Re: (Reply to Benzon) I

From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Sat 24 May 2003 - 00:41:41 GMT

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    At 09:10 AM 23/05/03 -0700, you wrote:
    >Benzon wrote:
    > >Gudmundur Ingi Markusson wrote:
    >
    > >>(GIM) I agree. The assumption that information simply resides in books
    > or otherwise, waiting to be incorporated by hosts, which seems to be
    > taken for granted in much memetic discussion, is misguided. Here I think
    > Peirce is useful. In the light of his semiosis concept, information is
    > not a dyadic relation, a carrier carrying something (signifier
    > incorporating a signified), but a triadic relation, where information
    > arises only when a subject interprets a signifier (sign-vehicle).
    >
    >Benzon:
    > >All of which is to say that mentalist memetics gets tripped up on a
    > point that linguists and semioticians have understood for a century or so.
    >
    >Actually, I see it more as a hurdle to "jet set" memetics, such as
    >Blackmore's, where memes seem to jump in tact from books to brains to the
    >internet, and what have you.
    >
    >Gim

    I think you might consider published genes as "lying there in books." A current major concern of certain people is that the smallpox genome is public as is the method of splicing in an immune suppressing gene IL-4.

    Keith Henson

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