Re: earliest memetics paper? and a question.

From: Francesca S. Alcorn (unicorn@greenepa.net)
Date: Tue 17 Feb 2004 - 01:10:58 GMT

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    > > From: "Scott Chase" <ecphoric@hotmail.com>
    > > I'd have to see the quote where Jung talks about Mendelian units in its
    >> larger context. His view of the psyche was that it rests upon a substratum
    >> called the collective unconscious and this could be broken into components
    >> he called archetypes. He might have been toying with the notion that the
    >> Mendelian units are the bases of inheritance for the collective
    >unconscious,
    >> and this substratum when broken into archetypes would be a primitive sort
    >of
    >> modularity not unlike that celebrated by the ev psychers. Archetypes could
    >> be closer to culturgens than memes as a concept. Cultugens IIRC are more
    >> strongly leashed to genes where memes more freely operate. Jung placed
    >> archetypes within the depths of the psyche, where memes operate outside
    >the
    > > person as cultural entities.
    >
    > Ted said:
    >
    >This is where neural reductionism becomes incompatible with the study of
    >culture. Brains come in discrete units. If minds are really just brains,
    >then a collective unconscious would require a collective brain. But a brain
    >is only one perspective onto a two-sided phenomenon. What is brain from the
    >outside is consciousness from the inside. The underlying reality is mind.
    >Unlike brains and consciousness, mind need not be individual and discrete.
    >Yes, we have individual minds, but these minds can be regarded as
    >*individuations* of collective mentality. Rather than six billion buckets
    >of water, we have six billion waves rising and falling on a single ocean.

    Are you suggesting that the "organism" level of memetics is not culture but our collective mind? Has anyone read "The Symbiotic Man" yet (typical sexist title). de Rosney suggests that human being
    "are becoming the neurons of the Earth."

    frankie

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