From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Thu 31 Oct 2002 - 20:45:13 GMT
>
> On Thursday, October 31, 2002, at 12:53 , joedees@bellsouth.net wrote:
>
> > But do we know NOTHING of what we are going to do before we do it?
> > This is what the behavior-*only* stance requires.
>
> Does it? I don't see that it does. I don't see that at all. Of course
> we know a great deal about what we are _planning_ to do. We might even
> prepare every square inch of surface we are about to act upon, much
> like a stuntman will do before a fall. No good driver enters a race
> without driving, or even walking, the course prior to getting the
> first flag. Actors block out every step in rehearsal. But, even the
> best laid plans....
>
But those plans are the meme; they may not be perfectly instantiated in
every case and thus identical, but perfection, that is, perfect replication,
is not required, and indeed is anti-evolution, for mutations are
necessary for selection to act upon.
>
> > If what you say is true, language - as a system that is learned and
> > competence in which is internally retained beween performances -
> > would be an impossibility.
>
> Hmm. I don't see that as a conclusion the bemetic model demands,
> either. But, are you saying that this internal retention is, by
> definition, memetic? Why do you call a spade a shovel? We know
> language is a human possibility.
>
And it is a human possibility because it is possible to teach, learn and
reMEMEber it. Competing versions of the language meme (different
languages) collectively saturate all of human culture, and they evolve.
As of now, English is winning the darwinian struggle; it is being
increasingly selected for.
>
> There is nothing in the bemetic model which denies memory or learned
> and retained skills. Nothing.
>
There is if it is categorized, as you have, as the *behavior-ONLY*
model.
>
> But, there is also nothing in the bemetic model that wants to call
> memory or retained skills anything else, or compand them into another
> structure called 'meme-ory' or anything else.
>
And that is where the occamic violation of multiplying entities beyond
not only necessity, but workability, happens, by polyfurcating multiple
similar behavioral token-instantiations of the self-same meme-type into
nonrelational sui generis entities.
>
> My point about spoonerisms was that, if one could perform with perfect
> utility all that one developed in thought inside one's head, (which I
> do see as a demand of your model- that we think and then manifest, in
> toto), then no-one would make an unintentional mistake.
>
No, I did not forbid mistakes, nor did I demand perfection; similarity is
enough to include a token in it's type-set.
>
> And even if your model allows for error in manifestation, it still
> demands this intact 'res' inside a brain and some improbable means of
> getting it into another. And I still fail to see any reason to put it
> there, or try to get it out and into something else.
>
The means is through behavior (both the first order encoding of
demonstration/imitation and the transmission/reception second-order
encoding dialectic of communication). The reason that it is there (in the
brain) is so that tokens of its type may be economically generated when
conditions are facilitative, and it gets out and into other brains is to
replicate (memes do that - reMEMEber?).
>
> - 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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