Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id GAA20199 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 27 Nov 2000 06:19:16 GMT Message-Id: <200011270616.BAA20941@mail0.lig.bellsouth.net> From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 00:21:19 -0600 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: RE: Fwd: Thinking Like a Chimp In-reply-to: <LPBBICPHCJJBPJGHGMCIIEBGCLAA.ddiamond@ozemail.com.au> References: <200011230310.WAA03742@mail4.lig.bellsouth.net> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01b) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: "Chris Lofting" <ddiamond@ozemail.com.au>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: Fwd: Thinking Like a Chimp
Date sent: Thu, 23 Nov 2000 21:18:28 +1100
Send 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' :-)
>
Yes, Chris,...but then "you" also maintain the concepts of
fundamental dichotomies, either refusing to look at anything that
threatens your concepts, or erroneously attempting to reduce
systems which are not fundamentally dichotomous into such
dichotomies in a square-peg-round-hole fashion, and so you are
'stuck'. I, OTOH, recognize that for some systems, dichotomies
are fundametal, for some, trichotomies are fundamental, and for
some, other intergral, and perhaps even nonintegral (or fractal)
bases are fundamental. It is "you" who are the dogmatic
and simplistic overreductionist.
>
> 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...
>
How many speeds does light have, exactly?
>
> >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..
>
And from the one comes the two, and only the two, and from the
two, not the three, five or seven, comes the many, and thus spake
the 'lofty" one, but not very verily (grin).
>
> As to thinking like chimps note carefully that the thinking processes of
> autistics seem to reflect the thinking processes of chicks
>
Is this sexist, or merely fowl (heehee)?
>
..., 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...
>
It does mean realizing that oneself inhabits one of many possible
perspectives, and that differential object and relationship info. is
available to each - otherwise things like hiding and lying would not
work. This is an important threshhold in the ontogeny of individual
conscious self-awareness; the genesis of self-other distinction
simultaneously creates the epistemological poles of self and other
(Piaget studies such in genetic epistemology) (yes, Chris, this IS a
dichotomous relation, but the ALL aren't). Two informative studies
in this field are serial no. 214, vol. 51, no. 1 and serial no. 214, vol.
51, no. 3 in MONOGRAPHS OF THE SOCIETY FOR RESEARCH
IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT.
The first, DEVELOPMENT OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE
APPEARANCE-REALITY DISTINCTION by Flavell, Green & Flavell,
is abstracted as follows:
Seven studies of the acquisition of knowledge about the
appearance=reality distinction suggest the following course of
development. Many 3-year olds seem to possess little or no
understanding of the distinction. They fail the simplest Appearance-
Reality (AR) tasks and are unresponsive to efforts to teach them
the distinction. Skill in solving simple AR tasks is highly correlated
with skill in solving simple Perspective-taking (PT) tasks; this
suggests the hypothesis that the ability to represent the selfsame
stimulus in two different, seemingly incompatible ways may
underlie both skills. Children of 6-7 years have acquired both skills
but nevertheless find it very difficult to reflect on and talk about
such appearance-reality concepts as "looks like," "really and
truly<' and "looks different from the way it really and truly is." In
contrast, children of 11-12 years, and to an even greater degree
college students, possess a substantial body of rich, readily
accessible, and explicit knowledge in this area. [Joe comment -
this parallels the Piagetian distinction between concrete and formal
operations - down to the chronological onset]
The second, INFANT SEARCH AND OBJECT-PERMANENCE: A
META-ANALYSIS OF THE A-NOT-B ERROR by Wellman, Cross
& Bartsch, is a chronologically precursive study. Before the age of
8-10 months, children do not search for hidden objects; after this
age, they do search for them, but once an object is found in a
specific location (A), they will continue to search for it in that
location even if it is hidden in another location (B) in front of them.
This is known as the A-not-B, or perseverative, error. They will
generally not consistently search for a hidden object in differing
observed hiding places until the age of 15-24 months, the same
time they pass the mirror test of self-recognition, indicating that
object permanence and self-permanence correlatively manifest.
Only when both self and world are accorded permanence may the
child progress to considering the perceptual accessibility of a given
object from perspectives other than their own (AR distinction).
>
> 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.
>
There are differing levels of uncertainty, plottable statistically on a
fitness landscape. Differing alternatives are not equally likely, and
cannot be verisimilitudinously viewed as such; the 'many' are not of
equal possibility-value, and cannot be considered
monochromatically, any more than all native americans are of one
tribe, or one height, and there are differing "many"s for differing
circumstances, some easily quantifiable (such as possible tic-tac-
toe moves), some more difficult (but possible) to quantify (such as
possible chess moves in a position) and some unquantifiable (such
as what does one do next). It is reductionistic in the extreme to
refuse to acknowledge these distinctions by cramming them all
into a single 1:many cubbyhole.
>
> 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...
>
There are differing values to not-me, such as inanimate, animate
but unresponsive (running water, wind), animate and responsive,
but not Others, as in other selves (at least the lower animals), and
true Others, with whom one may converse and engage in true
symbolic communication.
>
> All of this points to the 'ONE' being 'true', being 'certain', so the 'MANY'
> is biased to uncertainty and so includes negation.
>
If I own three chickens, that is many, but when I see them all in
their pens, I know with certainty that I still possess them all.
>
> 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 idea of common characteristics of a class grounds abstract
vocabulary. The technical name for same is the type-token
distinction, where a particular tree is a token of the type "tree"; this
may be generalized to 'plant' or specified to 'oak' or 'pine'. The
word "Tree", being the primitive (central) classification, is learned
first, before more general or specific terms, just as "dog" and "cat"
are learned before 'animal', 'poodle', 'terrier', 'persian', 'siamese', 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. :-)
>
ncluding your own.
>
> Chris.
> ------------------
> Chris Lofting
> websites:
> http://www.eisa.net.au/~lofting
> http://www.ozemail.com.au/~ddiamond
>
>
>
>
> ===============================================================
> 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 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 2b29 : Mon Nov 27 2000 - 06:20:44 GMT