Re: phenotypic plasticity and ontogeny

From: Mark Mills (mmills@htcomp.net)
Date: Sun Jan 21 2001 - 19:00:27 GMT

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Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 13:00:27 -0600
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: Mark Mills <mmills@htcomp.net>
Subject: Re: phenotypic plasticity and ontogeny
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    Scott,

    At 04:19 AM 1/21/01 -0500, you wrote:
    >Perhaps self-fertilization is a possibility. Could I impregnate myself
    >with an ideational grain of pollen of my own creation and perhaps even
    >serve as my own midwife? I think I'm actually doing that right now, but
    >the pollen I'm spreading on my own stigmae is possibly pollinating the
    >flowers of many others as a byproduct. Shall I now reap what I sow?
    >Hopefully it's a good harvest, considering the intellectual drought and all.

    Consider the implications of Edelman's 'neuronal group selection' with
    respect the notion of 'self.' If our neural system is composed of
    competing neuronal groups, what is the 'self'? Would it be the current
    'top dog' neuronal group? An interference pattern? A harmonic?

    I certainly 'experience' myself as a continuous entity, a unitary 'self,'
    but perhaps science is suggesting a different model.

    If our mind is the product of neuronal group selection, then the sort of
    memetic stimulus-convolution I described earlier is possible within a
    single neural system, among independent, competing neuronal groups.

    Mark

    http://www.htcomp.net/markmills

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