From: Wade T. Smith (wade.t.smith@verizon.net)
Date: Mon 10 Mar 2003 - 18:02:36 GMT
On Monday, March 10, 2003, at 11:09 AM, memetics-digest wrote:
> Is it best to imagine that there are memes inherent in objects like
> tools, texts, or speech? Is it better to restrict the definition of
> "meme" to something that exists in the mind? I can see both as
> reasonable.
And I can see a third, equally reasonable, case- memes exist only as
and in the moment of performance, and the time/place of this
performance (which is culture, y'all, with all its trappings) is what
can be altered and perhaps continues and thus endures. No need for
inherence, no need for magical mind particles.
> Memes are inside the checkers and depending on what memes you focus of
> you can group the checkers into different cultures.
There needs to be some apprehension of some performance before any
decision can be made about any way to group these pieces culturally.
There is simply no other way to deduce or imagine what is 'inside' the
piece. In other words, these pieces have to exhibit their culture
before you can give them one.
And in yet another thing, none of the pieces has any control, to any
appreciable degree, of the board, and it is not a flat, blank, surface,
and they may gather in clusters which might look like cultural
grouping, but is not- they had no other place to go on the board at
that time. (They did not perform, they were only moved.)
You might settle upon explanations of these effects with biased
assumptions of causes. This is the prime fallacy of the semantically
based memeinthemind model.
- Wade
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