From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun 16 Feb 2003 - 23:35:49 GMT
>From: "Grant Callaghan" <grantc4@hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>Subject: Re: Sue Blackmore lecture Wednesday 5.15pm London
>Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 14:52:19 -0800
>
>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.
>
Both fields, to the relatively shallow degree I've jumped into either are
interesting, but cognitive science probably has a lot more going for it and
lots more history. Hebb was one pioneer I can think of and he's pretty well
known and his ideas on synaptic plasticity changes are still referred to and
potentially applicible to an internalistic approach to memetics, if such an
approach were viable.
>
>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.
>
>
There's an amusing contrast between the American and British usages of
"knock up" isn't there.
I can proudly say I own no clothing which I"d refer to as knickers.
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