Re: I know one when I see one

From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Thu 31 Oct 2002 - 08:09:08 GMT

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    >
    > On Wednesday, October 30, 2002, at 05:14 , joedees@bellsouth.net
    > wrote:
    >
    > > If a
    > > choreographer thinks of an extra step in a routine and then performs
    > > it, you would have to call the addition an accidental mistake
    >
    > No, nothing in the behavior-only model would call that a mistake, an
    > accident, or both. I still fail to see how you come to that
    > conclusion. But, the mere thought of this action is insufficient to
    > produce an observable _res_, to fall back to latin, and thus is
    > memetically, and thus culturally, impotent. Just as the mere thought
    > of your singing is insufficient to produce a song. You have to
    > actually sing. And someone has to actually hear it.
    >
    > If a meme is an impotent thing, stuck in the head, I fail to see how
    > it is culturally active.
    >
    But if it leaves the head and is manifested in action, it was in the head to begin with. You deny its source, and rather mislabel its destination as source.
    >
    > In your example, the choreographer (who might also need to communicate
    > to a dancer in order to have the actuality performed, as not all
    > choreographers can actually perform their dances, just as all
    > composers cannot perform their musics, Milton Babbitt being the best
    > example I know of) still has to get the step _performed_ and
    > _observed_ in some way.
    >
    It only takes one dancing choreographer to falsify your point.
    >
    > The fact that composers 'hear' things in their head, or dancers 'see'
    > steps in theirs, is cognitively interesting, and perhaps, one day,
    > observable by instruments (at which point they might, indeed, become
    > culturally potent), but, in all the meanwhiles and in all the times
    > before the meanwhiles, culturally, and thus memetically, this is only
    > a _part_ of the process of creating the meme- which must be potent,
    > and thus, must be performed and observed. Performance and observation
    > are two irreducible, intractable, and undeniable qualities of the
    > meme.
    >
    And so is conception/ideation.
    >
    > But again, this is all from the view of the behavior-only stance,
    > which is, as we all know, a definitional and analytical stance, _not_
    > a behavioralist stance, or even a biological one.
    >
    > Whether we know it or not, we do have to see it.
    >
    To do it, we have to know it.
    >
    > - Wade
    >
    >
    > ===============================================================
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    > 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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