RE: _Religion Explained_ by Pascal Boyer

From: Richard Brodie (richard@brodietech.com)
Date: Thu 05 Jun 2003 - 21:19:11 GMT

  • Next message: Keith Henson: "RE: _Religion Explained_ by Pascal Boyer"

    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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