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Hi Joe,
Thanks for your response. What if I created a computer system or a robot that had the ability to immitate the behavior of other robots. Suppose I incorporated a small piece of software that enabled the robot to write itself new programs that allowed it to simulate observed behavior. I would not need to give the robot a sense of self, but wouldn't it be able to assimilate memes nonetheless? Of course, it could be suggested that the robot would need to view itself as a unified entity that could copy the activities of another, but I'm not sure if that amounts to a "sense of self" or consciousness.
I think the issue you raised: "where would the memes live before they created us?" can be answered by going back to the biological analogy. Genes did not live anywhere before lifeforms can along. They appeared with life. The same could be said of memes. They appeared when the first human mimicked the behavior of another, and it was from there that the modern mind developed. It is hard to imagine a mind with absolutely no memes. It would be a dull, non-eventful blank space.
Brent.
______________________
--Brent Silby 2000
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----- Original Message -----
From: Joe E. Dees
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2000 3:05 PM
Subject: Re: Purported mystical "knowledge"
Date sent: Thu, 05 Oct 2000 14:20:55 +1300
From: Brent Silby <phil066@it.canterbury.ac.nz>
Subject: Re: Purported mystical "knowledge"
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> >A cognitive ecosystem is quite different from the Gaian ecosystem in the sense that mutation and selection for replication are to some degree a function of conscious decision, will, innovation and experimentation. Most memes 'mean' something to people, rather than just blindly being, as are
flora and fauna for our planet, and are intentionally rather than randomly modified and selected for and/or against by us on the basis of these meanings, and what they mean to and for us.<
>
> Hello, I am new here and hope that I can offer some useful comments (please forgive me if I have misinterpreted the discussion thread).
>
> When I think about memetic evolution, I go all-the-way with the biological analogy. In my way of thinking, "conscious decision" or "intentionality" are just collections of memes. When memes enter our minds, they will either "fit in" with the memetic environment, or they won't. The ones that
don't whither away to nothing. The ones that do sometimes mutate. This mutation might be the result of an encoding error or some accidental blending of ideas. Of course, the mutations might not always yield a successful meme. For every successful meme, there are heaps of unsuccessful ones.
>
This viewpoint, proselytized in Blackmore's "THE MEME
MACHINE", is exactly why her book was widely panned - a book
purportedly ABOUT memes was in fact infected by one (and not
just the 'meme' meme). The Buddhizing of memetics according to
the Zen Doctrine of No-Mind, that is, claiming that all the mind is is
a collection of memes, does not work in memetics, any more than
it worked when it was proposed in semiotics (the mind is just a
collection of signs) and behavioral psychology (the mind is just a
collection of stimulus-response conditionings - refuted by cognitive
science studies of innovation and exploration). Memetic
replication requires self-conscious selection and mutation of
proferred meanings by will and free choice, for memes are not of
the world of being, but of the world of meaning. If individual memes
are not conscious in and of themselves (and they are not), then
they cannot mean anything to each other, and thus there is no
memetic criteria for purposive selection - yet purposively based
selection does happen. One cannot get the inhabitants of the
system confused with the system itself, and while that makes no
difference terrestrially (there is a lack of purpose in genetic
evolution), it makes a huge difference cognitively (in memetic
evolution). Don't forget; we create the memes; if we were created
by them, one reaches the absurd conclusion that we cannot be
here, or have evolved at all to this stage, for the memes that must
have created us could not have appeared from nothing, and would
have required a human brain in which to live. Where did, or could
they, live BEFORE they created us? Simple answer: no place.
Thus the container is prior to the contained, the replicator is prior to
the replicated, the mutator is prior to the mutated, and the selector
is prior to the selected. While it is true that memes and brains
evolutionarily coevolved, this could only have happened after the
advent of conscious self-awareness.
>
> Brent.
> ______________________
> --Brent Silby 2000
>
> [Please Try These Links]
> [BasePage]: http://www.geocities.com/brent_silby
> [Discussion Archive and Links to ePapers]:
> http://www.geocities.com/immortal_thoughts_home
>
> Room 601a
> Department of Philosophy
> University of Canterbury
> Email: b.silby@phil.canterbury.ac.nz
> __________________________________________
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