Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id CAA13330 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 26 Oct 2000 02:59:17 +0100 Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 14:54:00 +1300 From: Brent Silby <phil066@it.canterbury.ac.nz> Subject: Re: Defining and moving on To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Message-id: <000a01c03eef$c8d9d9c0$25d910ac@oemcomputer> X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 Content-type: multipart/alternative; boundary="Boundary_(ID_Y/TWS7TShm8GMNUnGO6+IA)" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-priority: Normal References: <B61CE58B.538C%bbenzon@mindspring.com> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
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>>William Benzon wrote "It's like adopting a Ptolemaic model of the solar system and arguing over whether to call themoon Fritz or Freddie. Who cares?" <<
Do you really think that terminology is unimportant? To take your astronomical example, how could people debate whether a Ptolemaic view was correct if they did not have a common terminology? They needed a standard name for the moon so that they could compare predictions made by competing theories. Without a standardized terminology they would have no way of knowing that they were talking about the same object, and so debate would be futile.
The same is true of memetics.
I agree, however, with your point about needing to identify "species" and some sort of "memecosystem" (there's a useful word) in memetics.
Brent.
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----- Original Message -----
From: William Benzon
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2000 12:31 PM
Subject: Re: Defining and moving on
> From: "Tim Rhodes" <proftim@speakeasy.org>
> Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 13:15:27 -0700
> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
> Subject: Defining and moving on
>
> William Benzon wrote:
>
> <<<If you don't have a grasp of the data to be accounted for nor of the
> causal processes and mechanisms, then you just haggle over definitions.
> In my experience, serious thinkers don't waste time over definitions.
> Where the issues are well understood, thinkers may give definitions by
> way of indicating which (among several well-known) position they
> take.>>>
>
> I have the sense that most of us are using the same concepts, but under
> different names. There are many reasons for this (and too many of them
> are surprisingly petty or political), but I think it could be a useful
> exercise to lay out all the differing terms and compare them. I suspect
> we'll find we share more concepts more in common than we disagree.
Well, I do think you're somewhat right in this. For a number of you it's
just a matter of terminological squabbles with no really substantive
differences. However your A, B, C below is not at all adequate to my
conception of these matters, no matter what terms you use.
>
> So here's a start, I call:
>
> A) the external vehicle by which memetic information is passed: the
> G-meme.
> B) the internal information necessary for propagating the cultural
> information: the L-meme.
> C) the combination of internal and external that results in
> replication: the meme
There's nothing in here that corresponds to the cultural correlate of the
biological species, and nothing really that corrsponds to the environment in
which species must compete for survival. As far as I'm concerned, without
those entities in your model, it's an absolute non-starter.
Therefore, from my POV any and all discussion toward straightening out the
terms for that set of items is just a waste of time. It's like adopting a
Ptolemaic model of the solar system and arguing over whether to call the
moon Fritz or Freddie. Who cares?
Now, my verison of these things isn't something that I can readily pack into
email-sized snippits, so I won't bother. If you're curious, you can find an
exposition here:
Culture as an Evolutionary Arena. Journal of Social and Evolutionary
Systems, 19(4), 321-362, 1996.
Culture's Evolutionary Landscape: A Reply to Hans-Cees Speel. Journal of
Social and Evolutionary Systems, 20(3), 314-322, 1997.
My book on music will have rather more to say on the issue, though it won't
be out until next year.
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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
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