William Morse  wrote:

> wilkins{at}wehi.edu.au (John Wilkins) wrote in
> news:blq04j$1lsr$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org: 
> 
> > William Morse  wrote, snipping out
one sentence:
> > 
> >> One of the key competitive advantages of cultural transmission is
> >> that it allows for Lamarckian evolution - the inheritance of acquired
> >> characteristics - on top of the power of Mendelian (genetic)
> >> evolution. 
> > 
> > No, it doesn't. Cultural evolution is the evolution of cultural
> > phenotypes, not biological phenotypes, and the former do not inherit
> > acquired characters.
> 
> Well, hmmm...
> 
> My first short response is that my statement is about cultural 
> transmission, which may not be what you are referring to as cultural 
> evolution. An example - the macaque who figured out that throwing 
> handfuls of grain mixed with sand into the water and scooping up the 
> floating grain was more efficient than laboriously picking out the grain
> from the sand. Now all the macaques in that tribe practice the technique.
> This to me is certainly lamarckian. Perhaps you don't call this culture,
> but prefer to call it simply learned behavior, with only the mode of 
> learning being an element of the cultural phenotype, not the actual 
> learned content. I can live with that (or something like it), in which
> case I would be happier with your statement that cultural phenotypes do
> not inherit acquired characters. Of course, I would still disagree with
> the statement, but I would be happier with it :-) 
> 
> I do think the question of malleability of cultures is an interesting
> one, and can give a longer response with a little more explanation of
> your claim that cultural evolution is also Mendelian.
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Bill Morse

Bill, before we go further, I have a paper on this you can read at the
link below (via published papers) entitled "The appreance of Lamarckism
in the evolution of culture", in which I argue the following claims:

1. Lamarckian evolution always relies on prior "darwinian" learning,
because no epistemic system can predict the future, only learn from the
past. Anything that *looks* like Lamarckian evolution must be in fact a
version of Darwinian evolution at a deeper or earlier point.

2. Things in culture look Lamarckian because the wrong entities are
being used as the benchmark entities - biological entities like
organisms are being used as the cultural items that acquire something.
But biological organisms in a biological evolutionary play do not
acquire biological genes because they are taught something; social
entities like agents acquire cultural inheritables, and *that* process
is a "darwinian" one of inheritance of fitter cultural items that went
to *cultural* fixation by trial and error.

That said, I fully think the Japanese macaque was doing  is cultural
evolution. When, and only when, that behaviour is acquired as a genetic
disposition via the Baldwin Effect will it become biological, and that
isn't Lamarckian either.

And culture is not Mendelian - it does not have the ratios of
recombination, nor dominant or recessive forms, and so on. But it is
likely to be particulate...
-- 
John Wilkins
DARK IN HERE, ISN'T IT?
wilkins.id.au
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