well done jerry!
I've had enough of the pseudoscience posts that are progressively choking
this newsgroup.
Richard
At 14:25 30/08/96 -0700, you wrote:
>Zegun wrote:
>>>> Jerry Larson wrote:
>>>> > > Not anywhere else outside the brain, as far as I know -- in
>> > > humans, at least.
>>>No, I didn't. Somebody else wrote that, and someone else said there was
>evidence for limited learning in spinal cord, and I said there was also
>some evidence for learning in the enteric nervous system (gut).
>>Zegun continued:> WHAT!!!!!
>> Does any where beside the brain harbor memories???
>> Id say every cell within us has "memories"....if our genetic makeup had
>> no memory, we would not mutate and evolve
>>Your equation of memory and learning with genetic makeup and evolution
>is pretty questionable. Learning in the usual sense is something an
>individual does. If your own individual DNA could learn something and
>pass it on, that would be Lamarkian evolution.
>>Change and adaptation is not necessarily the same thing as learning. A
>cell doesn't "remember" the evolutionary history of its species; it only
>"knows" how to do its job, at best. You might as well say, because one
>layer of rock stays under another one, that it "knows its place"!
>>If you're going to say, for example, that when the ancestors of whales
>evolved into land dwellers, they "learned" how to live on land; then
>when they returned to the sea they "learned" a new way of living in the
>water, but "forgot" how to live on land. If the ocean dries up, they
>can't decide to go back to their old habits; they have to reinvent land
>dwelling, or perish. If you learn something and forget, OK, you learned
>and forgot; but if you "learn" and totally forget what you know before,
>that isn't learning, it's just change.
>>The human species is putatively capable of learning _as_a_ species,
>because we have a way of passing on what we learn to future generations,
>but that isn't happening on a cellular level. Even learning in the
>usual sense _probably doesn't happen on a cellular level, but by means
>of new connections being formed _between nerve cells. I wouldn't swear
>there isn't any chemical learning on the cellular level, but I don't
>know of any evidence for it either.
>>Jerry
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Jerry
>>>>
