Re: venue examples

From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu 19 Jun 2003 - 22:02:25 GMT

  • Next message: Scott Chase: "Re: Idea, habit, meme"

    >From: "Wade T. Smith" <wade.t.smith@verizon.net>
    >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    >To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    >Subject: Re: venue examples
    >Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 16:54:47 -0400
    >
    >
    >On Thursday, June 19, 2003, at 12:39 AM, Richard wrote:
    >
    >>a course with some very clever design points.
    >
    >>which is conveniently offered in the back of the room during the break
    >>right after this module.
    >
    >>This is a controlled, deliberate attempt to induce learning
    >
    >>they are predictable induced learnings that result in meme replication.
    >
    >Ah, venue.
    >
    >
    Wade, in your emphasis on venue and the "out there" (I'm talking externalism, not X-files) are you paralleling the sociological emphasis in culture as a *sui generis* phenomenon? Steve Pinker in his rather nice book
    _The Blank Slate_ (which is growing on me like mold on blue cheese) highlights the focus of some of the environmentalists like Durkheim with their emphasis on social facts to the relative exclusion of individual and internal factors. Is your "venue" akin to a collective representational social construct? Unlike Pinker I'm not adverse to externalist emphases. That's the sociological tradition of Marx, Durkheim et al, but I'm thinking that individual psychology does need to be accounted for at some point. For you it's whether the locus of memetic research should be at the external versus internal level, the external being putatively the efficacious aspect, socifacts and artifacts thus winning out over mentifacts. For me, being agnostic on memes I can't say I'm sold on the externalist emphasis *vis a vis* memetics either, but share your caution as to whether memes are "in there".

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