Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id FAA19280 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 21 Feb 2000 05:04:29 GMT X-Sender: rrecchia@mail.clarityconnect.com (Unverified) X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.2 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Raymond Recchia <rrecchia@mail.clarityconnect.com> Subject: Re: What are memes made of? Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 00:03:23 -0500 Message-ID: <1261013093-1830859@smtp.clarityconnect.com> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Joe Dees wrote:
>> At 01:33 PM 20/02/00 -0600, Joe E. Dees wrote:
>> >>
>> >What is genetic is not memetic. Period. Finis. Q.E.D. End of
>> >sentence. This assertion is not circular; it is a single, simple, and
>> >irrefutable definitional statement of apodictic and irretrievable fact.
>> >Memes are not genes, which are not memes. Got it? If you don't,
>> >your proposed "memetic" ontology will be worse than useless
>> >(although a genetics class may get some adulterated mileage from
>> >it).
>> Hold on a moment Joe, it's not quite that simple. Yes, birds have a genetic
>> disposition to birdsong but, as Chomsky and others have shown, humans have
>> a genetic disposition to language. Surely the differences are one of
>> degree, not one of kind. Isn't it a truism that all things memetic are
>> built on a genetic base? Given all that, if the capacity to language leads
>> to memetic evolution, why could the same not apply to birdsong?
>> Intentionality you say? I'm sure the bird "intends" to sing just like we
>> "intend" to language.
>>
>No, the bird does not "intend" in the same way, as the bird is not
>meaningfully intending any objects or situations via its birdsong,
>and neither (although there are minor variations on each species'
>song theme) are there completely dissimilar and totally arbitrary
>vocabular languages of birdsong within a species, as we have
>Chinese, French, Russian, Choctaw and Urdu, among many
>thousands of others. A bird is never saying "Hey, Robinbird; look
>at the top twig on the branch to the left of the knothole on the tree
>behind me and see if I left a grub there"; it may be directing its
>song at an opposite sex conspecific in hopes of mating, or at a
>same sex conspecific to warn it off its territory, but it is not
>explicitly referring to shared objects in a common world in a
>vocabulary agreed upon by the locals but which differs in alien bird
>tribes.
>>
You never did address my specific example about cultural spacing. I suspect
you wouldn't call that a meme either. So despite being self-replicating
behaviors transmitted between humans some things still don't fit into your
definition of a meme.
I think you are making an important distinction here about what makes human
different but I think are really saying is that humans are the only ones
capable of symbolic thinking. Terrance Deacon's 'The Symbolic Species' does
an excellent job of explaining how important that is and how in one limited
case a member of another species may have crossed that barrier.
Frankly this whole 'intent' thing is a bit strange to me and I won't go into
further than to say that when my dog brings me his bowl he intends to
communicate to me that he is hungry and when he starts running from me to
the door and back again I am pretty sure he intends to communicate that he
wants to go out. You may call that conditioned behavior, but when I am sad
and he comes and puts his head in my lap I am pretty sure that he knows that
I am sad and that he wants to comfort
me. As far as I can tell this limiting 'intent' to humans stuff is just a
bunch of specism.
Language though, is defineatly something unique to us as a species.
Abstracting and using symbols within our heads is something that appears to
go along with that. I am not one hundred percent convinced
that we evolved all of the mechanisms for symbolic thinking since separating
from the primates because the processes involved seemed far too complicated
to have developed in a few short million years, but I do think that somehow
we have developed special functions in our brain that allow us to use some
pre-existing brain capacity in a way that no other species can.
As an illustration of how specialized our ability with language is consider
the difference between our capacity to multiply large numbers in our heads
compared with our ability to comprehend language.
Without a piece of paper in front of me I doubt that I could successfully
multiply two five digit numbers in my head without screwing up somewhere.
On the other hand I can instantaneously use language. Compare that with a
computer for which the multiplication of five digit numbers is
instantaneous. Yet developing a program that can compose sentences is
enormously difficult.
Children learn to talk in first two years of life. There is all kinds of
research on how language emerges in children and what it comes down to is
that learning to speak is a very genetically driven process. Further,
despite the differences between languages there are certain things they all
have in common that have less to with any innate requirements of language
and more to with our genetic predispositions.
Human language and bird song are both dependant upon genetic
pre-disposition. Specific bird songs and specific human languages are also
both dependant upon non-genetic transmission of behaviors. Thus they are
both memes.
The distinction between that sort of symbolic communication and other
memetic vehicles is clearly an important one, and one that I think Susan
Blackmore short changed in her book. However, my interest is in thoughts
and behaviors that self-replicate as subset of a larger group of
self-replicating phenomena and I see no reason for your self-imposed
limitation. Memes are in a category to which genes, prions, and computer
viruses all belong. Each of these is a self-replicator and each has unique
properties that can be compared with the properties of other
self-replicators. Prions for example, have what appears to be no capacity
for variation, confined as they are to exist as a special tertiary structure
of one particular protein. Comparing things like variation among
self-replicating phenomena is an area that I think could produce some
valuable information.
In addition I must add that I fail to see how Lynch's work is necessarily
dependant upon intent or symbolic driven communication. It is completely
possible to speak of horizontal and vertical transmission that occur with no
conscious knowledge or intent.
In short, I applaud your decision to study a particular type of very
interesting meme. However I do not believe that you have presented any
valid reason that everyone must accept your particular limitation.
Raymond Recchia
*DISCLAIMER* Lawyer and former mammalian physiologist only
No philosophy degree.
*DISCLAIMER*
Raymond O. Recchia
===============================================================
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 archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Feb 21 2000 - 05:04:34 GMT