From: Wade T. Smith (wade.t.smith@verizon.net)
Date: Wed 28 May 2003 - 15:08:02 GMT
On Wednesday, May 28, 2003, at 09:01 AM, Richard wrote:
> That's the definition of memetics.
"Memetics can be defined as an approach trying to model the evolution
of memes." (http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MEMES.html)
Indeed, the vicious circle involved in the definition of memetics
requires that the meme be not only present, but fully accounted for.
And, IMHO, it ain't.
When one attaches the admittedly loose definition of 'smallest possible
unit of cultural evolution' to 'meme', then I think, we can get close
to having something that is present and accounted for, and IMHO, that
something is the performance itself, not an imaginary element of a
vaguely understood cognitive process. Applying darwinian analysis to
the performances, and the venues within which these performances occur,
is both empirical and satisfying, especially since the historical
record is rife with well understood venues and artifacts. There is no
way, at present, to account empirically for cultural processes in
brains. When we analyze the changes in the venue and the artifacts
produced within these venues, we also begin to understand how the
perceptions of the observers helped to manage these changes.
I long ago took this sort of statement- "However, since the only
agreement as to the definition of
'meme' is that it is what gets passed on through non-genetic means,
only conceptual confusion can result from trying to make a hypothesis
into a definition" (thanks, Bill, for this example), and asked myself
what does it mean to 'get passed on' culturally, or socially? Social
mechanisms are, IMHO, on their way to being explained by
sociobiological models, and I'm happy to see culture as a another means
of manipulating social mechanisms, and in any case, I don't think
culture needs to know how minds work to manipulate humans and their
social mechanisms, and I don't think memetics needs to know how minds
work to explain how culture works.
If one takes the definition of memetics and separates it from memes
(which many people here are not allowing, I know, including you), then
it becomes 'an approach to modeling the evolution of culture'.
And, IMHO, the performance model succeeds at that with flying colors.
But, yes, it needs to be allowed to. So, I'm happy to separate it from
memeintheminditics if that will allow it, as a performance theory of
cultural evolution only needs a meme as a definitional unit in the
first place, and only then climbs on the memetic definition itself, as
the performance model is indeed an approach trying to model the
evolution of memes. It just doesn't define meme as something in the
mind, but as the observed moment of performance, within a venue. Pretty
empirical, that. Observable, measurable, and, thus, analyzable.
Now, calling something a 'virus' of the mind, is, perhaps, more to the
point of working on cognitive processes, but, the performance model of
cultural evolution does not use a viral model, and can only accept the
conditions of its players- meaning, that if the minds of two of its
agents, the performer and the observer, could be infected with viral
mechanisms, this needs to be a given in the performance model,
something that is innate to the venue, and culture is itself a means of
controlling, through parameters maintaining immunities, these viral
influences and behaviors. Religion, in the form of religious community,
is thus seen, in the performance model, as a large grouping of
parameters of immunity maintenance. That such parameters can be based
in natural falsehoods, i.e. gods, is not the issue- after all, even
secular communities are based in falsehoods, as no law is the truth-
the issue is that such parameters will control performance and maintain
expectations. Religion does the work of maintaining a cultural venue
very well. So does law and order of any stripe. Truth is not so
powerful, and rarely needed, in this arena.
- Wade
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