Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id VAA15761 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 8 Jun 2001 21:17:41 +0100 From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2001 15:20:12 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: USA Today - interview with Gugatkin and de Waal on animal culture Message-ID: <3B20ED2C.14080.A0A292@localhost> In-reply-to: <F163c1o8yfogkJXrRjb0001128b@hotmail.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 8 Jun 2001, at 15:53, Scott Chase wrote:
>
>
>
>
> >From: <joedees@bellsouth.net>
> >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> >To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> >Subject: Re: USA Today - interview with Gugatkin and de Waal on
> >animal culture Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2001 12:49:15 -0500
> >
> >On 8 Jun 2001, at 9:12, Scott Chase wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > >From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu>
> > > >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> > > >To: "Memetics Discussion List" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
> > > >Subject: Re: USA Today - interview with Gugatkin and de Waal on
> > > >animal culture Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 21:18:29 -0400
> > > >
> > > >Hi Ray Recchia -
> > > >
> > > > >His and de Waal's accounts may just be persuasive enough to
> > > > >convince humans it's finally time to open the door and allow
> > > > >animals into the culture club.
> > > >
> > > >Or, perhaps, to remove "culture" from the behavior club....
> > > >
> > > >
> > > Why? What would be wrong with using the word "culture" if defined
> > > in terms of "nongenetic behavioral transmission" (see de Waal.
> > > 2001. The Ape and the Sushi Master. Basic Books. New York, p.
> > > 237). The big problem would not be in using the word "culture",
> > > but employing this term in a way that anthropocentrically places
> > > humans within a charmed circle, removed from the "lowly" animals.
> > >
> > > One problem I could see would be the casting of cultural capacity
> > > in terms of homology versus analogy. If other apes such as our
> > > chimp cousins can exhibit traces of culture it would't be much of
> > > a leap to consider something homologous underlying this, but if we
> > > attribute fish, insects or other groups phylogenetically far
> > > removed from us with culture, then we might consider if we are
> > > talking about the same phenomenon or something superficially
> > > similar that has arisen via convergence.
> > >
> > > If a sort of non-genic transmission of behavior that could have
> > > been called culture existed in the common ancestor we shared with
> > > these other groups, then homology might enter the picture. Did the
> > > stem group of the metazoans have culture? It might be less
> > > contentious to think about the stem of the human and non-human
> > > apes exhibiting something cultural. Crude tool usage by chimps
> > > makes one wonder how unique the "third chimp" (sensu Diamond)
> > > really is.
> > >
> > > With no background in anthropology or primatology, I'm just
> > > babbling forth, chewing my cud so to speak.
> > >
> >Specifically, chimps do not use tools, but manually modify
> >implements for present tasks; manually stripping branches to feed on
> >termites falls within this category. Technically (that is,
> >anthropologically) speaking, a tool is an object used to modify
> >another object (such as the rock used to knap a handaxe); no nonhuman
> >primates are known to use tools in the wild. Neither do they retain
> >implements (it was opined that they left implements at a use site and
> >returned to use them again, but this is wishful hermeneutics; the
> >Occam explanation is that they discard them onsite when they are
> >finished with them and use what is available when they return), nor
> >do they assemble toolkits composed of differing and task-specific
> >shapes. While paying attention to the similarities between Homo and
> >simians, it is important not to overlook the differences. Reference:
> > INVERSTIGATIONS INTO THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE AND CONSCIOUSNESS, by
> >Tran Duc Thao, D. Reidel 1984.
> >
> Differences in kind or degree? Is there a danger of excluding chimp
> implement usage by definition from being tool usage just as culture
> can be excluded in the chimp realm via the same anthropocentrically
> biased views? What about the implements that de Waal discusses in _The
> Ape and the Sushi Master_ for palm nut cracking utilized by chimps?
>
Differences in degree, when great enough, spawn emergent
differences in kind.
>
> I don't know that chimps will ever be seen carrying tool boxes (akin
> to socket sets) around with them, but isn't a crude or rudimentary
> tool still a tool? What's the difference between an "implement" and
> "tool" anyhow?
>
An implement may be modified or unmodified, and is used upon
the environnment; a tool is used to modify an implement for such
use, and as such, is one level of abstraction further removed from
the environment than an implement is (this is why the use of rocks
to crack palm nuts is an implement use (and an unmodified one, at
that) rather than a tool use; if the chimps had used another rock to
fashion a surface on the cracking rock prior to its use on the nuts,
the fashioning rock (not the cracking one) would be a tool.
>
> _________________________________________________________________ Get
> your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
>
>
> ===============================================================
> 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 : Fri Jun 08 2001 - 21:21:28 BST