Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id AAA12899 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 25 Mar 2000 00:07:01 GMT Message-Id: <200003250005.TAA15167@mail4.lig.bellsouth.net> From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 18:09:14 -0600 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: RE: objections to "memes" In-reply-to: <A4400389479FD3118C9400508B0FF230040BD5@DELTA.newhouse.akzonobel.nl> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: "Gatherer, D. (Derek)" <D.Gatherer@organon.nhe.akzonobel.nl>
To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: objections to "memes"
Date sent: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 08:47:41 +0100
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Joe:
> You are not aware of it until you deduce it (no major logical feat,
> true),
>
> Derek:
> Fair enough, but it doesn't get over the infinite capacity requirement
> problem. If I am aware that Napoleon died in 1821, then I can immediately
> deduce that he didn't die in any other year n. That's _any_ other year, an
> infinite number of other years. That's an infinite number of 'mnemons' (to
> borrow the correct terminology from thought contagion theory) of which I am
> aware. But since my brain does not have an infinite storage capacity, I
> cannot store them all as individual mnemons. Therefore, there is no way
> that we store awareness of propositions.
>
The propositions "When someone dies in a certain year they can
not die in any other year" and "Each person can only die in a
single year" (which are different linguistic tokens of the same
cognitive type, and are logically convertible into each other) are
single propositions, which can be applied to all such examples of
dead famous people.
>
> Joe:
> and then you are free to promptly forget it and rededuce it as
> need be.
>
> Derek:
> Again, fair enough. But every time we have a rededuction, we run into the
> same problem.
>
No, it is but a single logical step, using the above internalized rule.
>
> Joe:
> We do not, nor
> do we have to, remember everything, and especially, to internalize
> a type (ideation) does not require us to store every possible token
> (linguistic expression) of it.... [snip, snip] To
> store a Chomskyian deep structure proposition does not require us
> to store every possible surface structure instantiation of it. When
> we store Napoleon, we do not have to store him separately for 1821
> and Waterloo and Josephine and so on; Napoleonic knowledge,
> like any knowledge, is interconnected in a neural gestalt, which
> makes contiguous access easier, and aviods space-consuming
> repetition. Memory, being experiential (involving imaginal
> recapitulation of sense experience, perspective, etc.), is much
> more neuron-quantity-intensive than knowledge (our bare symbolic
> shorthand of it). Remember the saying, a picture is worth a
> thousand words? Well, it probably takes much more than the
> equivalent of that to store, once we learn the basic vocab and
> syntax we may pan-apply to make fact storage neural space
> efficient. And a lot of facts we forget (few of us are mnemonic
> Kreskins); our most important knowledge is the knowledge of how
> to look them up.
>
> Derek:
> I'm not sure whether or not Chomskians think we do _store_ 'deep structure
> propositions'. I rather think they don't. It would be interesting to find
> out. I'm also not sure what 'neural gestalt' means in a neurobiological
> sense. Do gestalt psychologists believe that 'gestalts' are stored in some
> way?
>
Well, we will already, most likely, have the words "Napolean" and
"death" in our vocabulary, along with the implicit understanding that
napolean is indeed dead; we need then only associate the year
"1821" with the other two in a three-way link and we have the
concept, which can be linguistically parced in a variety of ways.
>
When you remember a day at the beach, the memory of the
position of the sun will remind you of the glint pattern off the waves
which will remind you of the direction and velocity of the wind which
will...these experientially linked perceptions are mnemonically
linked as well. Once you forget all these interwoven memories
(actually a mnemonic system comprised of interrelated
components - neither one memory nor many) and just have the
bare linguistic knowledge left over, bereft of spatiotemporal
perspective or sensation, you will still perhaps have the phrases
"cool offshore breeze" and "afternoon sun" linked with "a month
ago last tuesday - or was it wednesday - at the beach", until this,
too, dissolves in the mists of forgetfulness, replaced by other, more
recent or important concerns.
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
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> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
>
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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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