[Wade]
> > Regardless of any social interaction or learning or anthropomorphic
> > interpretation of sounds, what even chimpanzees possess is not a culture.
> > Social behavior is a varied and complex set of actions. An artifact
> > defines a culture. No human species, even without a written language,
> > existed without artifact.
>
> That's /very/ interesting; I could have sworn humans pre-existed
> language. Unless they inherited it through theological or mystical
> means, I dare say that humanity (and thus, the ability to host memes,
> simple as they must be) pre-existed both written language, spoken
> language, even the beginnings of wide-spread tool use. It begs the
> question of where do you begin to allow humanity to be defined and
> where their cultures became manifest.
?????
[theoretical exercises--NO, I DON'T WANT THIS WORKED!!]
Define "human" in genetic terms. Is the language ability a usual
consequence of being a viable instance? Is the artifact ability a usual
consequence? Are these abilities simply side effects of something more
fundamental? Is our definition even complete? [Do we need spiritual
DNA, for instance?]
Note that any progress in dealing with so-called "spiritual" phenomena
almost surely will require their "materialization" by consensual measurement
techniques.
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/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
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/ Kenneth Boyd
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