Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id SAA04799 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 17 May 2000 18:52:36 +0100 From: Robin Faichney <robin@faichney.demon.co.uk> Organization: Reborn Technology To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Why are human brains bigger? Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 18:28:39 +0100 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.0.21] Content-Type: text/plain References: <39214903.8226F81A@mediaone.net> Message-Id: <00051718343201.00526@faichney> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On Tue, 16 May 2000, Chuck Palson wrote:
>
>There is a blurry line between society and culture (I was
>originally trained as an anthropologist) but the standard different is that
>society is a set of stable behaviors between individuals, and a culture is the
>perceptions that inform those behaviors.
Thus making culture entirely subjective. Whose standard is that?
>Do animals have cultures? From a generic point of view, yes; they, like us, need
>to have perceptions as part of behavior. But beyond that, we know that certain
>groups of primates have distinctive ways of doing the same thing. The ways vary
>by geography. Hauser (Harvard) points out that when birds learn their songs (not
>all do), there are different "dialects" of songs.
Now that's more like it. The only clear definition of culture I know is behaviour
passed between generations by imitation.
-- Robin Faichney===============================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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