From: Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Fri 22 Apr 2005 - 23:31:30 GMT
Bang on :)
Kate Distin wrote:
> Scott Chase wrote:
>
>> In his 1958 paper "Cerebral organization and behavior"
>> here's an interesting quote from Karl Lashley to
>> ruminate upon, given the tension that exists between
>> notions of replication, transformation and
>> re-creation.
>>
>> Lashley writes (found in Orbach, p 371):
>>
>> [KL] "We remember the content of a book, not in the
>> author's words but in meanings which fit into previous
>> knowledge of the subject. During the reading the
>> meanings are not necessarily formulated clearly in
>> verbal or other thought forms, but they may be so
>> formulated later. That is, associations may be formed
>> during reading with traces in the system which are not
>> activated above tonic levels during learning."
>> Would this passage support replication, transformation
>> or recreation? Words are supposedly "digital" and we'd
>> thus assume a replication based on transmission of
>> language content, yet Lashley's saying we don't recall
>> the author's words but meanings. Previous knowledge
>> may influence how what we read fits into our mnemic trace system (or
>> engram store). If we're not actually
>> replicating the author's words in our knowledge base,
>> maybe we are transforming them based on our personal
>> history or we recreate them later? I'll need to digest
>> Sperber and Bloch for more on these tangents.
>>
>
> Isn't this description also true of any cultural input? If I report the
> content of a telephone conversation then I paraphrase it according to my
> interepretation, rather than repeating it verbatim - just as I would do
> if asked to recall the content of a book.
>
> This is partly due to memory constraints: not having a photographic
> memory I cannot recall the author's words. But if he has expressed
> himself clearly enough then I can remember what he was trying to say
> through those words. Any information needs a medium for transmission -
> but what gets tranmitted is the information itself.
>
> As you know I regard Sperber and Bloch as both much too pessimistic
> about the possibility of cultural replication. When we read a text of
> course we bring our existing memes to it. The content of the text may
> be recombined with these existing memes to produce new memes - which we
> then incorrectly assign to the text. (And then when we go back to the
> text later we are surprised and a little humbled to find that our
> recollection is not justified by the text!) But this doesn't mean that
> it's not *possible* for the information contained in the text to be
> replicated in our minds. If a child wanted to know what his teacher had
> meant by "Einstein's famous equation", and her parent showed her a book
> in which was written "E=mc2" - and if later she proudly tells her
> grandparent that she knows what Einstein's famous equation is, and
> repeats it correctly - then in what sense has the information in the
> text not "really" been replicated in her mind? (We can argue about her
> understanding of what the equation means, but she is now able to repeat,
> write down, convey to others the symbols that she read in the text.)
>
> How much the information in a text "sticks and spreads" - how much of an
> effect it is able to produce on the reader's behaviour - will also be
> influenced by the reader's existing memes. But again this is not to do
> with transformation, but with the affects of context on a replicator's
> selection and effectiveness.
>
> Kate
>
> ===============================================================
> 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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri 22 Apr 2005 - 23:48:40 GMT