Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id FAA04358 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 5 Oct 2000 05:17:47 +0100 Message-Id: <200010050404.AAA01732@mail1.lig.bellsouth.net> From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2000 23:04:57 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Purported mystical "knowledge" In-reply-to: <002201c02e77$931840c0$25d910ac@oemcomputer> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01b) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Date sent: Thu, 05 Oct 2000 15:52:15 +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
> 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.
>
No, there is a difference between the blind storage and replication
of pattern and the meaningful recognition of an informational
significance to such pattern. These would mean nothing to the
robots in question (nothing would); only to we who view them and
created the robots in the first place. They would only be memes to
us, not to them. If we (the self-conscious) weren't around, there
would be no one for memes to be memes to, or in, or between.
>
> 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.
>
Of course memes have been both symbiont and virulent, and we
have coevolved, but there is a difference to be drawn between the
genesis of life (which required such a replicative genetic principle)
and the emergence of conscious self-awareness within it (which did
not require a memetic principle). The higher apes pass the mirror
test for self-recognition, and are thus rudimentary memetic beings.
They modify implements for specific use in the wild, and learn how
to do so by watching and imitating others. The first minds with self-
awareness were indeed impoverished places containing little
meaning compared to our own, but even though memetic
complexity and permeability and cortical size co-evolved, the
advent of conscious self-awareness had to occur first, for meaning
cannot occur in the absence of a mean-eror, in other words, the
structure of signification requires the presence of the components
of signifier, sign, and signified, whereas simple stimulus-response
does not require same. We are memetic beings precisely because
we can transcend our genetically programmed species-specific
instincts; otherwise, behavior could not change, and memes could
not be propagated.
>
> 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
> __________________________________________
>
> ----- 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 succes
sful 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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