Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id FAA19351 (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 05:41:55 GMT Message-Id: <200002210540.AAA16201@mail3.lig.bellsouth.net> From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 23:44:16 -0600 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: What are memes made of? In-reply-to: <1261013093-1830859@smtp.clarityconnect.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: Raymond Recchia <rrecchia@mail.clarityconnect.com>
Subject: Re: What are memes made of?
Date sent: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 00:03:23 -0500
Send 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.
>
Actually, I DID address your example, labelling it memetic and
indicating my opinion that it was taught to children by their
caregivers.
>
> 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.
>
Terence Deacon's work is a good one to read; others are THE
ADAPTED MIND by Barkow, Cosmides and Tooby, TOOLS,
LANGUAGE AND COGNITION IN HUMAN EVOLUTION by Gibson
and Ingold, and ORIGINS OF THE MODERN MIND by Merlin
Donald.
>
> 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.
>
Animals respond to environmental circumstance; they do not
formulate conceptually concatenated plans regarding absent
objects, as we do. Words are symbols for things present or
absent. Animals demonstrate rudimentary intention, but not the
complex conceptual intention-schemas which we do, and do not
create arbitrary sign systems with which to communicate same.
>
> 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.
>
The key is technology; three million years of technological
evolution provoked selection for progressively more elaborated
cortical areas governing hand-eye coordination - areas which were
subsequently co-opted (by means of a metamutation) for use by
the mouth-ear nexus about a hundred thousand years or so ago.
The tool represents its use; thus tools were the first non-natural
(human-created) signs.
>
> 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.
>
Our number sense is less evolved due to our dependence upon
external aids to perform the calculations; prior to the advent of
textual skills, working with very large numbers was just not
essential to members of our species for long enough for aptitude for
it to be evolutionarily selected for. We certainly have the raw
material for this to happen, as evinced by the appearance of rare
"human calculators."
>
> 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.
>
We have capacities for syntactic and semantic organization, but no
genetic exigency which would determine the forms these must
take. In a very significant way, we are programmed to transcend
our programming, an ability that is dependent upon the
size/complexity quotients of our brains.
>
> 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.
>
Specific birdsongs are imprinted minor variations on themes; they
do not signify anything, and as such remain genetic rather than
memetic phenomena. The differences are possibility and
signification, which perfuse human language capacity and for all
practical purposes are absent from birdsong.
>
> 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.
>
We must be careful, as I am, to propose definitions for these
entities specific enough so that they do not overlap and blur.
Intention, meaning and subjectivity are essential to people
intending to replicate meaningful messages within individual others
in a common but not genetically mandated species-specific code
and being able to succeed in this.
>
> 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.
>
Accidental and inadvertant can only have meaning in contrast with
intentional; subtract intention, and every transmission becomes
driven by the dialectic between genetic necessity and
environmental variability, that is, by instinct.
>
> 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.
>
I have presented many of them; whether or not you accept them is,
of course, your own affair. Please be on guard against the
overromantization of the purported abilities of the diverse and
valuable species with which we share this sphere; aside from the
great apes, none of them have shown the cognitive prerequisites
necessary to choose to or not to receive or transmit particular
messages rather than others, which makes it impossible for
memetic selection to take place.
>
> 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 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 - 05:41:58 GMT