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Re: Animal culture?
Jesse S. Cook III (jcook@AWOD.COM)
Mon, 5 Aug 1996 15:48:40 -0400
On Monday, 5 August 1996, D. Lee Beard replied:
>On Monday, August 5 1996, Ronald Kephart wrote:
>
>>I will say, in
>>general, that some social animals (especially nonhuman primates) are
capable of
>>acquiring new behaviors and maintaining the new behavior over generations via
>>social learning.
>
>IMHO, culture is exactly the acquisition of new behaviors and the maintainence
>of the new behaviors over generations via learning.
Surely, your "definition" is rather arbitrary, is it not? All you have done
is repeat what Ron said was not culture and said it was. This makes me
think that you have not thought about it, that this is just off "the top of
your head", that you are only trying to be argumentative, to argue for the
sake of argument.
I agree with you, by the way, that culture does not require language, else
everything that our genus invented before language was invented could not be
considered culture. In my view, culture is everything humans invent.
Jesse S. Cook III E-Mail: jcook@awod.com
Post Office Box 40984 or
Charleston, SC 29485 USA 201-9573@mcimail.com
"Our attitude toward others is not determined by who *they* are;
it is determined by who *we* are."
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