From: Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Date: Fri 01 Nov 2002 - 23:48:51 GMT
On Friday, November 1, 2002, at 06:26 , joedees@bellsouth.net wrote:
> your
> position, which seems to be that perfprmance is all there is, and that
> competence is a chimera. Tell that to a bicycle rider.
I _am_ a bicycle rider. And a good one. I can manage a track stand, even.
My position is that, and please, read this twice, _performance is the
cultural unit required by memetic theory_. Nothing in this is a
limitation of performance, and performance _demands_ a performer capable
of performing, thus _competent_. I take most definitions at face value
in my model as well as in my thinking, trying not to add or pad with
jargon. I never said, again I stress, that _behavior_ is all there is,
as I never introduced the pemetic model as a behavioralist model, and I
think I still see something seething under that misconception.
There are no chimeras in the pemetic model, as there are, the meme
itself, the memeinthemind, in your theory, with the strict caveat that
culture, itself, could be a chimera in both models, and there is no
reason to stuff that conjecture under some rug somewhere, either.
How is the memeinthemind _not_ chimeric? What is non-conjectural about
the memeinthemind? It was enough of a conjecture to axiomize that
culture needed a unit. It was tidy and not a little cute to call it a
meme.
- Wade
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