From: Wade T. Smith (wade.t.smith@verizon.net)
Date: Wed 14 May 2003 - 18:33:39 GMT
On Wednesday, May 14, 2003, at 02:02 PM, Scott wrote:
> Fact of memes? A rather bold statement that is. I'd rather see it as
> "presupposition (or assumption) of memes".
>
> Is there sufficient reason to assume that ideas are isomorphic between
> individuals? If so, provide some here:
>
> I don't see Wade as raising a straw man, but raising healthy objection.
Well, firstly, thanks. I don't see it as a straw man either. I see
people who object to it as a straw man as deliberately avoiding the
issue, entirely, almost to ad hominem levels. There is no straw there
in this objection, as there is no straw there in your claiming memes
are assumptions.
But- in the case of the performance model, memes are not only
evidential and non-abstract, but absolute and defined with certain
rigidity. They are not assumptions about the way a mind, or minds,
work, but a working theory about the process of cultural evolution, at
the level of quantum units.
There is no reason to assume that ideas are isomorphic between
individuals. In fact, memetics would not be possible if this were the
case- the telepathy that is required to create this isomorphism (this
transmission from one mind to another) would also ensure that any and
all of the communicative steps now necessary for transmission- a body,
language, artistic expression, context, scenery, venues, etc.- would be
unneeded, in fact, extraneous.
Joe claims that, one day, fMRI and other technologies, will show us
such isomorphisms as a proof of memesinthemind, but, I also claim this
is impossible, just as impossible as telepathy, because no two minds
can be isomorphic to begin with. That a river is a river because it has
banks and moving water is a truism. That the Mississippi is the Amazon
is not.
That Richard, who has been raising his specious claim of memesinthemind
for, what, seven years or more now?, sees information and transmission
in some unexplained way, denying the modes of communication, or,
somehow, seeing them as agents of the progress of some 'meme', which
somehow, regardless, 'takes hold of' or 'controls' someone's
'memespace', is most understandable, as he is the leader of the mob
carrying the banners that most amply reinforce my statement that such
is "a simplicity that dumbs down any further effort to explore
memetics, if not halt it altogether." It is certainly this willingness
to mysticize memetics or to multiply cognitive entities that
sociobiologists and cognitive scientists find most off-putting about
the general schema of memetics, if not urging them to reject it out of
hand.
On the other hand, since we're talking about hands, the performance
model rejects nothing from sociobiology or cognitive science (it rather
embraces any and all empirical and developmental work about the brain
and body and the mind), but manages, as the memesinthemind model
cannot, to place its agent, the meme, outside of _direct_ human
sociobiology, into the milieu of culture, that very non-imaginary
construction of mind and society and environment that biological
evolution has worked so hard to put the human animal into and without
which our species probably would not have formed and most certainly
could not continue.
And, if the study of memetics is indeed the study of cultural
evolution, then the performance model is the best and most viable
analytic tool, and the only one that does not introduce questionable
entities or suppositions as prefaces to the enterprise.
- Wade
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