From: Bill Spight (bspight@pacbell.net)
Date: Thu 24 Oct 2002 - 16:41:05 GMT
Dear Grant,
> Would you say the term "couch potato" is an example of a meme
> that propagated itself?
It is a meme, but it does not propagate itself.
> Words are not memes themselves because they can mean anything depending on
> the circumstances in which they are received. They carry information but are
> not the information being carried.
I agree, but the information they carry (metaphorically) is not the only
information they possess. They also have structural information. If you
define a meme as information, that information is sufficient. I will
post more about "lex-memes" soon. :-)
In any event, in the context of "I know one when I see one", you do not
have do define memes to include words. It is enough to identify memes by
words. I suspect that you are denying that, but I am not sure. Would you
say that each word *sense* is sufficient to identify a meme?
> So the same sentence, containing the same words, can be used by different
> speakers to send out four different messages. The words, therefore, are not
> the meme. They are artifacts which carry the meme.
As I pointed out to Vincent, emphasis may have a memetic component.
Surely it does in spoken English. And besides, as I also pointed out,
just because something carries meaning does not mean that it is memetic.
Much of animal communication is not memetic, though it is meaningful.
> The reason the sentence and the
> phrase can have the same exact word content but an infinite number of
> meanings is because it can be used in an infinite number of situations. The
> meaning of any word, phrase, or sentence is context sensitive.
>
Indeed. However, memes are meaningful, but meanings are not memes.
> So the sentence, "I know a meme when I see one." is a lie.
I guess there is less unity than I supposed. ;-)
> You can't see
> one. You can only perceive the artifact that carries it. You only
> recognize the artifact as a meme carrying sentence after a number of people
> have started using it in their own communications. But the message or
> information it carries can be completely different for each person each time
> it is used. So where is the meme?
>
Indeed. If memes are meanings, and meanings are contextual, you can have
communication, perhaps, but it is not clear that you have cultural
transfer simply by transferring meanings. One thing I assumed for memes
for all definitions is that they are units of cultural transfer. So
where is the meme?
Best,
Bill
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