Re: reading a book

From: Scott Chase (osteopilus@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue 26 Apr 2005 - 23:02:01 GMT

  • Next message: Keith Henson: "Lethal memes, was reading a book"

    --- Kate Distin <memes@distin.co.uk> wrote:

    > Chris Taylor wrote:
    >
    > > Okay so this is linked to my vague point about
    > imagination: Is it simply
    > > the case that this ability to recontextualise a
    > pattern, and to exploit
    > > serendipitous accidents (either in the world, or
    > internally) is much
    > > more advanced in us, but no different in kind; or
    > is there more?
    > >
    > > Is it the ability to deconstruct and recombine
    > disparate parts that is
    > > the key (fish genes in tomato iyswim), or can
    > 'lower' forms do that too,
    > > but again to a less advanced (=speedy?) degree?
    > >
    > > Maybe we can think of 'living' ~memes as
    > 'beginning' in a similar way to
    > > the kinds of piggybacking genetic elements that
    > exploit the copying
    > > machinery of the nucleus (something that is still
    > really poorly
    > > understood actually, as we can't really get stuck
    > in until we know how
    > > genomes work). For instance a simple one Keith
    > touched on is bird song
    > > -- for some passerines, the more songs you know,
    > the better
    > > (reproductively speaking). This is I'd assume an
    > indicator that (1) your
    > > brain works better than okay, which is a good
    > telltale for genetic
    > > fitness and (2) you are a cluey lil' bugger that
    > has lived long enough
    > > to pick up lots of tunes (and other behaviours?).
    > But what of the songs
    > > themselves? They are alive by a
    > Shannon/Bianchi+Hamann-style definition...
    > >
    > > Cheers, Chris.
    > >
    > >
    >
    > I have two separate (and slightly conflicting)
    > intuitions about this.
    > The first is that the apparent continuum between
    > human and non-human
    > culture implies to me that the specifically human
    > abilities are more
    > advanced rather than very different in kind.
    >
    > But on the other hand there *does* appear to me to
    > be a difference in
    > kind: the metarepresentational instinct is not
    > apparent in any other
    > species. I've suggested that it emerged on the back
    > of the language
    > instinct - although it ironically freed us from
    > being tied only to
    > natural languages, enabling us also to construct
    > alternative
    > representational systems (of written notation,
    > etc.).
    >
    I think you've got something there with your metarepresentation concept. That was one part of your book I liked a lot.

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