From: Wade T. Smith (wade.t.smith@verizon.net)
Date: Sun 15 Jun 2003 - 15:47:59 GMT
On Sunday, June 15, 2003, at 12:11 AM, Joe wrote:
> But if you mean that cultural venue encompasses the between but not
> the within
The cultural venue is a term I started to use more in place of the also
and previously used 'cultural ecology', but, of course, I did not want
to use that phrase, as it smacked of newagism, and 'venue' was more apt
to the performance aspect of the model I was intrigued with. So much
for my etymology.
The cultural venue _is_ the 'outside' (the between and the around)- it
is the realm within which performance happens, and the performers are,
on this planet, humans, who have brains. (If a self-conscious creature
could be so without a brain, then, so be it- culture _could_ happen
without two _brains_, but not without two self-conscious creatures. We
just don't know about any other way to accomplish self-consciousness.)
And the observers are self-conscious humans. But the technologies of
communication and observation are part of the venue. (There are no
televisions or prosceniums or orchestra seats inside a brain.) The
specific language used is part of the venue. (Each specific language is
from the society outside the brain.) Every tool or media utilized is
part of the venue. (There are no artifacts or newspapers inside brains.)
> Of course I can't
> So my counter-challenge is to explain how one can remember one's own
> birthday in the absence of a brain.
This is not a true counter-challenge to my challenge of discovering
one's birthday solely from nature, since a brain is part of nature,
but, I'll continue nonetheless, as your challenge provides incentive,
albeit off-vector, and you've completely acknowledged that meeting my
challenge is impossible. I try not to bet on unsure things....
The cultural venue 'remembers' birthdays quite well without brains,
because it uses artifacts- after all, it created both the need for
birthdays and the particulars of their specifics. I have my birth
certificate in my possession. I could be a robot and bring it out to
show you. _My_ brain was not necessary to supply either this record, or
the conditions of its manufacture, or its distribution to your
perception. (I know people who have birth certificates for pedigreed
animals, who do not remember such things, and also could be trained to
fetch and display them....) As you say, other brains, _all_ of them
acting within the specific cultural venue within which I was born, were
required. But the venue itself was, and always is, a requirement of
cultural information and distribution, and in the case of birthdays,
there _is no other way to arrive at one_. Nature, and any science of
it, are not sufficient, to supply a date of birth. One cannot discover
one's name in likewise extra-culturally dependent fashion. (I suppose
this is the time for a fascinating sidestep upon some cultures',
notably some amerindian and aboriginal, inclusion of a magickal or
spiritual name which one can discover in shamanistic passages through
an external/internal supernature, but, not now....) Nature is that
which is not dependent upon culture, from a socio-centric viewpoint.
(We may be changing that, here upon this planet, for better or worse,
in an ironic technologically magickal retrogression, but time will
tell.)
Every artifact is a venue-specific demonstration of a performance, and
a cultural venue needs to be maintained to supply the meaning to this
artifact. (There is, and I have, empirical proof of this assertion- it
is more than axiomatic to cultural evolution.)
But remembering is not the same, even the selfsame, as creating. And,
yes, in order to create, we do need a brain. In order to remember a
cultural specific, we need a brain, and a venue, and an observer.
Without all, as you say, the external and the internal, culture is not
possible.
The performance model truly _accepts_ this triad of condition, and
calls the necessary and sufficient agent of this cultural continuation
and evolution the 'meme'. (Which, AFAIK, was the original proposed use
of this word- the unit of cultural evolution.) As a performer, a venue,
and an observer are all necessary and sufficient to continue or to
mutate a cultural specific, and the blanket condition wherein all these
agents are active _is_ a performance, I adopted the performance model
of cultural evolution for its sheer parsimony. For me, nothing else is
sufficient to explain cultural evolution, and putting the meme in the
brain only does one third of the job. Last I knew, one third is a good
two-thirds short.
For one to remember one's birthday, all three agents need to be active.
As I've shown and you've agreed. Remove one of them, and there _is_ no
birthday, regardless of the fact there most certainly was a birth. But
even that has no need itself to be remembered.
- Wade
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun 15 Jun 2003 - 15:56:31 GMT