From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Fri 23 May 2003 - 19:31:56 GMT
>
> On Thursday, May 22, 2003, at 04:53 PM, Ted wrote:
>
> > If I write "Tinkerbell" on my
> > computer and then email it, and you read "Tinkerbell" on your
> > computer, does
> > that mean Tinkerbell has traveled, via computer networks, from my
> > mind to yours? Not at all.
>
> But this is precisely what the memeinthemind model claims happens. It
> claims the meme for Tinkerbell has been transmitted from one mind to
> another, and that, indeed, if the technology were available, we could
> find 'Tinkerbell' in both minds.
>
It is not 'mind-only', Wade; it is not as partial, exclusive and fragmented
as your nonalternative. You could indeed find the word 'tinkerbell',
linked to most probably a stored visualization of a Disneyesque flitter, in
both minds prior to any communication; however, the communication
from the transmitter would cause the recipient to access the sign-
referent relation. And if what was transmitted was "Tinkerbell leapt from
the log and flew over the swamp, the forest, the mountains and the
seashore, towards the full moon, on the dark side of which she knew
Peter Pan awaited her arrival , meanwhile amusing himself by watching
dwarves fellate unicorns", then a plethora of already-present internally
stored sign-referent semantic associations would be accessed and
syntactically connected in a fashion that I'll just bet had never been
envisaged by the recipient before.
>
> > All that's required is that we interpret written language the same
> > way
>
> Yes. But examine that 'all' of yours. Only the performance model
> explains it.
>
The 'performance-only' model does not, and cannot explain the
meaning-transfer above, while I have clearly laid out its mechanism.
>
>The language we speak is, after all, a cultural venue all
> its own. We are born with the ability to observe and then perform a
> language, but the language itself is an expectation of the cultural
> venue, and not of any individual mind. This is another nail in the
> coffin of the memeinthemind model, because there is no meme for
> english. English is the set of memories that fill in the language
> acquisition area of the brain, and these memories are supplied, not
> from other brains, but from performances and artifacts contained
> within a cultural venue.
>
English, while taught and learned between brains in the external world,
is stored in brains, just as any other language is. And the
understanding of the vocabulary and syntax are indeed action/taught
and perception/learned (the between part), but cognitively stored (the
within part).
>
> > When people freely determine their beliefs, they're dealing with
> > ideas, not memes.
>
Memes are the subclass of memories, knowledge, ideas, etc. that are
communicable.
>
> But when an idea exploits a weakness in an
> > individual's mind, the power of determination has shifted from
> > person to idea, in which case we may call the idea a meme.
>
Nope; some memes are virulent, but others are symbiont (such as the
language meme, which vastly benefits its hosts).
>
> The idea
> > that black people have lower IQ's is thus a meme because it
> > replicates from mind to mind by exploiting the unconscious desire to
> > justify continued poverty among nonwhites. While the racist meme
> > builds its own momentum, the counter-argument has to proceed under
> > the power of conscious intelligence. This is why we're so often
> > helpless in the face of irrational beliefs. Their advantage is that
> > they self-replicate, while rational beliefs do not.
>
> This would seem to be a proposal that all memes are false.
>
Memes may proliferate even if they are not true, but they must have a
good hook to compensate. In religion, the hook does not have to be
very good; in science, however, even the best hook eventually will not
do.
>
> - Wade
>
>
> ===============================================================
> 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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