Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id FAA29125 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 3 Dec 2001 05:34:10 GMT Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2001 21:29:15 -0800 Message-Id: <200112030529.fB35TFI19575@mail1.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: [216.76.248.168] From: "Joe Dees" <joedees@addall.com> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: circular logic Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk('binary' encoding is not supported, stored as-is)
> "Kenneth Van Oost" <Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be> <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Re: circular logicDate: Sun, 2 Dec 2001 13:29:29 +0100
>Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Wade T. Smith <wade_smith@harvard.edu>
>
>
>> To make some remark upon your 'should've' comments- lamarckianism (or
>> neo-lamarckianism, don't matter much) marches from the 'need'
>> perspective- as if it isn't so much an accidental process, this
>> evolution, but somehow forced by some collective will- the cold starting
>> to come in requiring the need for warmer woolens, and the tribe somehow
>> selecting (the females selecting to mate, perhaps, with hairier, furrier
>> males) for thicker coats. Or something.... At any rate, there is somehow
>> a goal in lamarckianism, and, so far, nothing about evolution admits of
>> goals.
>> If all neo-lamarckianism is is the application of design criteria to
>> future generations, we will be there soon enough with life, and we were
>> always there with artefacts.
>
>Hi Wade,
>
>Well, well,... friend,
>
>Just to comment yours,
>
>The goal in Lamarckism, the need for warmer woolens, the need for longer
>necks, is IMO a complete misunderstanding.
>We ought to be alive, we must survive as an organism in order to act as the
>proper working- hosts to allow memes to propagate.
>The need for them to survive is far more greater than their desire to do so.
>Desire is ' included ' in need but has not such a strong ' meaning' to it as
>need as such does.
>
>The need is not expressed into what is found in Lamarckism ( use- disuse),
>like the giraffe- example, but you have to concentrate yourself upon
>Lamarckism as a more neurobiological substrate, not as more as a bodily
>level.
>Lamarckism IMO, has nothing to do with bodily supposed changes, not in
>the short term anyway.
>Lamarckian processes are the start for a possible bodily change, not having
>longer arms/ hairier man or longer necks, but to have changed behavior_
>another way to move/ (re)act, sit...
>
>The change is the way we express the behavior, not the behavior itself.
>The change is like you mention, the application of design on another level
>of complexity.
>Lamarckism has to do with the brain and which kind of connections are made
>there. The result of such processes are changed behaviors, changed appli-
>cations of design, changed ways we use artefacts or changed ways we design
>artefacts.
>
>And to conclude,
>The famous giraffe- example of Lamarck is also a misunderstanding,
>Devillers and Chaline, Théorie de l'évolution, Paris, 1989 write, in a kind
>of circular logic, if the ancestors of the giraffe did got indeed a shorter
>neck
>they had to be bigger in general than the giraffes of today. They too did
>reach (for) the leaves at the top of the tree.
>
>What in a sense dismisses any explanation as for Darwin as for Lamarck.
>The thing is, according to Devillers and Chaline, that not only the neck,
>but
>also the frontlegs of the animals were getting longer. The result of both
>processes, forced upon them by the environment, is that the giraffe, without
>standing up on its backlegs can now reach a hight of six meters ( 20 feet).
>All is due to habits. And the habit, more likely the need, of reaching for
>the
>highest leaves resulted in changes.
>
Nope. Shorter giraffes starved to death, taller ones (however 'taller' was manifested, by neck or legs or both) survived to reproduce, giving us a new spectrum of heights in succeeding generations; the shorter ones of these generations starved to death, too, and the median giraffe height rose as a consequence of this blind purposeless natural environmental selection of certain mutations over others, or of one end of that species' body-configuration spectrum over the other, in continuous iteration.
>
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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
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