Re: Mini case study of memetic mutation

From: Bill Spight (bspight@pacbell.net)
Date: Thu 07 Nov 2002 - 14:34:37 GMT

  • Next message: Bill Spight: "Re: Standard definition"

    Dear Joe,

    +> Phonemes are not ideas, for they do not inculcate meaning, but
    > morphemes are.

    Indeed, morphemes are meaningful.

    > Emoticons inculcate meaning, inasmuch as their
    > function, like that of morphemic prefixes and suffixes, is to modify what
    > is already present respecting its semantic content.

    Emoticons are meaninful, too. They are lexemes, no?

    However, being meaningful does not make something an idea (in the modern sense). Meanings are ideas.

    In any event, just as words are not scientific units in linguistics, as the question of what is a word is too vague, so I think that the question of what is an idea is too vague for scientific purposes.

    Best,

    Bill

    =============================================================== 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 archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu 07 Nov 2002 - 14:37:11 GMT