Re: Standard definition

From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Thu 31 Oct 2002 - 03:57:55 GMT

  • Next message: Wade T.Smith: "Re: virus: Psychological Profile of Hall"

    >
    > On Wednesday, October 30, 2002, at 05:28 , joedees@bellsouth.net
    > wrote:
    >
    > > Now,
    > > the capacity for language in general may be hard-wired in humans,
    > > but the capacity for English, Chinese, Tagalog or Urdu is not,
    > > because these are created, not inherited, specificities.
    >
    > Like the spider's web is different when stretched from tree branches
    > to rocks, or from fence posts to grasses, the capacity for English, or
    > Chinese, are specifics of the environment and humans' responses to it.
    >
    Uh-uh. In the first case, we have physical differences; in the second, we have cultural, that is, cognitive ones - exactly the kind of thing your behavior-only attempt at memetics cannot admit without self- destructing.
    >
    > > I'll bet you thought of that answer before you typed it, and that
    > > fact in and of itself negates your stance.
    >
    > Interestingly enough, I do not completely think of things before I
    > write them (and I suspect no-one does), but, am constantly
    > re-arranging and conditioning my words as I type, making efforts to
    > perform at each finger movement. Writing is a performance like any
    > other, and things happen that I have no control over, or that demand
    > effort and change in each instant. No, my stance is not negated by any
    > experiential examination of performance or cognition that I have ever
    > encountered, rather it is amplified by my own experience of myself and
    > by my investigations of nature and what knowledge I have of the
    > investigations of others. I would not be championing it with such
    > gusto if I, myself, were not heuristically involved with it.
    >
    But to obviate my point, you would have to be thinking of nothing, both before and during your automatic-writing performance.
    >
    > > Specific cultures are not hard-wired human nature
    >
    > The ability for culture _is_ hard-wired human nature, and _specific_
    > cultures are products of environment. Just like spider webs, and
    > language, and music, and, yes, childhood songs.
    >
    It doesn't matter what branches you surround a trap-door spider with; he will not weave a web. Likewise, a society of feral children wil create a novel (not hard-wired) language, regardless of their environment.
    >
    > > And BTW,
    > > even hard-wired behaviors are hard-wired in those brains you
    > > insist upon avoiding;
    >
    > Again, and again, and again, I _am not_ ignoring _anything_ in or
    > about the brain.
    >
    And what about the storage of meme-ory?
    >
    > - Wade
    >
    >
    >
    > ===============================================================
    > 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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