Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id XAA15537 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 12 Jun 2000 23:02:22 +0100 Message-Id: <200006122200.SAA15748@mail6.lig.bellsouth.net> From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 17:04:31 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Criticisms of Blackmore's approach In-reply-to: <00061210291400.00467@faichney> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: Robin Faichney <robin@faichney.demon.co.uk>
Organization: Reborn Technology
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Criticisms of Blackmore's approach
Date sent: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 09:56:23 +0100
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> On Sun, 11 Jun 2000, Joe E. Dees wrote:
> >I'm encouraged to see you giving consciousness, cognizance and
> >cognition its fair due.
>
> As I've said before here more than once, such concepts as you mention
> there, and memes, have their parts to play in different explanatory
> frameworks. They are, if you like, characters in different stories.
> In practice, we can "mix and match" -- just as we can speculate whether
> Superman would beat Batman in a fair fight -- but there's no place
> for consciousness in "pure" memetics, nor for the meme in phenomenology.
>
Then you have not read Edmund Husserl, the founder of
phenomenology, who addresses "the sign as such, and its
transmission through discourse" in the first chapter of his
monumental LOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS.
>
> Just as speculation on the Superman/Batman contest is basically
> pointless, at the theoretical level these concepts are incompatible.
> People have to get over the naive realist "theory of everything"
> fantasy, and learn to get along in a world in which you have to switch
> modes now and again.
>
I don't wanna drown the baby, nor toss it out with the bathwater,
but in this case I must consider the little rascal to be an
amphibian. Both the realm of meaning and the realm of being are
involved in memesis, and they are inextricably intertwined.
>
> >Howzabout this?
> >Memetic dialectics:
> >Level 1) showing: demonstration-imitation
> >Level 2) telling: explanation-understanding
> >Level 3) writing: composition-comprehension
> >
> >Each level depends upon the mastery of the prior levels to be itself
> >learned. This proposal shows that I agree with your point that to
> >learn to tell, one must be shown (referents for the word sounds),
> >and to learn to write, one must be told (meanings) AND shown
> >(written words). I would be interested in finding out about a
> >possible falsification of this view; is there an instance of anyone
> >who has learned to write with comprehension without first being
> >able to speak (engage in discourse), say, a deaf mute who learned
> >to read braille without having learned ASL (American Sign
> >Language)? Imitation is not enough, however; if one learns to
> >knapp a handaxe, yet never sees one used, does it really possess
> >artifactual (frozen memetic) meaning for the imitator, or would
> >spoken or written words possess meaning for those taught to
> >recreate the sound or the script, but not taught the associations? I
> >think not.
>
> It's obvious that one cannot read/write a language one has not
> learned. Whether one could learn a language solely by reading and
> writing, with no oral experience, I don't know, but I don't see
> any reason to rule out the possibility. I think my suggestion,
> that to learn symbolic communication requires imitation -- and
> that in memetic terms these boil down to the same thing, which is
> the transmission and replication of memes -- is not only much
> clearer, but likely to be very much more useful, than your
> formulation. Your distinction between showing and telling
> corresponds to mine between imitation and symbolic communication,
> but to suggest that there is an equally fundamental distinction
> between telling and writing seems to me, I'm sorry to say, off
> the wall.
>
This is quite simply wrong, Robin. Writing is the visual
representation of the presentation of speech in discourse; the two
simply cannot be equated, since writing is dependent upon and
derivative of telling. There have been many cultures which have had
speech but no written language; we have not one single instance
where the reverse is true, and for the good and "telling" reason that
the saddle cannot come before the horse, even though the horse
may exist without a saddle.
>
> Note, by the way, that to focus on memetic replication is to
> neglect the distinction between imitation and symbolic
> communication. This doesn't mean either that memetics is wrong,
> or that the distinction doesn't matter. It means that sometimes
> we focus on one thing, and other times on another. That's life.
> Get used to it.
>
Memetics is a useful philosophical stance AND the distinctions
between the imitation of actions, the understanding of discourse
and the comprehension of text matter within memetics itself. To
encompass memetic evolution is to study the entire mutation-
replication-selection system, without any of these legs, the stool
does not stand. This is the obtaining process of affairs; get used
to it.
> --
> Robin Faichney
>
>
> 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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