From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Tue 05 Nov 2002 - 01:59:40 GMT
> >You could just as easily have made the case with a wolf pack, but we
> >are still discussing an instinctive, not a chosen, series of actions.
> > Self- preservation trumps sex in the ram hard-wire hierarchy, and
> >the female doen't seem to have the choice of mating with the smaller
> >ram because she thinks he is cute. The pecking order is a lockstep
> >structure.
> > >
> Sounds to me like you're anthropromorphizing. Cute is a human way of
> looking at things. There's no reason to think it plays any part in
> the choices of other species. Every species has to make choices based
> on the way they live and the way their bodies are structured -- even
> humans. Like I said, if memes in your scheme require culture as we
> know it, humans are the only ones capable of having them. If all it
> requires is learning something from other members of the same species,
> almost every species can demonstrate it. If you say animals don't
> make decisions based on what they learn from other dogs or people,
> even my dog can refute your argument.
>
Actually, I consider those who cannot draw memetic distinctions
between humans (and to a small degree, the higher apes) and the
lower animals to be the anthropomorphizers. My point was that the
ewe's hardwiring does not grant her the option to choose to accept the
attentions of the losing ram. With human females, however, the suitor
who wins a fight about her is not necessarily the suitor she will choose;
she may choose the loser, or even neither of them, considering their
behavior to be unacceptable. And behavioral conditioning is not a
qualifier for memetic meaning grasp (or are you claiming that Skinner's
target-pecking pigeons are memetic signification sophisticates?).
>
> Grant
>
>
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> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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===============================================================
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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