Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id AAA06444 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 16 Feb 2000 00:47:09 GMT Message-Id: <200002160047.TAA24380@mail1.lig.bellsouth.net> From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 18:49:25 -0600 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: What are memes made of? In-reply-to: <B4CEF533.14B%heuvel@muc.de> References: <200002100130.UAA08090@mail3.lig.bellsouth.net> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Date sent: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 12:22:09 +0100
Subject: Re: What are memes made of?
From: William van den Heuvel <heuvel@muc.de>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>
> Joe E. Dees:
> > Meaning and intention are co-primordial in the sense that there
> > must be meaning differences for there to be selective intention, but
> > selective intention is necessary to imbue particular meanings.
>
> William van den Heuvel:
> If you intend to convey what I take you to mean then you seem to be
> suggesting a kind of feedback loop in which meaning and intention mutually
> give rise to each other. If this is what you mean then I get the picture
> that meaning and intention are primordial relative to each other. This makes
> me think that the intention of the meaning stance is to give meaning to the
> intential stance. Does that sound right?
>
> However, meanwhile Robin Faichney has indicated that he uses "intential
> stance" in a medieval sense, which (judging from his explanation) doesn't
> seem to be quite same as what I intended by "intential stance". From Robin
> Faichney's point of view, what we say about meaning and intention probably
> doesn't seem very relevant to him.
>
The very first meaning is presence to the perceiver, and it is at this
point that existential and hermeneutic considerations converge, as
the primordial whatness is thatness. Perceptual distinctions are
lifted from the perceived objects; conceptual characterizations of
them (their meaning and value for us) are subsequently imposed by
the discriminating and categorizing mind. Robin's attempted self-
denying "Zenification" of memetics, a tendency for which Susan
Blackmore's THE MEME MACHINE has been criticized, was also
attempted in existential and hermeneutic phenomenology,
structuralism and semiotics, each time without success. As the
Clintons, subsequent to the defeat of their comprehensive health-
care plan, have attempted to enact it piece by piece, and as the
antiabortionists continue to try to chip away at the Roe vs. Wade
they cannot manage to repeal wholesale, so Robin has, after his
claim that there was no self, merely memes, foundered on the
rocks of emergent cognitive science and its acknowledgement of
the necessity of subjectivity, attempted to chip away at the
existence of self piece by piece, by attacking the necessity of
including considerations of intentionality and signification when
formulating a memetic ontology. Such an approach cannot work
for one simple reason - it is incorrect (via willful incompleteness).
Religious or ideological considerations, whether eastern, weastern,
or whatever, are memesets themselves and can have no place in
any serious endeavor to construct a genuine memetic ontology.
>
> William van den Heuvel
> heuvel@muc.de
>
>
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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