From: Dace (edace@earthlink.net)
Date: Fri 06 Jun 2003 - 20:57:09 GMT
> From: "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
>
> Greetings, all,
> There is yet a third alternative to 'understanding' and 'mimicry', and
that
> is _influence_. Memes, in our PoV, is much more about influence than
either
> (conscious, considered) understanding, or (reactive, unprocessed) mimicry.
> If one only considers understanding and mimicry, it is not too surprising
> that the notion of memes is disputed and seemingly inadequate.
How is influence different from mimicry?
> From: Keith Henson <hkhenson@rogers.com>
>
> At 02:19 PM 05/06/03 -0700, Ricard wrote:
> >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.
>
> Memes, every single one of them, depend on "standard cognitive
> features." Pascal Boyer makes this really clear in his book, which is
much
> more on cognitive science than anything else.
Okay, you've sold me. I will read this book. It'll be interesting to see
how it stacks up against Barbara Ehrenreich's *Blood Rites.*
> >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
>
> *All* ideas that are spread around to a lot of minds have "a life of their
> own." This is, of course, only metaphor.
I have to disagree. Many ideas, including the ones we're exchanging now,
have no life of their own, even metaphorically, and merely respond to the
mental life of we humans.
> From: Keith Henson <hkhenson@rogers.com>
>
> At 12:28 PM 05/06/03 -0700, you wrote:
> > > From: "Ray Recchia" <rrecchia@mail.clarityconnect.com>
> > >
> > > Unfortunately your narrowed definition is even more confusing. Why
not
> > > call it a T-meme? Or a sub-meme, or an P-meme. sub for subconscious.
> > > The problem you have is that the same objections you raise for
> > > consciously aware memes are raisable for those that are transmitted
> > > subconsciously. You've sited a "recreation" phenonoma. That a meme
is
> > > not so much reproduced as created.
> >
> >Oh, no, I'm saying that memes are replicated from mind to mind, while
> >typically ideas are recreated in each mind through the process of
> >understanding. Replication involves mimickry more than genuine
> >understanding.
>
> Which would you say applies to a person who has internalized the baseball
> meme and knows how to play it?
If you grow up in the USA, baseball is a meme. If you grow up in a foreign
country, it's an idea. Same goes for the English language. I never had to
consciously make an effort to learn English. It all came through simple
imitation. But if you're Chinese, you don't get English through cultural
osmosis. You have to study it and learn it as a sequence of ideas. I had a
philosophy professor in college who once worked in Japan. He said that
after a few years of struggling with Japanese, one day it just "clicked."
Suddenly he could speak fluently and never had to strain to understand
people. He had become part of the culture and shared in the habit of
thinking and talking in Japanese. At that point, Japanese ceased to
function as an idea for him and became a meme.
> > > In addition your example of religion points the necessarily arbritrary
> > > nature of the distinction you are making. "Darwin's Cathedral" points
> > > out that elements of Calvinism were intentionally created as a
contrast
> > > to the Catholic church which the founders thought was bloated and
corrupt.
> >
> >Yes, what begins as idea becomes ingrained as meme. I'm saying that
memes
> >are simply culturally shared habits. Just as conscious thoughts become
> >habitual and unconscious if repeated enough, cultural beliefs and
behaviors
> >and styles, etc., become memetic once they've been repeated enough times.
>
> I don't buy that something can slowly shade over into being a meme.
Do you agree that conscious intentions, when repeated, ultimately shade over
into habit?
> Just doesn't work as a way to define something that should be very simple.
Memes are culturally shared habits as opposed to personal habits. I don't
see what's so complicated about that.
> > > Much of what I've been seeing from you has been of the nature of 'this
is
> > > a subconscious meme' because the transmitters really don't know why
they
> > > are transmitting it but you or someone else knows the real reason. I
> > > submit that such evaluations on your part are subjective and
unnecesarily
> > > patronizing. Such evaluations suffer from the same flaws you use to
label
> > > the beliefs of others. So for example I am among those who believe
that
> > > your attachment to morphic fields is based upon a subconscious
inability
> > > to accept material determinism (even while failing to recognize that
> > > morphic fields are just another version of it). Am I being subjective
> > > and arbitrary?
> >
> >Yes, and the reason is that you haven't produced an argument that
> >demonstrates conclusively that life is reducible to atoms and molecules.
> >This is very important. *First* you establish that the belief in
question
> >cannot possibly be explained according to rational thought. *Then* you
> >engage in a psychological analysis. If the belief is *clearly*
irrational,
> >we may examine the unconscious reasons for its acceptance.
>
> I can't deal with morphic fields, Scientology's space aliens, or
> supernatural spirits. Sorry.
No need to be sorry, you're just a bit confused here. "Morphic field" is
shorthand for "morphogenetic field," a standard explanatory tool in
developmental biology. The field concept is utilized to explain why one
clump of cells becomes, say, an arm, while another clump of cells develops
into a kidney, despite the fact that all the cells have identical DNA. It's
generally believed that morphogenetic fields will ultimately be explained
according to genes, but don't hold your breath. Many developmental
biologists have given up this quest as a lost cause and are now fully
committed to mathematical explanations of fields. (Morphogenetic fields can
be described with the same mathematical precision as electromagnetic or
grativational fields). The problem with this approach is that it seems to
imply that organisms are governed by eternal equations. Of course,
equations do not evolve. Thus Sheldrake proposed that fields are the
product, not of genes or of equations, but of past, similar organisms. As
organisms adapt, fields evolve. Ironically, Sheldrake's view is the most
easily testable and therefore the most scientific of the three alternatives.
(No one has ever devised a way of testing the hypothesis that organic form
arises from DNA. It's simply assumed by those who believe it.)
> >"The idea that one can examine the transfer of information without regard
> >for the systems sending and receiving it has been challened on a number
of
> >levels... Reddy (1979) argues that this inaccurate belief is based on
the
> >way the English language has developed, and refers to the mistaken idea
that
> >information is sent and received unaltered by the acts of sending and
> >receiving as the conduit metaphor."
>
> Memetics is based on the same model as genetics. It is *well* recognized
> that memes are subject to more transmission errors than genes are. If a
> meme (like baseball) is transmitted with extremely high fidelity, it is
> because there is much redundancy and/or error correction applied to the
> transmission.
Polichak's point is that information is altered through a variety of
cognitive factors having nothing to do with transmission errors. These
factors need to be considered in order to understand culture.
> Look, when you are concerned with mixing drinks you are not the slightest
> concerned with the isotopic ratios of the atoms in the glass the drink is
> being mixed in. Memetics is a way to view the spread and persistence of
> cultural information. At the definitional level is it just not concerned
> with details at this level.
Memetics began as a way of avoiding social and cognitive psychology by
simply reducing culture to its particulate elements-- memes. Cultural
evolution, rather than being a product of human intelligence, results from
the Darwinian competition of memes to replicate. The irony is that in order
to understand why some memes are selected and others are not, we must study
precisely the cognitive factors that Dawkins hoped to avoid. Of course,
Polichak's critique is nearly five years old now, and the field may have
matured in that time. Aunger appears to be interested in cognitive factors,
and I'm glad to hear that Boyer is as well.
> From: "Richard Brodie" <richard@brodietech.com>
>
> Keith wrote:
>
> [Dace]
> >Oh, no, I'm saying that memes are replicated from mind to mind, while
> >typically ideas are recreated in each mind through the process of
> >understanding. Replication involves mimickry more than genuine
> >understanding.
>
> [Keith]
> <<Which would you say applies to a person who has internalized the
baseball
> meme and knows how to play it?>>
>
> Exactly. The fact of replication is indifferent to the mechanics involved.
> Whether the meme is transmitted through brute force, like the Pledge of
> Allegiance, or though guided inference, like someone figuring out the
rules
> of baseball by watching the game, the meme is still replicated. Or, to use
> Dennett's Intentional Stance, the meme replicates itself.
Let me give a simple example to illustrate my point. On another list I
recently made an off-the-cuff remark about the 2003 Reith lectures, which
concern neurology. These are truly amazing lectures that reveal, once
again, the incredible explanatory power of pathological case studies. I
wanted to express my gratitude to Lexie, who had directed us to the website,
but I didn't express myself very clearly. Here's what I wrote:
"Fascinating. Gotta love those wacky brain diseases."
Needless to say, Lexie took it the wrong way. She thought I was being
sarcastic. Now, I'm from Kansas, where sarcasm is regarded as something
that only nasty, malevolent people from large, coastal cities engage in. To
this day I often fail to recognize when people are being sarcastic, and it
*never* occurs to me that others might interpret my own comments as anything
but perfectly earnest and friendly, if not a little eccentric, which is
really what Kansas is all about.
My point is that I tried to get across a simple piece of information, but
Lexie missed my meaning due to memetic interference. The sarcasm meme
replicates from mind to mind because it endows greater fitness in social
exchange (at least outside Kansas). If you realize someone is being
sarcastic, you're much less likely to be embarrassed after having taken the
comment literally. So, this is clearly a meme. But the comment I made was
in no sense a meme. It was just a simple piece of durable information that
would have been accurately recreated in Lexie's mind had it not been for the
interference from the sarcasm meme. It's not as if my positive take on the
Reith lectures is now a meme competing for survival against negative takes
on the Reith lectures. When it comes to standard discourse, it's humans
beings, not the information they exchange, that have agency.
Ted
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