From: Richard Brodie (richard@brodietech.com)
Date: Thu 05 Jun 2003 - 21:19:11 GMT
Dace wrote:
<<Epidemiology provides a better model for memes than cognitive science
precisely because memes are only a tiny subclass of transmitted information
that is not influenced by standard cognitive factors. While ordinarily
information must be regarded in the context of speaker and listener and has
no self-existence outside their conscious minds, memes are discrete packets
of information that change only through accidental mutation. Memes are
ideas that have taken on a life of their own and are radically different
from ordinary ideas, as described in cognitive psychology. But until
memeticists make this clear, the field will continue to be dismissed by
established scientific authority.>>
No, that's not it at all. Memetics studies how the future is influenced by
differential selection of replicating cultural elements. It is orthogonal to
cognitive science, not a replacement for it.
Richard Brodie
www.memecentral.com
===============================================================
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Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
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see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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