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(I sent this 4 hours ago but it didn't seem to make it through.)
Joe,
I think you are using a different definition of memes than the standard one that I have come to know (via Dawkins and Dennett). As far as I know, memes are simply self copying instructions that give rise to behavior that is not a part of a creatures innate behavioral repertoire. There does not need to be any understanding. Consider the "waving goodbye to someone" meme. These are memes that are assimilated at a very young age (even before language). At such a young age there is no meaning behind the immitation of the action, but it is a meme nonetheless.
You wrote :"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."
I agree but I do not think this entails "understanding" or "meaning" or "consciousness" of the memes. It is true that the brain is flexible and can support new behavior, but it does not follow that the new behavior has to be "understood".
I think it is plausible to suggest that consciousness emerged as the complexity of memetic structures increased in the brain.
Brent.
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----- Original Message -----
From: Joe E. Dees
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2000 5:04 PM
Subject: Re: Purported mystical "knowledge"
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.
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