place ourselves in their domain
          to hear them - this is termed "listening in the backyard".
     
               We feel that there is much to be gained from combining their
          view  with  the  connectionist  approach[5].   The   problem   is
          combining   the   intensional   programming   of  evolution  with
          extensional programming by the owner.  Connectionist theories  of
          learning  combined  with  considerations  of  "listening  in  the
          backyard" suggest that if we simply present  the  dog  with  many
          examples   of   the  desired  input-output  behavior  within  the
          backyard, we will get the desired result.
     
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             [1]Actually, Californians have known this for years.
             [2]Note that this is to be distinguished from  the  structural
          coupling that produces new dogs from old ones.
             [3]Dogs have often followed Mateyourauntie in  this,  ignoring
          the inside/outside dichotomy.  These considerations may eliminate
          the basis for the continence-performance  distinction  (Hutchins,
          1986).
             [4]The  field  of Dog-Machine Interfaces attempts to deal with
          such problems as the poor design of the doorknob - a lever  would
          help  reduce  the  inside/outside  barrier. Others feel that this
          research is misdirected; the doorknob is designed that  way  pre-
          cisely  because  it acts as a species filter, keeping dogs out of
          restaurants and movie theatres.
             [5]Their work also suggests applying the theory of speech acts
          to  the  command  interface. Thus, we can classify much more than
          simple Directives.  For example, "You've had it now,  Jellybean!"
          is  a commissive - the speaker is committed to a future course of
          action.  The dog will usually respond with an attempt to withdraw
          from  the  dialogue,  but  the  speaker  rejects  his withdrawal.
          "You're in the doghouse, Bean" is a  declarative  -  the  speaker
          brings  about  a correspondence between the propositional content
          of this and reality simply by uttering it.