From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Thu 17 Oct 2002 - 01:30:04 GMT
>
> On Wednesday, October 16, 2002, at 07:43 , joedees@bellsouth.net
> wrote:
>
> > My argument is that by insisting upon the uniqueness of every
> > performance, so that no two performances cann be deemed to be
> > tokens of a single memetic type, you undermine linguistic definition
> > generally.
>
> The uniqueness of every performance is a given. I'm not insisting upon
> it, I'm recognizing it. This is an established aesthetic axiom as well
> as a physical fact of spacetime. And I _am_ saying that each
> performance can absolutely be precisely an attempt to replicate a
> single memetic experience. Each performance of Dvorak's Eighth
> Symphony is an attempt to utilize the memeplex (the symphony
> orchestra) that produces the noise that Dvorak described when he
> performed his meme and left his artifact of the score.
>
It is an attempt to recreate the eighth symphony which Dvorak mentally
composed and physically wrote down, and if it can be recognized as a
token of that type by someone familiar with other tokens of it, then it has
been successfully replicated.
>
> But it is necessary to recognize that all performances are unique, and
> that this is another mutative function.
>
> My stance rejects the very idea of non-unique memes, because it
> recognizes the evidential certainty of unique performances.
>
So every smoked cigarette is unique, as is every quaffed beer, and,
furthermore, so distinguishable and unassimilable that they are not
tokens of beer-quaffing or cigarette-smoking memes? Hardly.
>
> In this way it mirrors genetics, as every mutation is a unique
> performance of DNA, from a set of similars. Coughs from the audience,
> squeaks from the reed, scrapings of the chair, if you will. Random,
> uncontrollable, unforeseeable, and yet, part of the performance,
> regardless of rehearsal or mental preparation or experience or even
> expertise.
>
The genome corresponds to the entire form of the individual; a gene
within it corresponds to the repeated performance of a single meme, as
it encodes a single characteristic, and not the totality of the template.
>
> > If you reject type/token distinctions
> > and similarities for all behaviors
>
> Ah, I don't think that I do.
>
> I only call some behaviors memes, not all behaviors, and those
> certainly contain "that subset of significative behaviors which we
> call communicative, that is, meaning-bearing, such as speaking,
> writing, signing, gesticulating, miming and all the rest."
>
> A meme is a significative cultural behavior, if you will, in the
> meme-is-behavior-only stance.
>
> Indeed, behavior is the only item we can investigate.
>
Actually, by not allowing the type/token distinction, which is crucial to
the structure of semantic communication but anathema to your "every
performance is a nonpareil" stance, you do indeed render meaningful
language impossible, for lack of common referents.
>
> > We also need to decode the 'language of thought'
>
> We do, yes. The memetic models, I think, regardless of which one, help
> in that realm.
>
> I just say the behavior only model does it a little more neatly.
>
I can't see how, since it seems to have problems even admitting the
causal efficacy of that thought.
>
> - Wade
>
>
>
> ===============================================================
> 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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