Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id SAA07629 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 28 Feb 2000 18:22:03 GMT Message-Id: <200002281820.NAA12052@mail4.lig.bellsouth.net> From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 12:24:33 -0600 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Monkeys stone herdsman in Kenya In-reply-to: <B0000273544@htcompmail.htcomp.net> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Monkeys stone herdsman in Kenya
Date sent: Sat, 26 Feb 00 09:21:16 -0000
From: "Mark M. Mills" <mmills@htcomp.net>
To: "Memetics List" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Joe,
>
> >>> Who would
> >>>assert, for instance, that a band of baboons throwing rocks at
> >>>another band of baboons trying to drink water at their watering
> >>>hole comprised culture?
> >>
> >> Why not?
> >>
> >Next you'll tell me that an otter swimming on its back with a rock
> >on its belly with which it cracks clams, or a seagull dropping
> >oysters on coastal rocks and then eating the meat exposed by the
> >breakage are culture.
>
> If someone wanted to spend time proving regional variations in otter clam
> cracking practices represent a body of imitative practices passed down
> from the otter herd (?) to younger memebers, I would probably laugh. I
> don't think it would be a wise investment of time, but there is nothing
> wrong with the hypothesis.
>
> I'm puzzled by your assurance that group rock throwing by non-human
> primates is the cultural equivalent of an otter cracking a clam on its
> belly. As Lloyd Robertson pointed out, the concept of 'normal behavior'
> comes into play and you seem to find no need for reviews of the norm.
>
From what I understand, throwing things is pretty common in
simians; what anthropocentrically grabbed everyone's attention was
that a human was killed as a result.
>
> I suspect your assurance reflects your conviction that self-awareness
> must be achieved before behaviors express culture.
>
I do not think that memetic evolution can occur without selection,
which can only occur in the memetic environment (which is a
cognitive one where candidates compete to be reMEMbered) by
means of conscious choice. We remember something because
we ATTEND to it, find it new or unusual or useful or elegant or in
some other way interesting, and it passes the filter between short-
term and long-term MEMory. There has to be a self- and other-
aware, differentially signifying and differentially intending WE for
this to happen; as the surrounding environment is the facilitator of
physical (genetic) selection, so the self- and other-conscious
awareness of the freely choosing agent is the facilitator of cognitive
(memetic) selection. Skinner is dead as a viable can't-look-in-the-
black-box nontheory as far as conscious agents - and memesis -
are concerned. Things do indeed happen between the input of
stimulus and the output of response; varying task behaviors do not
find their genesis and development in a mental vacuum but are
cognitively constructed in individual ways.
>
> Mark
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
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> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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