Re: meme as catalytic indexical

From: Van oost Kenneth (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Thu 22 Jan 2004 - 20:34:29 GMT

  • Next message: Van oost Kenneth: "Re: meme as catalytic indexical"

      ----- Original Message -----
      From: M Lissack
      To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
      Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 2:08 AM
      Subject: Re: meme as catalytic indexical

      Ted:

      Questions of cause and prediction are shifted from the memes to the environmental niches of which they are a semiotic sign. There exists a huge literature on causation and prediction regrading environmental interactions at the level of niches and agents. The shift to meme as catalytic indexical means we not only look to the environmental niche but also to the functionality of the meme as a catalyst and to its carrying capacity as an indexical. Both carrying capacity and catalytic fuction can be studied and statistically examined. Replication and resilience become characterizations of the environmental niche not of the meme. The environmental niche embodies a much richer set of variables than does the meme. Thus, we can look at resources, energy flow, constraints, external and internal pressures, life and death cycles and rates, competition, cooperation etc.

      << If we take Dace his example about racism....my take on this goes like follows,

      Memes, in other words, are thus not just the matter, ( material of how) of what
      I think about a situation; they are somehow inscribed in that situation itself.
      It is no good my reminding myself that I am opposed to racism as I sit down
      on a park bench marked Whites Only; by acting of sitting on it, I have
      supported for, propagated, perpetuated...(questions of cause and prediction !?)
      forver racistic memes.
      The environmental niche of where racism fits in, has thus indeed a much richer
      set of variables than does the meme itself !?

      Doesn 't this involve a more ' performative ' rather than an ' constative ' language,
      memes belong to the class which are getting things done, rather than to class
      of just describing !?

      There is a difference between sitting on the park bench and expressing racistic
      memes than just saying the- meme- of- racism.

      Regards,

      Kenneth

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