Re: Sue Blackmore lecture Wednesday 5.15pm London

From: Grant Callaghan (grantc4@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun 16 Feb 2003 - 22:52:19 GMT

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    I know that literature pretty well, and the meme metaphor has nothing whatever to offer that literature. If you want to talk about frames or blends or whatever, you should use those terms. The people who talk about frames and blends and knowledge representation and cognitive networks etc. don't talk about replication and parasites and hosts and all that. They donšt need to and that pseudo-biological language adds nothing to our understanding.

    Bill Benzon

    --
    I think you got it backwards.  I was saying that cognitive science has a lot 
    to offer memetics, not the other way around.  I get the idea you wish the 
    whole concept of memetics would just disappear, but I think there is 
    something there that is not being discussed in the literature of cognitive 
    science and that is how ideas become culture.  I, too, don't care much for 
    the terminology and other baggage carried over from biological sciences, but 
    I think that will change as we discuss these ideas and narrow them down to 
    more specific definitions.
    To my mind the differences betwen the two fields is like the differences 
    between British and American English.  They call a front window on a car a 
    wind screen and we call it a windshield.  They rise up in a lift and we rise 
    up in an elevator.  But once we realize we are both talking about the same 
    thing, the words sort themselves out.  Either term can convey the same idea.
    Grant
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