From: Chris Taylor (chris.taylor@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Tue 24 Jan 2006 - 16:07:26 GMT
Hi.
> As a slight aside, this is one of the key reasons why I don't go for the
> mind-as-a-memeplex view. Philosophers talk about "propositional
> attitudes" - i.e. the fact that we can take a variety of different
> attitudes to any given proposition: we can wish/fear/believe/disbelieve
> that "it's going to rain today" or "the earth is flat" or whatever. We
> respond to incoming memes - we are not identical with them.
This is not incompatible, in fact the memes-only thing provides
the most compact explanation. The diversity of responses is
purely a result of the diversity of memes in there, and the
difference between awareness and acceptance relates to previous
discussions about having the 'same' idea.
To properly internalise an idea requires that it becomes
integrated into the (memetic) ecological web: Imagine a predator
that came across to an island in sufficient numbers to be able
to breed (i.e. not a fleeting thing); firstly, would it find
food, would it be outcompeted? Secondly, assuming it took or
created a niche (acceptance), then went locally extinct, would
something else fill that niche? These ideas are analogous to the
meme-based model of acceptance.
The fundamental issue though is as I said related to having the
same idea; when we observe a meme we do not 'import' it in _any_
sense, we simply model it with our own resident memes in a kind
of phenotypic mimicry (cf. previous post talking about
inheritance of emotional linkage if you want to examine this
further -- try to think of new-to-you ideas that nevertheless
seem to have inappropriate emotional resonance). So acceptance
is impacted by the similarity of things that are already there,
the compatibility with things that are alredy there, and by the
facility with which an appropriate model can be constructed.
I know that was all a bit obtuse but I don't have time to draft
it up properly and for me all this is still part-formed, as the
bio analogies can only stretch so far.
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chris.taylor@ebi.ac.uk
http://psidev.sf.net/
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