Re: transmission

From: William Benzon (bbenzon@mindspring.com)
Date: Thu 22 May 2003 - 14:58:39 GMT

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    on 5/22/03 9:39 AM, Wade T. Smith at wade.t.smith@verizon.net wrote:

    >
    > On Wednesday, May 21, 2003, at 09:34 PM, Joe wrote:
    >
    >> But that is what's wrong with the performance model; it cannot explain
    >> the situations it is tasked to explain, such as how a performance type
    >> is
    >> retained between expressed tokens of it.
    >
    > It not only explains this, it also explains all facets of it- the
    > _cultural venue_ is what retains the expectations of the performances,
    > as well as the memories of both the performer and the observer.
    >
    > Again, you fail to understand the performance model and argue from
    > ignorance.
    >

    So, think of a performance as a cultural phenotype. As I've said, the performance includes not only the publicly observable aspect, where we find the memes, but the neuro-muscular activites of all the performers. That being so, a performer will have some memory of the performance, though not necessarily an exact or complete memeory (in fact, almost certainly not). In particular, the performer has a sense of more or less pleasure or displeasure.

    To the extent that a performance was pleasurable, the performer will be motivated to repeat it. The new performance -- which is thus a new phenotype -- may be more or less like the previous one. No doubt it will share a bunch of memes with the previous one. Thus the "survival" of a meme depends on its being in successful performances.

    That's how it is in the biological domain, no?

    As before, for details see my 5.18.03 post on "music, memes, and performance."

    -- 
    William L. Benzon
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    Mind-Culture Coevolution: http://asweknowit.ca/evcult/ 
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