Re: electric meme bombs

From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Thu 31 Oct 2002 - 20:07:29 GMT

  • Next message: Wade Smith: "Re: electric meme bombs"

    >
    > 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
    >
    And I will repeat my objections to same; not only does the denial of a commone meme-plate for various beme-tokens violate Occam's razor, since it multiplies entities beyond necessity (instead of multiple instantiations of a single informational pattern, we now are offered a plethora of unconnected behavior manifestations), but by rejecting the type-token structure upon which language is based, you render it impossibly unwieldy, inconceivably difficult to learn and teach, and useless as a communication tool, for each thing must have its own name, unrelated to all other things (a separate name for each tree, cloud and grain of sand).
    >
    > ===============================================================
    > 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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