From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Sun 03 Nov 2002 - 05:45:07 GMT
>
> On Saturday, November 2, 2002, at 05:41 , joedees@bellsouth.net wrote:
>
> > it is ideation itself which you reject
>
> I assume you're talking to me.
>
> But, no, no, and no, ideation I do not reject. The self I do not
> reject. Both sides of the coin I do not reject.
>
> And I can't begin to see why you think I do. At first, I thought you
> were disturbed to the point of fixation about the word 'behavior', in
> that I thought you thought this had some conspiratorial connection
> with behaviorism, but, I had hoped I'd shown you that was an erroneous
> reading.
>
> And then, I thought you were using your own model to criticize mine-
> and I used the example of someone who would condemn a painting because
> the canvas was only used on one side. I still think your criticism of
> the pemetic model is misaligned in this fashion- since the pemetic
> model is one that _does not_ have memes in the mind, it is specious to
> use a model that _does_ to criticize one that doesn't.
>
But the brain is the only place in which memes may reside between
multiple performances of them; it is where the meme-type is stored
between exhibitions of tokens of it.
>
> And then, I asked you if anyone else in cognitive theory (since your
> memesinthemind conjecture is dependent upon a deep understanding of
> cognition) had any use for a meme. No answer yet on that one.
>
Give it time; the entire discipline is still new and not entirely reputable.
The only person of note in cognitive theory of whom I'm aware who has
embraced it is nevertheless a true heavyweight: Tufts professor and
former president of the American Philosophical association Daniel C.
Dennett (CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED, DARWIN'S DANGEROUS
IDEA).
>
> But, again, and again, and again, and yet again, the pemetic model
> does _not_ use memes in the mind. Instead (instead!), it locates the
> meme, the unit of cultural transmission, in performance.
>
And, even if it's the thousandth iteration of a finger-snap, it springs
anew each time like Pallas Athena from the head of Zeus (from the
head? naah...you'd never agree...).
>
> And performance is a product of the individual human (body, mind,
> self), and of the observing humans (bodies, minds, selves), and of the
> cultural environment (things, places, times). All coins, all sides. I
> can't explain it much better at this point, but I hope you see that
> the things _you say_ I am denying, I am _not_ denying.
>
And if the memes which inform the performance of examples of them do
not issue from the mind, from where do they issue, and when an
observer sees, likes and plans to emulate a behavior (s)he has
observed, where does (s)he store it until it is time to engage in such
imitation? Or does that particular behavior-type vanish into the aether,
and magically mystically spring out of nothing (and THAT behavior-type
and not another) when the observer decides to participate in it? These
are all questions to which you have not provided satisfactory answers,
because you cannot.
>
> And, in many and perhaps all ways, your subject line answers Kenneth's
> question about creativity.
>
> > Action and perception both proceed from the interface between self
> > and world
>
> Actions are part of all life, movement, (if not all matter in the
> universe propelled by the first instant). Perceptions are part of all
> life, even the simplest, since bacteria sense chemically. Self is,
> however, only a result of the way the human mind works (as your own
> definition so brilliantly explains).
>
All perception involves action, and vice-versa, so to deny one
component of the system in order to absolutize the other is to separate
in theory what is perpetually conjoined in practice, and furthermore, to
claim that one of the two components of a dual-pole system does not
exist. Both of these are related errors; one of illegitimate bifurcation,
the other of illegitimate elimination.
>
> - 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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