From: Van oost Kenneth (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Sat 05 Jul 2003 - 19:17:17 GMT
----- Original Message -----
From: <joedees@bellsouth.net>
> A person could go to a library to write and be writing a scientific
> treatise, a suicide note, a love letter, or a pornographic poem, just as
> the same person could do on a sunlit grassy hillside. WHAT is being
> written, the MESSAGE that is being ENCODED, is the meme.
< I agree of course, but the message could be just a performance and
it evolves too, it is being selected for or against_ or do you consider the
fact that solely the informaion is of importance to the observer and not
the form/ container by /in which the info is distributed as the truth !?
That thus the ways by which the selfsame memes are communicated
are of no importance_ while the information itself is manisfestly so !?
In such a manner you completely ignore the environment out of which
memes originate ! The interaction by which anew memes are formu-
lated is stipulated outside the actual environment of the mind_ spea-
king/ writing/ signing/ etc. are although part of the cognitive environ-
ment_ not made up as of being a piece of that puzzle.
The interaction/ the intertwining of memes/ words/ writing/ signing/
symbols...are made in the ' outside ' environment_ in the reality of
our daily routine. Performances/ gestures, the changing of one letter
provoke others to change and it is within such a contex that our
cognitive abilities make us understand what is going on.
Once one learns how to speak or write, and memorizes a sufficient
> vocabulary, an indefinite number of memes may be communicated via
> the common code. Memetics is an irreduceably SEMANTIC enterprize,
> inextricably intertwined with signification. Memes have individual
> communicable MEANINGS; otherwise they could not compete with one
> another for replication in a cognitive environment, for they would be
> indistinguishable.
< I don 't deny this, but IMO there are 2 ' memes '_ writing as such,
learning it, learning to speak is only the first part of a 2 way- model.
If you learn to write, you begin with abc up to z, mostly done in calli-
graphic writing, but is there already syntax or meaning !?
Oh, a can stand for ape or for apple, and z for zebra but this holds
thus the semantic enterprise within you talk about !?
I doubt that the human mind at that age, at that rate, is capable of
giving meaning/ of semantic doing in the real sense of the word to
understand the connection made between a and ape.
The ape is in this solely a tool to remerber ' a ' more easily, the
kids need such a kind of association to memorize.
Making the connection beween a and ape and understanding it,
is IMO the second mode.
You have a primair group ( writing ) and the secondary group
consist out of the ' what '.
Writing a letter is the first meme, what you write is the second...
And that information comprises the meme, no doubt, but a
performance can just do the same. That meaning is of impor-
tance for meme survival and propagation, no doubt, but like
Keith acknowledged but not in such words, memes don 't have
to be expressed in words, performances can do that trick too.
That Wade, makes of the performance the motor behind cul-
tural evolution is his prerogative in his own right.
Regards,
Kenneth
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