RE: Silent memes

From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Tue 08 Jul 2003 - 04:13:22 GMT

  • Next message: joedees@bellsouth.net: "Nonverbal Communication"

    From: "Scott Chase" <ecphoric@hotmail.com> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: RE: Silent memes Date sent: Tue, 08 Jul 2003 00:01:50 -0400 Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk

    >
    >
    >
    >
    > >From: "Richard Brodie" <richard@brodietech.com>
    > >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    > >To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
    > >Subject: RE: Silent memes
    > >Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2003 17:23:08 -0700
    > >
    > >The fact that two different computer programs can print "hello world"
    > >does not lend credence to the notion that the printing caused the
    > >program rather than the other way around.
    > >
    > Yet the programs are indeed different and one might not look at these
    > programs and see isomorphy where one can abstract something out that
    > can be called a selfsame meme. Two different programs or the ideas
    > that led to these programs (programs being artifacts in their own
    > right as they are human creations on a disk somewhere perhaps on a PC
    > with Microsoft or an *evil* Apple Macintosh ;-) can lead to a similar
    > (or selfsame?) outcome (the printout).
    >
    > Trying to arrive at the "hello world" outcome did cause these
    > different programs to be written by people. In a sense, the printout
    > (the goal to be achieved) did cause the programs via the mediation of
    > human ingenuity.
    >
    > Shifting gears a little, with people as individuals within a culture
    > (versus your computer example as these computers aren't learning from
    > or exchanging with each other in the process of creating a selfsame
    > printout) we are looking at efficacy, meaning which way the causal
    > arrows point in reference to a situation. This may become a nasty
    > chicken and egg problem, but if it is the behavior that is selfsame
    > and the ideas which lead to this behavior that differ, these ideas are
    > not selfsame and one cannot easily argue for a selfsame meme at the
    > level of memory, but this selfsameness can possibly be abstracted out
    > at the level of behavior or something more externalized like an
    > artifact.
    >
    > Looking at an artifact could cause differing ideations in two people,
    > yet given these differing ideations the two people could still produce
    > a similar reproduction (ectype) of the original object. The ideas will
    > be more different in each person than the objects they create using
    > these ideas.
    >
    However, the relationships between the ideas and their respective environing cognitive gestalts would most likely be much more alike than either the ideas or the cognitive environments taken alone (simpliciter).

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