From: Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Wed 13 Apr 2005 - 23:00:10 GMT
cf. the extensive recent stuff on artefacts and ~meme (which means not 
the trivial dinner party 'cultural virion' conception) [re]generation, 
as I mentioned in parentheses previously. It's not all about backwards 
baseball caps y'know.
Bill Spight wrote:
> Dear Scott,
> 
>> This is just wrong, surely? The example you give is, if anything,
>> evidence that the child has taken past experience (~meme) of
>> purposively dropping things (this is equivalent to an artefact
>> causing the reconstitution of a meme as recently discussed), almost
>> uniformly while standing still, and reused that ~meme in a new
>> context without decomposing it _at all_.
>>
> 
> Does  '~meme' mean 'non-meme'? ;-)
> 
> Where is the culture in this? Where is the transmission? The so-called 
> meme, "Things fall straight down," is not part of modern scientific 
> culture. People don't transmit these ideas to children, nor do they 
> mischievously set things up so that children get these wrong ideas.
> 
> Children have minds of their own, and do not wait for the culture to 
> teach them everything. If they had to, we would not be such a successful 
> species.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Bill
> 
> P. S. For a time when I was three years old I thought that calves gave 
> chocolate milk. Nobody suggested that idea to me. You can see the 
> analogical thinking. To be sure, the idea of chocolate milk is cultural. 
> But not the idea that calves give milk. Nor the overall analogy.
> 
> Now, some people may believe that analogical thinking is cultural. I 
> strongly doubt it.
> 
> ===============================================================
> 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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