From: Lawrence DeBivort (debivort@umd5.umd.edu)
Date: Mon 31 Mar 2003 - 12:11:50 GMT
Nice summary, Bill, and nice to see the mention of Varela and Maturana, two
of the most useful thinkers of recent years.
I would add Jim Miller's LIVING SYSTEMS THEORY to the mix, and Stafford
Beer's work as well -- both represent extraordinary advances.
Cheers,
Lawry
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> Of Bill Hall
> Sent: Mon, March 31, 2003 5:55 AM
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: memetics-digest V1 #1319 - are memes alive?
>
>
> I'll amplify a comment I made last week about whether memes can be
> considered to be living.
>
> To me the closest thing there is to a living meme is the self-producing
> (i.e., autopoietic)organization, which could be interpreted as a
> self-producing assembly of mutually catalytic memes.
>
> The theory of autopoiesis as a definition for the property of
> life was first
> introduced to the English language in 1980 by Humbeto Maturana
> and Francisco
> Varela in their book Autopoiesis and Cognition. A more recent work is The
> Tree of Knowledge, 1988. Personally, I think their structure is quite good
> because I was using a very similar definition as an heuristic when I was
> teaching a variety of basic biology courses in the 1970's.
>
> Georg von Krogh and Johan Roos 1995 applied the theory to
> organizations, in
> their book Organizational Epistemology. Here they give a neat
> checklist for
> determining whether an entity should be considered to be autopoietic:
>
> o Identifiably bounded (membranes, tags). In other words,
> if it can't be clearly distinguished from its environment
> it isn't a discrete entity.
>
> o Identifiable components within the boundary (complex)
>
> o Mechanistic (i.e., metabolism/cybernetic processes)
>
> o System boundaries internally determined (self reference)
>
> o System intrinsically produces own components (self production)
>
> o Self-produced components are necessary and sufficient to produce the
> system (autonomy).
>
> Only where all these properties exist together can the entity be
> considered
> to be living.
>
> Memes can certainly participate in forming a complex self
> productive system,
> but as I understand the term, one meme on its own is like a virus (a small
> number of genes wrapped in an bomb casing) - it has no life on
> its own, but
> in the right circumstances it can explode and subvert an existing
> autopoietic system to make more of its own kind. (An analogue to a suicide
> bomber?)
>
> Regards,
>
> Bill Hall
> ------------------------------------------
> Information is not knowledge
> Knowledge is not wisdom
> Wisdom is not truth
> Truth is not beauty
> Beauty is not love
> Love is not music
> Music is THE BEST
> -----------------------------
> (Zappa - Packard Goose)
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dace" <edace@earthlink.net>
> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
> Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 8:28 AM
> Subject: Re: memetics-digest V1 #1319
>
>
> >
> > > From: "Scott Chase" <ecphoric@hotmail.com>
> > >
> > > > > > > Memes alive? Have we resurrected animism?
> > > > > >
> > > > > >If I attributed life to animals would you accuse me of animism?
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > No. Butam I wrong in thinking you are attributing life to memes in
> the
> > > > > literal sense (not the marginally less absurd metaphoric
> sense)? I'd
> > say
> > > > > that a palm tree or a porpoise are alive. An idea is not alive. A
> > virus
> > > > > strains ones views on what life is, and I'd probably lean
> towards no
> > hee
> > > > > too. A viral idea ("meme") if this exists, doesn't seem
> to be a good
> > > > > candidate for being alive.
> > > >
> > > >At the very least, viruses participate in life processes. The same
> could
> > > >be said of memes. After all, the mind/brain is as alive as any other
> > organ.
> > > >A meme, i.e. a "selfish" idea, lives and evolves in relation to the
> > cultural
> > > >environment in the same sense that an animal lives and evolves in
> > relation
> > > >to the natural environment.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > But I thought a meme was akin to a gene, not an animal.
> > >
> > > An animal is alive. Is a gene alive?
> >
> > This is really opening up a can of worms.
> >
> > As "systems" theorist Paul Weiss argued many years ago, there's no clear
> > definition between life and nonlife. Any self-organized, dynamic system
> > that perpetuates the conditions of its existence can be
> considered alive.
> > In recent times biology has tended to arbitrarily divide things off
> between
> > those systems that utilize genes and those that do not. For
> reductionistic
> > biology, it's not simply that genes are alive but that they are life
> itself.
> > It's the gene that makes you alive, and the point of your
> existence is to
> > spread your genes. As Susan Blackmore reasons, if an animal is a gene
> > machine, then a human is a meme machine. It's the particles, whether of
> > bodies or cultures, that determine the higher levels of structure.
> >
> > I'm perfectly willing to grant agency to genes and memes. Not simply
> living
> > aspects of larger systems, they help shape those systems and are thus
> doubly
> > "alive." What's most intriguing about memetics is its
> vindication of the
> > founding principles of modern psychology. We are driven by unconscious
> > "forces" carrying their own momentum. But that doesn't mean we
> don't have
> > our own agency as conscious beings. It's a complex interaction of
> different
> > levels of determinacy, from meme to group.
> >
> > Memes in the domain of human consciousness are akin to animals in the
> wilds.
> > This is essentially what Dawkins was saying, except that, as a
> reductionist,
> > he thinks what evolves (and truly lives) is not the whole organism but
> > merely its genes. For him the genome stands in for the whole
> animal. But
> > we need not be bound by this predilection. Memes could just as
> easily be
> > regarded as species of beliefs competing in the jungles of the mind with
> > other such species.
> >
> > Ted
> >
> >
> >
> > ===============================================================
> > 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
>
===============================================================
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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