Re: Durkheim redux

From: Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Sat 09 Apr 2005 - 17:33:44 GMT

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    Now _this_ is the fundamental issue that underlies all (virtually) that I spew into this forum: I understand that the common usage of 'meme' follows those rules exactly, and in essence dwells in the sociological sphere if you like; but then we keep blurring into patterns in heads and all that and it is never clear who understands/means what by what they are saying.

    I'd like to see two things: the first is a clear demarcation between on
      one hand the phenomenological modelling of persistent patterns in society, and on the other hand the way minds work, which is the second thing that I think we could be addessing here (although this is only superficially similar to memetics as the brain is not a collection of phene-copying Lamarckian people, it is a massively-interconnected analog computer) I would assert mind is a microcosm of society in a sense (but not a completely literal one, just another useful analogy). But we need to get shot of these mystery high-level black boxes in the mind doing complex processing (excluding i/o stuff like visual processing).

    Something that may throw light on this, and which, by luck is semi-germane, is the source of novelty; which is mostly the thought-experiment-remixing of existing ideas' bits, plus error (which is rarely a good thing). That is very much something that only happens in minds really. Which as I say throws a small light on some of the kinds of mechanisms we need to think about.

    Cheers, Chris.

    Bill Spight wrote:
    > Dear Kenneth,
    >
    >> But what if the individual ( personal) memeset is working totally on its
    >> own, with no outside connection or attachment !?
    >> What then !?
    >
    >
    > Then we do not have memes, because memes are cultural.
    >
    > Ciao,
    >
    > Bill
    >
    > ===============================================================
    > 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
    >
    >

    -- 
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
      HUPO PSI: GPS -- psidev.sf.net
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    ===============================================================
    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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