Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 15:02:10 +0200
From: "Gatherer, D. (Derek)" <D.Gatherer@organon.nhe.akzonobel.nl>
Subject: RE: Inernal meme?
To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
regarding the cat vision experiment:
It is important to remember that none of the cat neurological events need be
cultural. It may be that, presented with a visual stimulus, a cat sees what
it has to see, because it is genetically programmed to do so. There may be
variations on this kind of genetic programming (eg. colour blindness in
humans etc), resulting in different neurological events and therefore
different visual impressions, but there is no reason to suppose that any of
this is culturally mediated (especially not in cats)
This research would only be relevant to memetics if it could be shown that
what the cat sees, and the underlying neurological events, are in some way
culturally transmitted, ie. does the cat learn to see things in
such-and-such a way from other cats? I think that is unlikely????....
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