From: Kate Distin (memes@distin.co.uk)
Date: Wed 30 Mar 2005 - 20:10:36 GMT
Price, Ilfryn wrote:
> Kate
>
>
>
>>This is becoming a humblingly familiar refrain in my posts, but I'm just
>
> not familiar enough with Derrida to know whether that's what I'm
>
> saying! Could you explain a bit more about what he says about discourses?>
>
>
>
> I wouldn't but see Gatherer (1977)
> http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/1997/vol1/gatherer_dg.html who is good on the
> subject, or has assiduously studied Dennett.
>
>
>
> Derek I hope you don't mind being quoted
>
>
>
> "Saussure's theory revolves around the notions of the `signifier' and
> the `signified'. To use an example provided by Sarup ([37]
> <http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/1997/vol1/gatherer_dg.html#37#37> p. 3), in
> the case of an apple, the signifier is the sound image made by the word
> `apple', but it is the concept of an apple which is the signified (not,
> as one might imagine, the apple itself). The `sign' in Saussure's
> terminology is the relationship between the signifier and the signified,
> and it is arbitrary, depending on convention. A case has already been
> made for equating the propositions and pseudo-propositions of Logical
> Atomism with memes, but in this case the correspondence is not so easy
> to tease out. Is the signified the meme? or the signifier? or the sign?
>
> A further difficulty is provided by the fact that Saussure's followers,
> the Structuralists, like the Logical Atomists, were not particularly
> interested in change. Structuralism emphasises the study of structural
> relations existing at one moment in time, ie. the `synchronic', over the
> way that these relations change through time, ie. the `diachronic', and
> thus relegates evolution to a position of lesser importance. As
> Structuralism has turned into Post-Structuralism, there has been a
> tendency to concentrate on the signifier rather than the signified,
> which has been interpreted as an attempt to remove the one-to-one
> correspondence between propositions and reality. This presents a
> considerable philosophical challenge (especially for Anglo-Americans),
> but in effect it brings Structuralism closer to memetics. The potential
> ambiguity present in Saussure's complex triadic system of signifier,
> signified and sign is removed. For the Post-Structuralists, the
> signifier is now the dominant unit and can be considered as analogous to
> the meme. We thus have `the play of the signifiers' (le jeu des
> signifiers) much beloved of the school of Post-Structuralism known as
> the Deconstructionists. The process of breaking a text down into its
> component signifiers is a similarly reductionist process to memetics.
> Memeticists analysing a complex belief system are concerned with
> identifying, dissecting and describing the memes that are present in it,
> in terms of their replicative powers, adaptiveness, selfishness etc.
>
> The leading Deconstructionist Jacques Derrida has presented the notion
> that we are made out of language. This seems a strange idea to many
> scientists and Anglo-American philosophers. However, Daniel Dennett [10]
> <http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/1997/vol1/gatherer_dg.html#10#10> has used the
> meme concept to say something very similar about consciousness. Dennett
> sees memes as a kind of software for the `virtual machine' of
> consciousness which runs on the `hardware of the brain'. To say that we
> (or our consciousnesses) are `made of' language, following Derrida, is
> not too far from Dennett's view that our consciousnesses are `made' from
> the complex interaction of memes"
>
> Discourse as I understand it is form of meta-signifier. I tend to agree
> with Derek as above.
>
>
>
> If
>
I still don't know whether I'm saying that memes are discourses. I do
know that I disagree with Dennett's analysis of the relationship between
memes and the mind.
>
>
>>Wrt to the title - I was kind of surprised that nobody had used it
>
> before, and mildly surprised that nobody at the CUP questioned my use of
>
> it (though the subtitle was their suggestion not mine). Richard
>
> Dawkins certainly wishes I hadn't used it,>
>
>
>
> Did he say why?
>
>
>
> If
>
He suggested that the decent thing would have been to avoid this title,
as others have, since he might one day wish to use it himself.
Kate
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