From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Tue 09 Sep 2003 - 02:31:48 GMT
By Joe E. Dees, crossposted from the Virus BBS:
In my mind, memetics is presently more of a perspective,
doctrine, or theory, in other words, a philosophy, than it is a
science. Particular applications of this theory, such as double-
blind experiments to discover, say, whether the more simple
falsehood or the more complex truth is more readily accepted by
others, may qualify as scientific investigations. But science has to
do with the subsumptions of a restricted class of particulars to a
common structure, whereas philosophy proposes general models
that are supposedly applicable universally, to unobserved as well
as observed phenomena, as a matter of logical principle. Thus, the
'soft' sciences, such as psychology, sociology, anthropology,
political science and economics, are rarely strictly scientific in the
same sense that, say, physics and chemistry may claim to be.
However, this fact does not invalidate the memetic stance,
any more than it invalidates the stances of phenomenology,
genetic epistemology, semiotics or hermeneutics. In fact, theory,
while not in itself science, is indispensable to scientific inquiry. A
case in point is the relation between cognitive philosophy and
cognitive science.
Cognitive philosophy encompasses such perspectives as
the gestaltist stance, the associationist stance, the connectionist
stance, etc. These stances are basically investigation engines, that
is, they correlate and structure the data which cognitive science
supplies, then propose logical entailments or possibilities, that is,
other things that must or might be true if the correlations and
structurations into which these systems fit the data are indeed
correct. The consequences of these further suppositions are then
cast into testable hypotheses upon which experiments are
conducted, and the data are fed back into the models, where they
enrich, elaborate, extrapolate and refine further developments of
the stances/theories.
What we have going on here is a dialectic, but not a
Hegelian one, where a thesis and an antithesis are subsumed as
special cases by an encompassing synthesis. Rather, we have a
continuously evolving and mutually informing bouncing between
theory and practice, or, in other words, an evolving praxis.
Feedback from experiment winnow out some theoretical
possibilities, while suggesting others; theoretical
innovations/advances suggest areas where novel experiments
might reveal new scientific knowledge. The two nurture each
other.
In fact, the philosophical stances I mentioned before are
themselves interrelated in a broader overarching structure.
Phenomenology and genetic epistemology are both stances
addressing the realm of being, rather than the realm of meaning.
Phenomenology is the introspective (from within the
consciousness of the investigator) study of the invariant
perceptual and conceptual structures which are congealed in the
matured, that is, the self-and-other-consciously aware, mind,
while genetic epistemology is an extrospective (from the data
collected from questioned and observed others) study of the
functional paths by which mind evolves and develops into self-
and-other-conscious awareness. The same relationship obtains, in
the realm of meaning rather than that of being, between semiotics
and memetics; semiotics studies the structure of meaning-relation,
that is the triadic relation between self, observed and symbol,
whereas memetics addresses the inculcation of this symbolic
relationship in the developing mind. Although our perceptual
apparati provisionally reach an end-state where things like
causality, conservation and completion are internalized and
provide a template within which mind and world can relate in the
realm of being through the dialectic of perception and action, we
forever are developing and evolving new meanings by which we
interpret and categorize our experiences of being, as well as
discarding obscelescent ones. Presence is the ur-meaning as well
as the ur-being; hermeneutics held that meaning was prior to
being and existentialism held that being was prior to meaning, but
it is now known that, for the self-and-other-conscious awareness,
whose self-identity and self-existence in the face of the other its
(things) and thous (people), (a self-existence and self-identity
which itself was purposefully developed via engagement with
responsive others (parents and caretakers)), that being and
meaning are co-primordial.
Thus memetics takes its rightful place in a larger structure
that includes semiotics, genetic epistemology and
phenomenology, a structure which itself is informed by the co-
primordiality if existence and interpretation.
My Present Addendum:
If memetics is indeed a philosophical stance, as I have
above maintained, than it must be informable by the rest of
philosophical inquiry. There are three branches to philosphy; they
are logic (theory of necessary conclusions given postulated
premises, that is, theory of form), epistemology (theory of
knowledge - I would include ontology here) and axiology (theory
of value). This last includes aesthetics and ethics, the two main
attributes of cultures.
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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
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