Re: Aunger vs. Pinker on Galton

From: Bill Spight (bspight@pacbell.net)
Date: Thu 21 Apr 2005 - 20:42:48 GMT

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    Dear Scott,

    > For Calvin's work Aunger says "my schematic approach
    > to replication shares little with Calvin's
    > sophisticated neuroscientfic approach".
    >

    I noticed Calvin in Aunger's bibliography, but missed any reference to him in the book. Thanks. :-)

    > BTW, as you might have read, I've been reading grandpa
    > Hebb's work on the cell assembly. Doesn't Calvin
    > fashion himself after Hebb in a way?

    Hebb's work still stands up. It's classic.

    > Aunger should
    > address stuff like this before he dismisses Lashley's
    > work with the magical wave of a hand and goes on to
    > talk about the distributed nature of memory.

    Linguist Sidney Lamb makes a good point, I think, about the lack of a need for a homunculus as far as behavior is concerned. Distributed knowledge is quite sufficient. Things are trickier about the apparent unity of consciousness. But logically a homunculus is problematic. Like the gnats in the poem, how do you prevent an infinite regress? It's turtles all the way down, to shift metaphors. ;-)

    Best,

    Bill

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