From: Wade T. Smith (wade.t.smith@verizon.net)
Date: Sat 24 May 2003 - 02:16:06 GMT
On Friday, May 23, 2003, at 08:50 PM, Reed wrote:
> At best you could say it favors certain kinds of
> expression as geographical conformations favor certain paths for a
> river.
I think that is more than best, I think that is enough.
> "No, indeed, it does not. But the people who put it there did. And the
> fact
> it is there will make you use it, if it works properly."
>
> Using your examples of Tinglit artifacts and Cargo Cults would refute
> that
> statement.
No, I do not refute myself. The Tlingit artifact did not work properly,
and the cargo cults could not operate their totems properly. The venue
for proper operation is not present in either case, and in the absence
of the venue, cultural evolution is not possible.
> But there is no such thing as a 'fact' that a
> physical object must serve a specific purpose.
I totally agree. The only fact about a physical object is its
physicality. But the only meaning attached to it is from culture, which
gives it a purpose, and much of culture is the explanation of these
purposes, so that there will be followers.
> "I suspect you'll still have a door, though."
What I meant was- I suspect there will still be a door (a means of
ingress and egress) in your house that you will use and call a 'door'
even though a very similar slab of wood is now a table in your living
room.
> Without your mind it is just a slab of wood.
Without the cultural venue of the house and the carpentry (after all,
Intuits do not use doors), it is just a slab of wood. No-one can keep a
door in their mind and let another know there is a means of ingress and
egress to a house using it. The thing that makes it a door is not
simply the fact that someone thinks such a thing as a door exists, but
that the venue of the house has been conformed to the culture that
calls this egress a door. Putting a slab of wood on hinges and
attaching it to a wall and calling this means of ingress and egress a
'door' is a cultural command. That someone follows this command is
selection. That someone observes and uses the door is replication. That
someone puts a knob on it is a mutation of the venue which will also be
observed and perchance selected and, perchance, replicated.
> I've been pointing out that the only meaningful
> parts of the venue...the parts that have agency or can be thought of as
> participating in cultural evolution...are in the brain.
As all these thoughts of the door are, as you say, pre-cursors of the
performance and the selection and the mutation, (not to mention the
carpentry), which are all necessary and sufficient for evolution,
saying that just this _thought_ is all that is required for this
evolution is, well, not even wrong. The brain still has to put them
somewhere.
- Wade
===============================================================
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 archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat 24 May 2003 - 02:21:43 GMT