From: Wade Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Date: Thu 31 Oct 2002 - 19:50:55 GMT
On Thursday, October 31, 2002, at 12:58 , joedees@bellsouth.net wrote:
> Beme (x1), (x2), (x3), ...(xn) may all be seen as externally
> performed/manifested tokens of the internally stored template meme-
> type x.
They may indeed. Richard agrees with you there.
But, I see no reason to see them as anything but performances- with
_none_ of this token identity involved at all.
Because there _is_ no 'internally stored template meme', (well, there
ain't one needed in the bemetic model), and there is no way to know what
someone else is thinking prior to performance, and performance itself is
a feedback self-referential event.
As I point out in tireless repetition- no-one can know one's own actual
performance prior to the actual performance, and again I defy you to say
we do. This is not just an axiom of the beme theory, but a fact of
causal events in this universe. There is many a slip twixt the cup and
the lip, and the best laid plans often go awry. What happens in
performance is, at best, well prepared for, but it, _in no way_, is a
_completely_ manifested token of anything internal. We move in, out, up,
down, left, right, in an external universe, not just dance in thought
within our brains. It is not until the actual performance that
completeness of the beme happens.
As to whether or not there are memes hopping about in the brain prior to
performance, I see no need to put anything there but normal cognitive
processes like memory and recall, sense and sensory feedback, and all
the other things that occupy the brain during a time of awake
consciousness. I see no need to multiply entities of cognitive process
by introducing a meme, a meme-ory, or anything else. If what what does
with memory is cultural, then a beme happens. If one simply recalls,
recollection happens. If you want to embrace the activities of the mind
prior to bemetic performance, and call that process 'memetic', fine. The
process is what is important to me and I see no need to add more cogs
and whistles.
And I'm continually amazed that anyone really wants to complicate, even
further, the already over-archingly complex process that is human
thought.
Culturally, nothing happens until the performance of the beme. As
humans, we have culture, but, I see no reason to make it a multiplied
entity, either, but rather see it as an expected product of social and
cognitive processes, impacting upon the self (that referential emergent
process you so capably describe) and continued through performance.
- Wade
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