Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id DAA23685 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 15 Feb 2001 03:58:57 GMT Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 19:52:36 -0800 From: Bill Spight <bspight@pacbell.net> Subject: Re: Darwinian evolution vs memetic evolution To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Message-id: <3A8B5284.691A9621@pacbell.net> Organization: Saybrook Graduate School X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en]C-CCK-MCD {Yahoo;YIP052400} (Win95; U) Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-Accept-Language: en References: <20010215021603.AAA12398%camailp.harvard.edu@[205.240.180.32]> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Dear Wade,
> How is memetic fit defined? What is the environment that it
> (whatever it is) needs to 'fit' into? How is this not a chicken/egg
> question?
Aren't these the same questions genetic evolution faces? :-)
I remember debating a creationist in the 80s. His claim that
evolutionary fitness is circularly defined is not easy to refute. And in
practice, we cannot always predict fitness beforehand. Also, in an
interdependent system of genes, chicken/egg questions cannot always be
resolved. Everything hangs together, and information about origins is
obscure.
As for the environment of memes, I define a class of memes as
situation-action pairs. These are human actions in human environments
(environments for the humans). Human society is the environment of
memes. Do memes form part of that environment? Sure. But again, that is
not a special characteristic of memes. Genes form part of the
environment of genes, as well.
Best,
Bill
===============================================================
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 archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Feb 15 2001 - 04:01:07 GMT