From: Joel.M Dimech (j.marie.dimech@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Wed 26 Oct 2005 - 12:38:54 GMT
Keith,
>>> Joel provides an example here. I can think of hundreds of other examples. What do they have in common? What evolutionary forces caused human minds to exhibit this psychological trait? I don't know the answers, (...)
>>As to you current example, I know the answers. In my opinion it's not necessary to call upon evolutionary forces. It's a mere problem of vocabulary, background, and translation. Embryogenesis, organogenesis, >> and "physical development of the embryo" have three distinct meanings as I am used to these terms. I forgot to account for this fact.
> Sorry, I should have looked at the headers and realized the translation problem.
No problem. It may be difficult to translate thoughts from one language to another one; what you have to translate is not a language, but a cultural way of thinking. As I said once, each language develops a linguistic reality of its own. Each linguistic-reality favours its memes in the first place; it ignores other memes, this way it makes difficult their expression.
Languages are inherited from the past; they have a big inertia and show the most important sources of cultural anomaly. The issue is that languages may cause fractal semes; these semes oppose the natural functioning of the mind (in my vocabulary, seme = meme + underlying structure. Fractal semes = linguistic or social semes that arise from the use of language). Psychological projections are normal in the instance of fractal semes; these linguistic semes were not born straight from the human mind. The difference is enormous, the use of language impose linguistic semes on the mind, and more precisely at the level of the unconscious. Linguistic semes are by-products that exist outside and oppose our almighty capacity of decision. We constantly use language, and doing so we are supposed to constantly use our capacity of decision. Linguistic semes oppose our capacity of decision, and this way they cause effects onto the mind : variable feelings of being in a powerless state, and variable feelings of insecurity.The effects of linguistic semes are unconscious, constant and real within a given linguistic community. And all languages are not equivalent, some languages cause more linguistic semes than others do.
Roughly speaking and according to Sigmund Freud, the concept of God is a projection of our capacity of decision (when it's not available, when one feels powerless and insecure); from this respect the current debate Intelligent Design vs Darwinism is very interesting.
> There is good evolutionary reasons for ideas to be hard to change, especially those ideas in classed that are more important to keep a group together than being important for survival. But it is a difficult question as to how brains classify memes like this.
Durkheim was not all wrong stating that social facts might come to a life of their own.
Joel
> > > --- Derek Gatherer wrote:
> >(...)
> > > > In the face of this avalanche of evidence, how can you, or anyone,
> > still believe otherwise?
> >
> > > That's actually an excellent question to ask in a memetics group.
> > Rather than argue about the subject (which is in my opinion solidly as
> > Derek states) the memetics meta question is why people believe in things
> > that are clearly just not so?
> >Joel provides an example here. I can think of hundreds of other examples.
> >What do they have in common? What evolutionary forces caused human minds
> >to exhibit this psychological trait?
> >I don't know the answers, (...)
> >
> >As to you current exemple, I know the answers. In my opinion it's not
> >necessary to call upon evolutionary forces. It's a mere problem of
> >vocabulary, background, and translation. Embryogenesis, organogenesis, and
> >"physical development of the embryo" have three distinct meanings as I am
> >used to these terms. I forgot to account for this fact.
> >
> >Joel
>
> Sorry, I should have looked at the headers and realized the translation
> problem.
>
> Still, there are lot of other examples where people hang on to memes that
> are obviously wrong. I remember amazing hostility by a senior scientist I
> knew against plate tectonics years and years after it had become well
> understood and supported by mountains of evidence.
>
> There is good evolutionary reasons for ideas to be hard to change,
> especially those ideas in classed that are more important to keep a group
> together than being important for survival. But it is a difficult question
> as to how brains classify memes like this.
>
> Keith Henson
>
>
> ===============================================================
> 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 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 : Wed 26 Oct 2005 - 12:59:07 GMT