Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA25639 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 25 Jan 2002 15:33:11 GMT X-Originating-IP: [137.110.248.206] From: "Grant Callaghan" <grantc4@hotmail.com> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: necessity of mental memes Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 07:28:55 -0800 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: <LAW2-F14OB7vHatYSgG0000beff@hotmail.com> X-OriginalArrivalTime: 25 Jan 2002 15:28:56.0005 (UTC) FILETIME=[008DEF50:01C1A5B5] Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> >
>I am simply asserting that we are causative agents, and that between the
>Scylla of genetics and the Charybdis of environment are multiple choices we
>can make. Infants are, in a way, little machines that are programmed to
>engage the world and thus develop enough complexity to transcend their
>programming. Lower animals are circumscribed by instinctual responses to
>environmental stimuli; that is, they lack individuality. We possess a
>degree of individual freedom in our responses, and in our selections of
>stimuli.And you did not address at all my contentions that in a
>deterministic universe, there would have been no reason for a causally
>inefficacious self-conscious awareness to evolve, or that there could be no
>such thing as truth or falsity or any other value, or that meaning could
>not exist, or that there could be no claims of delusion as to a true nature
>of things, for delusion requires a deludee who can apprehend the meaning
>difference between delusion and reality, and t!
>ruth vs. falsity, vs. meaninglessness. The white dog truth is that the
>free assumption of the lack of free will embroils the asserter in such a
>miasmically self-contradictory quagmire that circus contortionists would
>flock to admire if the conceptual knots entailed were instead physical
>ones.
> >
> >Keith Henson
> >
I think you just demonstrated your point. Charybdis and Scylla? Are you
assuming the people you're talking to have all read or heard that story and
will understand how it applies? And "the white dog of truth?" Now there's
a metaphor I can sink my teeth into. ;-)>
Grant
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