Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id IAA07685 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 7 Jun 2000 08:36:19 +0100 Message-ID: <20000607073346.26256.qmail@hotmail.com> X-Originating-IP: [62.6.118.195] From: "Paul marsden" <paulsmarsden@hotmail.com> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: RE: Criticisms of Blackmore's approach Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2000 00:33:46 PDT Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Diana wrote
Does anyone on the list know of any published criticism of Blackmore's focus
on imitation only, or any idea of where in the list archives I can find this
discussion? It would be useful for me to have some sources for this.
Try Liane's (Gabora) thought provoking peer reviewed, review of Sue
Blackmore's Meme Machine published in the Journal of Artificial Societies
and Social Simulation
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/2/2/review2.html
It all depends of course on how you define imitation - depending on whether
you are an ethologist, comparative psychologist, cognitive psychologist or
social psychologist - there are very different definitions that range from
any form of behavioural matching to only social (vicarious) learning of
something entirely new (Blackmore's definition).
The argument for the latter is made in Blackmore's paper in the Journal of
Memetics.
Again it depends on what you want to do with memetics on how you define
memes and imitation, for my work on suicide contagion, and my mememapping
grounded research tool, it makes more sense for me to adopt something
similar to Liane's more inclusive approach
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
===============================================================
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 2b29 : Wed Jun 07 2000 - 08:36:59 BST