Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id QAA20209 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 16 May 2000 16:45:54 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D31CEB199@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Why are human brains bigger? Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 13:07:42 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Well yes, I can't really comment on brain size issues, but I think that this
line of argument in memetics misses the point of what memetics is about.
Yes, there are other big brained animals, and yes they tend to be social
animals, but do other social animals have cultures?
How do we distinguish culture from society? Well we have to ask questions
about what humans do that other social animals do not. To give a few
examples, we have rituals (I believe the oldest known is burying the dead),
we have art, we have religion, and arguably coming after all of these
historically, we have writing- and all of these are far more distinct
behaviours than the more problematic ideas of consiousness, or even language
(which this list has discussed at length).
Memetics asks questions, in one sense, about what happened next- what was
the impact of all these developments on human society? One impact, if you
like, was the emergence of culture, and whilst the fundamentals of human
culture may be products of natural selection, culture itself is not
necessarily, or even at all, transmitted through the genes, but is
transmitted predominantly through communication of various kinds. What we
want to ask questions about are, therefore, the processes that have led to
humans having culture, how cultures evolve, and what are the criteria
through which cultural artefacts are preserved or disappear?
I think this is a crucial distinction to make, because memetics is not a
theory of everything, but merely a theory of culture and cultural change.
At least that's the view I take on it, and I have no problem with seeing
other aspects of human behaviour as products of natural selection. If some
of you have a problem with seperating culture from other human behaviour,
and therefore memetics from evolutionary psychology or whatever, remember
that the jury is still out on group selection within natural selection, and
what is culture if not something that is conducted at the level of the
group?
Vincent
> ----------
> From: Chuck Palson
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Sunday, May 14, 2000 9:11 pm
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Why are human brains bigger?
>
> Blackmore in Meme Machine claims that the only reason she can think of
> why human brains are so big is because they accomodate so many memes.
> That may very well be true and not at all in contradiction to what other
> sciences have been thinking about for quite a while. After all, it is
> known that we have a huge lexicon - 80,000 words by the time the average
> "illiterate" kid graduates from an American high school! And then that
> same kid has to keep learning all kinds of things constantly through his
> life that are, believe it or not, _useful_ for making a living. The
> point is there is no reason to suppose that memes are like genes that
> have an independent life of their own as Blackmore claims.
>
> But the number of memes that have to be crammed into our heads goes
> beyond just simple knowledge of those sorts of objective things we need
> to know to make a living. There is a lot of stuff we have to know also
> just to live with other peoplel. The problem is that people tend to
> cheat - they want something for nothing. But in order to cheat and lie,
> they have to remember who they lied to, what lie works with each person
> they have to deal with, and what they have to cover up from other people
> to make sure they are credible to everyone. It's an enormous amount of
> social information and computational power just to keep it all straight.
>
> There is some interesting cross species information that tends to
> confirm this explanation for why the human brain is so large: In many
> kinds of animals, the largest brain and smartest behaving species are
> social -- like bees, parents, Dolphins, etc. social animals send and
> receive signals to coordinate attacks, and defense, gathering, in
> collective sexual access. They exchange favors, repay and enforce
> debts, punish cheers, enjoying coalitions. In other words, the social
> animals have societies just like we do also have larger brains.
>
>
> ===============================================================
> 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
>
===============================================================
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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