Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id RAA11629 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 23 Nov 2000 17:56:07 GMT Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2000 09:52:44 -0800 Message-Id: <200011231752.JAA18132@mail7.bigmailbox.com> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary X-Mailer: MIME-tools 4.104 (Entity 4.116) X-Originating-Ip: [209.240.221.97] From: "Scott Chase" <hemidactylus@my-deja.com> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: RE: Fwd: Thinking Like a Chimp Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk('binary' encoding is not supported, stored as-is)
>From: "Chris Lofting" <ddiamond@ozemail.com.au>
>To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
>Subject: RE: Fwd: Thinking Like a Chimp
>Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2000 21:18:28 +1100
>Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
>> Of Joe E. Dees
>> Sent: Thursday, 23 November 2000 2:14
>> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>> Subject: Re: Fwd: Thinking Like a Chimp
>>
>>
>> Date sent: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 09:42:10 -0600
>> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>> From: Mark Mills <mmills@htcomp.net>
>> Subject: Re: Fwd: Thinking Like a Chimp
>> Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>>
>> > Wade,
>> >
>> > Interesting stuff.
>> >
>> > At 09:26 AM 11/16/00 -0500, you wrote:
>> >
>> > >After
>> > >all, he concludes, "In every critical juncture, after the chimp has
>> > >learned something and we gave him the option to tell us, 'are
>> you really
>> > >reasoning about seeing or are you using some surface behavior cue?', at
>> > >every case, they have consistently said, 'What are you talking
>> about? We
>> > >are using what is there. We're using what is in the world.'"
>> >
>> > I wonder what would happen if you asked a 3 year old human the same
>> > question. Considering conversations with my 3 year old
>> grandson, I think
>> > he would tell me the same thing. I doubt I could distinguish
>> 'reasoning
>> > about seeing' for him.
>> >
>> > Perhaps human and chimp neurology is the same, but the longer human
>> > development period extends abilities. Cast in memetic terms,
>> perhaps the
>> > genetic difference (between chimp and human neural systems) is only a
>> > change in the length of development. The additional cognitive
>> abilities
>> > are additional neural memes stuffed into the brain.
>> >
>> An increase in quantity of nodes and interconnections, and thus
>> complexity, leads to the emergence of new qualities and
>> capacities, such as explicit self- and other-reference and
>> spatiotemporal self- and other-situation (past(then)-present(now)-
>> future, here-there) and self- and other-consciousness, when
>> recursion happens (breaching the Godelian threshhold), as I've
>> maintained all along.
>
>yes Joe ... but then *you* also maintain the concepts of fundamental
>trichotomies refusing to look at anything that threatens your concepts and
>so you are 'stuck' :-)
>
>BTW since you have not responded to previous emails (both off memetics and
>on) I suppose I will have to point you in the 'right' direction: the
>*fourth* concept that enables the encapsulation of the idea of a wave is
>SPEED, something you leave out so as to retain your trichotomy... As usual
>all those who favour trichotomies fail to differentiate relational
>processes, they lump them all together, Freud did, Popper did, and Peirce
>did. An education based on these sorts of works prior to analysis of the
>neurology clouds your thinking...
>
>>From out of the MANY come MANY modes of interpretation and this includes
>'false' ones where you span a boundary and so confuse levels of analysis.
>The core processing is in the form of bifurcations...self/other as well as
>self/others... there are subtle distinctions here that you seem to miss..
>
>As to thinking like chimps note carefully that the thinking processes of
>autistics seem to reflect the thinking processes of chicks, IOW there is
>only one object and MANY things happen to it. There is a STRONG sense of
>SELF but NOT of other minds. To develop a theory of mind requires the one to
>become at least two... this seems to be what splits us from all other
>lifeforms where many relationships of ONE are extended to many relationships
>of MANY...
>
>Lets look at this from an information theory angle:
>
>If information is deemed as being a decrease in uncertainty and uncertainty
>is where all possible symbols have an equal chance of expression then
>uncertainty reflects what could be and so falls into the realm of the
>general; a particular expression acts to 'collapse' the uncertainty into
>certainty -- collapsing the wave function is part of our thinking. This
>process reflects a 1:many methodology where uncertainty is the in realm of
>the MANY.
>
>For primitive lifeforms the ONE is 'me' and the MANY are aspects of 'me' and
>that includes 'out there' (territory behaviours reflect this 'ownership' and
>also include the development of the concept of NOT me).
>
>Development causes 'me' to bifurcate into MANY and these can be
>externalised, projected onto others as well as 'me' adopting characteristics
>of others...
>
>All of this points to the 'ONE' being 'true', being 'certain', so the 'MANY'
>is biased to uncertainty and so includes negation.
>
>The general left/right brain distinctions favour this bifurcation and the
>these distinctions identify sets of general behaviours where the feedback
>within the MANY is applied to itself and out pops dichotomies, trichotomies
>etc and this includes exagerations etc, 'lies' if you like, that act to try
>and emphasis, + or -, a particular aspect or set of aspects of the MANY that
>we can collapse into a ONE. (I think you can see the emergence from this of
>the concept of Metonymy and Metaphor as well as analogy etc)
>
>The dichotomies, trichotomies etc etc reflect harmonics analysis but
>fundamental to this is the emergence of the distinctions of objects and
>relationships (the ONE and the MANY), even talking waves forces the
>identification of 'a wave' and so an object. In its purest form the SUM of
>MANY = ONE but the MANY is always IMPLICIT when compared to the EXPLICIT
>ONE.
>
>The metonomy angle comes in when object is differentiated into a whole (a
>'stand alone' object) and parts (an object in a relationship to another,
>'bigger' object) and parts acts to communicate the whole, here we see the
>beginnings of sameness/difference entanglements to aid in communications (in
>linguistic disorders it is metonomy that is linked to similarity disorders
>and metaphor to contiguity disorders).
>
>The establishment of 'clarity' is a very 'ONE' perspective and despite all
>of the complexity that happens in the development of a human so this
>perspective still shines through reflecting a rigid 1:many development at
>all levels of development and analysis.
>
>This will 'naturally' lead to confusions in levels of understanding. :-)
>
>
Are you perhaps familiar with Jung's Seven Sermons to the Dead (as found in _MDR_)? All his talk of pleuroma and creatura confused me at about the same level as your discussion above (or is it below?) ;-)
Scott
P.S.- My email feed ain't so good anymore since deja made a switch, so I might jump to hotmail or something else if they're any better.
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