Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id CAA20186 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 29 Nov 2001 02:00:20 GMT Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" From: "Philip A.E. Jonkers" <phae@uclink.berkeley.edu> Organization: UC Berkeley To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Debunking pseudoscience: Why horoscopes really work Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 16:59:54 -0800 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.2] References: <001001c16c62$3552d3e0$3524f4d8@teddace> <0111211504020D.01049@storm.berkeley.edu> <004501c176f6$706febe0$8788b2d1@teddace> In-Reply-To: <004501c176f6$706febe0$8788b2d1@teddace> Message-Id: <01112816595402.01083@storm.berkeley.edu> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Philip:
> > If you are conscious of some event you can express it in words right?
Ted:
> What is this "you" that's conscious of events and can express it in words?
> If there really is a "you" in there somehow, then why assume the human
> "you" came from memes as opposed to the animal "you" that preceded you
> evolutionarily?
This *you* consists of the brain-machinery inside my head interacting with
the world through sensory perception together with the execution of
meme-programs from my (self-)meme database.
Ted:
> I think what it shows is that the feral child tells us nothing about human
> nature. The child raised by wolves is a wolf in the body of a human. Even
> when removed from its "family" and raised as a human, it remains an animal.
> What makes this research so significant is that it shows exactly the nature
> of the beast we evolved from. It helps us imagine the organism that lived
> two million years ago and looked remarkably like us but was absolutely,
> positively *not* us.
The feral child phenomenon tells us that if we are raised isolated from
our cultural environment we do not obtain our typical human character.
That is, unlike the roots for developing a human character humanity itself
is not purely innate, it is something that needs to be nurtured and
developed.
Philip.
===============================================================
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 : Thu Nov 29 2001 - 02:10:25 GMT