From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Wed 21 May 2003 - 22:54:17 GMT
>
>
>
>
> >From: joedees@bellsouth.net
> >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> >To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> >Subject: Re: DS syndrome
> >Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 12:08:44 -0500
> >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > >From: "Wade T. Smith" <wade.t.smith@verizon.net>
> > > >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> > > >To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> > > >Subject: Re: DS syndrome
> > > >Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 07:30:35 -0400
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >On Wednesday, May 21, 2003, at 01:13 AM, Joe wrote:
> > > >
> > > >>If a person dogmatically insists that 2 + 2 = 5, it is a duty of
> > > >>knowledgeable others, not a fault of theirs, to point out that
> > > >>they really = 4, lest the mathematically deficient believe and
> > > >>spread the fallacious meme. That's the way selection works.
> > > >
> > > >As Richard would be wont to point out, the correctness of a thing
> > > >in no way determines its probability of selection or
> > > >distribution.
> > > >
> > > You are correct, but probably, in the present context, selected
> > > against.
> > >
> > > When a group has, in general, a predisposing bias in favor of an
> > > alluring concept, they will likely tend to select against
> > > criticism of this concept, regardless of the correctness of their
> > > cherished belief.
> > >
> >Here Scott is wrong. Memetics has hopes of being a science.
> >Correctness is indeed selected for in this field, by the Verification
> >Principle and peer review.
> >
> Yet where's the your attempt at incorrectness of the field being
> selected against via the Popperian falsification principle with its
> associated process of conjecture and refutation? Sounds more like
> people seeking to confirm their predisposed biases in favor of the
> idea versus trying to approach it critically (philosophizing with a
> hammer) and seeing what remains.
>
> Has the existence of memes been verified? You'll probably assert that
> somehow fMRI studies and other imaging techniques verify memes, yet
> all you wind up doing is embedding your cherished notion of the meme
> within the garb of legitimate neuroscientific work.
>
As Richard Brodie has previously pointed out, the apodictic proof of the
existence of memes is the obvious efficacy of an education. fMRI
studies may someday pinpoint their microlocations (their
macrolocations, in particular brain lobes, is already known) and we may
one day figure out the mechanism that is followed in encoding them in
our cortices, in which case we will be able to reverse engineer their
decoding. But of their existence there can be no rational doubt; we are,
in fact, constructing competing memes from our ideations and encoding
them in language in this exchange. This whole exercise reminds me of
Thomas Aquinas attempting to define God into existence by claiming
that there is no greater being that can be conceived, and thus existence
is necessary to the very concept of such a being, for if it did not exist, it
would not be as great as if it did. This is what you seem to be accusing
me of doing, but instead I am employing the Socratic argument "You
say that I do not believe in the existence of gods, yet you admit that I
have stated a belief in the existence of sons of gods. Now how can
there be sons of gods without the existence of gods?" likewise, how
can one admit the efficacy of education and deny that there is some
cognitive mechanism that allows us to learn, store, access and repeat
wthat which our education has taught us? "What is truth?" Pontius
Pilate asked, and did not wait for a reply. Truth is that which is
internally consistent (does not self-contradict), is externally coherent
(does not contradict contiguous truths) and faithfully represents or
refers to an actual state or process of affairs. Now, lies can be
internally consitent, but if either of the other two conditions are satisfied,
all three are. The theory of cognitive memetics is not only internally
consistent, but it also does not agree with observed phenomena, and in
fact, reasonably represents what must be the case for that phenomena
to be as it is and not in other ways. That is all that is necessary to
regard the theory as true, and it is also sufficient for that regard.
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> ===============================================================
> 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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