Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id UAA25367 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 17 Jan 2001 20:17:30 GMT Message-Id: <200101172019.PAA25505@mail1.lig.bellsouth.net> From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 14:18:44 -0600 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: DNA Culture .... Trivia? In-reply-to: <20010117194749.A432@reborntechnology.co.uk> References: <200101171601.LAA13193@mail5.lig.bellsouth.net>; from joedees@bellsouth.net on Wed, Jan 17, 2001 at 10:06:49AM -0600 X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01b) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Date sent: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 19:47:49 +0000
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: DNA Culture .... Trivia?
From: Robin Faichney <robin@reborntechnology.co.uk>
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> On Wed, Jan 17, 2001 at 10:06:49AM -0600, Joe E. Dees wrote:
> > We have points of agreement, and points of disagreement, like any
> > other two people who are not cognitive clones. Information, per se,
> > is not necessarily meaningful, and meaningless information, and
> > meaningful information some meaning of which cannot be grasped
> > by the potential recipient, are in my view, poor candidates for
> > memetic propagation.
>
> You accept that information is not necessarily meaningful, and that may
> be enough. Our previous argument as to whether memes are meaningful was
> really about the use of the word "meme", ie semantics. My quest is for
> an understanding of how meaning arises out of the universe's inherent
> meaninglessness, and how memes can be carried by or encoded in matter.
> How can the structure of matter be meaningful?
>
It can be meaningful if it refers to something other than itself, when
apprehended by a consciousness capable of such referential
attribution who has chosen to imbue such a referential meaning
upon tokens of its type. Significances may be public or private, but
they cannot occur in the absence of a signifier. The three-legged
stool of signification (signifier, sign, signified) requires all three legs
to stand.
>
> Accept, just for the sake
> of this argument, that it could be useful to view material structure
> as information. It has no inherent meaning, unless that structure
> in itself is all you're interested in. But we now have information:
> how can it be imbued with meaning? How can the squiggles on a piece
> of paper refer to things, people, events, relationships, "out there"?
>
It can't, in the absence of a consciousness which imbues it with
meaning, and can, in its presence. Once you internalize the 'A
stands for B' rule in any given instance (such as the word 'cat'
standing for the four legged sharp clawed common domestic pet
that miaous and makes some people sneeze), then the
appearance of A to you will evoke the thought of B.
>
> And don't tell me to read some book to answer that question. I know that
> many, many people have written about such stuff. I also know, with as
> much certainty as is possible in such things, that noone has taken my
> approach to it, noone has answered precisely the questions I'm asking,
> which (obviously) require more than one paragraph to fully describe.
>
Don't be so sure in the absence of checking that such questions
have not been asked and answered. Such as the above, which is
not original with me, but is a consideration of both continental and
analytic epistemology.
>
> That's a start (if it's anything). Is it worth going on? Even if
> so, there are many possible directions to take, and it might well be
> impossible to get anywhere, along any of them, within the space of one
> email. But specific questions, if any, I'll try to answer. (But I do
> mean _specific_ questions, not vague ones, because they're too difficult,
> unless you have the time and energy to woffle, which I don't.)
>
Actually, I have no question to ask of you. I know where you stand
on the concrete and pragmatic existence of selves in the world,
and disagree with you on that point. You cannot eliminate
significance without eliminating the signifier, and vice-versa. You
seem to want to do both, but in such a case, there would not be a
you, not be anything to write or to write about, and not be anyone
to read it. The nonexistent you may uninhabit such a strange
region, but I simply cannot nonselfcontradictorally go there.
> --
> Robin Faichney
> robin@reborntechnology.co.uk
>
> ===============================================================
> 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
>
>
===============================================================
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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