RE: Cons and Facades - Welcome to My Nightmare Part 2.Bb

From: Vincent Campbell (v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk)
Date: Thu Jul 06 2000 - 10:39:11 BST

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    From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk>
    To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
    Subject: RE: Cons and Facades - Welcome to My Nightmare Part 2.Bb
    Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2000 10:39:11 +0100 
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    Thanks for this.

    You've sprung me on Wittgenstein here, as this is a general sense of what I
    thought one of Wittgenstein's views was, and not something I can cite page
    refs for. The bit I'm thinking of is the notion that a 'cat' is not a 'cat'
    because the word contains some essence of the object it is describing, but
    only because 'cat' means 'not a dog', 'not a cow' etc. etc. I don't know if
    that comes in the Tractatus or Philosophical Investigations, or whether it
    was how a lecturer explained it to me once!

    Vincent

    [P.S. how was the genome news media coverage in Oz?]

    > ----------
    > From: John Wilkins
    > Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    > Sent: Thursday, July 6, 2000 1:56 am
    > To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    > Subject: RE: Cons and Facades - Welcome to My Nightmare Part 2.Bb
    >
    > On Wed, 5 Jul 2000 12:55:27 +0100 v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk (Vincent
    > Campbell) wrote:
    >
    > >I won't pretend to have understood most of your recent postings, but
    > >here
    > >goes with a few comments.
    > >
    > >First, there's a lot of Jung in what you say, but isn't Jung about as
    > >credible as Freud when it comes to social analysis? After all his
    > >notion of
    > >archetypes stems from his belief in a collective unconscious- what's
    > >your
    > >position on that?
    >
    > Just to interpose, and without any references I can cite, but I think
    > Jung's account of the collective unconsciousness owes something to the
    > neo-Lamarckian and recapitulatory view of evolution; that we
    > biologically inherit trace records of the past phylogenetic experience
    > of our species. A similar notion underpinned Piaget's account of child
    > development. I'm sure there is or will have been a scholarly treatise in
    > this influence of non-Darwinian evolutionary theory on psychology.
    > Anyone with a good ref will be my friend :-)
    > >
    > >Second, the A/~A distinction sound remarkably like Wittgenstein's
    > >approach
    > >to logic and the formulation of knowledge, the distinction he makes is
    > >P/~P.
    > >Where do you stand on Wittgenstein's notion that meaning of words rest
    > >only
    > >in negation?
    >
    > Where does he say this? In the Tractatus or in his later philosophy (eg,
    > Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics)? In the Investigations, he
    > treats meaning as the following of a rule, more or less.
    >
    > <snip rest, to say>
    > I find Chris Lofting's account of the difference between Lamarckian
    > views of evolution and Darwinian views totally opaque. The two
    > theoretical views are not a matter of semantic or dichotomous
    > definition; they are two quite different models of how biology occurs,
    > and they are not in the sort of opposition that textbooks often suggest.
    > It is possible to be a Lamarckian Darwinian, if the relevant definitions
    > are clear enough (for example, Darwin accepted both the inheritance of
    > acquired characters and the effects of use and disuse on the propensity
    > of a trait to be inherited).
    >
    > --
    >
    > John Wilkins, Head, Graphic Production
    > The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
    > Melbourne, Australia
    > <mailto:wilkins@WEHI.EDU.AU>
    > <http://www.users.bigpond.com/thewilkins/darwiniana.html>
    > Homo homini aut deus aut lupus - Erasmus of Rotterdam
    >
    >
    > ===============================================================
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    > see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
    >

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    This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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