From: Reed Konsler (konslerr@mail.weston.org)
Date: Fri 23 May 2003 - 18:57:29 GMT
Reed
> The door doesn't expect anything.
Wade:
"No, indeed, it does not. But the people who put it there did. And the fact
it is there will make you use it, if it works properly."
Using your examples of Tinglit artifacts and Cargo Cults would refute that
statement. The door is like the Tinglit artifact. Just because it exists
doesn't mean I will use it, or use it as the person that built it intended.
"The participants of the cultural venue who put that door there might well
have packed up and gone, taken their tools and moved to another house, and
they most probably did...So, what is _now_ participating?"
Everyone in the house, using and adapting the materials available to suit
our own uses. You give an excellent example below. In my opinion, the
house is best thought of as a substrate, not an agent.
"The venue itself is participating, and yes, the venue itself _is_ a
required participant in the performance model."
I've already accepted that. I've been pointing out that the only meaningful
parts of the venue...the parts that have agency or can be thought of as
participating in cultural evolution...are in the brain.
"Don't please, attempt to deny it by saying that only the performer and the
observer are there. They are not alone."
They are in a physical environment, yes. But that physical environment does
not have any agency. At best you could say it favors certain kinds of
expression as geographical conformations favor certain paths for a river. I
don't think it's best to think of the environment as "wanting" anything in
particular to happen.
"Meaning that the fact that there _is_ a door in your house leads you to use
it, and see it as a means of ingress and egress."
As I point out above, it's possible that the cultural context the door was
created in will be lost. At that point, there is no 'door'. It is the
mind-memes that bend your perceptions in such a way that you take it as
'fact' that there is a door. But there is no such thing as a 'fact' that a
physical object must serve a specific purpose. It might seem obvious to me
that the 'door' is a means of entering the house.
Well, of course. I learned that from other people. The memes in their mind
were replicated in mine. Now, when I look at it, I see a door. My
mind-viruses encourage me to make that identification because it benefits
their replication. After all, if I can't leave my house it is harder for me
to transmit them.
"But, you can use it as a slab of wood if you like. Take it down and put
four legs on it, bash it up a bit, and recoat it with some varnish, and you
have a table, which is a slab of wood on legs, if it just sits there,
although it is a place to put flashy magazines and cutglass fruit bowls if
it is used."
I couldn't have put it better myself.
"I suspect you'll still have a door, though."
The memes in your mind would cause you to identify it as a 'door'. The
novelty would be that I have used the artifact for a purpose not intended by
the original designer. In my mind, it is now a 'table-previously a door'.
To my child, it may always be simply a 'table'. Wouldn't he be confused if
you pointed at the slab of wood and called it a 'door'. And how can you
connect the slab to it's previous existence...in other words, how can you
maintain the cultural venue? Because, in your mind, there are a set of
memes: proportions of size, surface features, and so on that are associated
with 'door'. Without your mind it is just a slab of wood. It doesn't have
any purpose itself, only that to which it is put by a mind.
Best,
Reed
===============================================================
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 2.1.5 : Fri 23 May 2003 - 19:05:48 GMT