LeDoux vs. Rose on Semon

From: Scott Chase (osteopilus@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun 08 May 2005 - 05:30:47 GMT

  • Next message: Kate Distin: "Re: LeDoux vs. Rose on Semon"

    I'm finding both LeDoux's _Synaptic Self_ and Rose's
    _The Future of the Brain_ excellent reads. I like Rose's critical bent. He's a little light on his quick dismissal of memetics and Blackmore, not really delving into it and referring the reader to Midgley instead, but he's especially heavy on EP and Pinker.

    Rose cites LeDoux's book and refers to LeDoux as synaptocentric (kinda parallel to the term genocentric I suppose).

    LeDoux, when he's talking about the engram concept mentions Lashley of course but actually cites Semon for his coinage of the term and refers the reader to Daniel Schacter's book about Semon _Stranger Behind the Engram_. Rose refers in his book to the retrieval concept of ecphory but attributes this term to Tulving, which is only partly correct, since Semon originated it. That would be like saying how _War of the Worlds_ is coming out this summer, but not mentioning that it first originated as an awesome classic sci-fi flick in the early 50's. Sure the new version will be more elaborate and technically sophisticated, but the earlier version had its merits.

    This is in the context of Rose saying how memory is transformed in the process of retrieval and its a dynamic process. If memory isn't static but dynamic and continually remade, what implications does this have for neuromemes? Can replicants survive the mnemic transformative process, if they were actually a result of replication instead of tranformation in the process of being passed from noggin to noggin in the first place? Thus there could be a tranformation between mindbrains and also one within a mindbrain. The obstacles for replicationists to overcome continue to pile up.

                    
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