Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id MAA05885 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 12 Mar 2000 12:04:09 GMT From: Robin Faichney <robin@faichney.demon.co.uk> Organization: Reborn Technology To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: RE: Monkeys stone herdsman in Kenya Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 11:40:19 +0000 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.0.21] Content-Type: text/plain References: <NBBBIIDKHCMGAIPMFFPJIEOKEHAA.richard@brodietech.com> Message-Id: <00031211520200.00474@faichney> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
It's Sunday again, and I find a precious few minutes to participate in my
favourite mailing list.
On Sun, 12 Mar 2000, Richard Brodie wrote:
>
>I would call information in a book an artifact.
The book itself is obviously an artifact, but the information "in" it? That
begs many questions, not least of which is: what exactly do we mean when we say
that there is information "in" a book? I think that such questions have to be
answered before memetics can make very much progress. In fact, I think that
the lack of such answers is precisely what has bogged memetics down since 1976,
and will continue to do so until they are provided. And I confidently predict
that the central concept here will be found to be that of encoding.
>It may be that a percentage
>of humans with a certain cultural context
Or decoding key?
>predictably acquire a certain meme
>from observing a single artifact (such as your example), or it may be that
>it requires (e.g.) an entire course of study at a university before someone
>predictably acquires a certain meme.
More key(s), no?
>Either way, as long as the
>self-perpetuating structure of acquired mental information is there, it's
>properly studied as memetics.
Agreed -- with the quibble that "mental" is not very well defined, but if it's
taken to mean "in the brain", then memes only spend part of their life-cycle
there -- admittedly an absolutely essential part. Gosh, it gives you
confidence when you know Dennett shares your position! :-)
-- Robin Faichney===============================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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