Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA03067 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 8 Mar 2001 15:08:42 GMT Message-ID: <3AA79FB5.C65533E0@bioinf.man.ac.uk> Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2001 15:05:25 +0000 From: Chris Taylor <Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk> Organization: University of Manchester X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Are there any memes out there? References: <20010306224836.AAA20739@camailp.harvard.edu@[205.240.180.70]> <20010307004616.A1476@reborntechnology.co.uk> <3.0.5.32.20010307192147.007fc900@mailhost.rongenet.sk.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
To Robin:
Yeah, I know that both views (everything is a meme / memes only in the
head) are widely held, I just was surprised at myself flipping view and
wondered how many of the people on the list were confirmed either way,
and who felt they didn't fall into either of these camps.
In response to Lloyd:
> artifacts, behaviors and neural patterning are all phenotypes
Hmm. I think our problem is in deciding what is part of the phenotype.
Classically we'd be looking at the interaction of genome and environment
(incl. culture obviously) which amounts to a (very) weak version of
evolutionary psychology. The problem comes when you try to draw a line
between the phenotype and the rest of the world: Is the moss that grows
on a sloth (giving it rather nifty camoflage and effectively making it
one of the few [partially] green mammals) part of its phenotype? Are our
gut bacteria part of our phenotype? I think these things are the other
side of the line - partnership for mutual benefit - but what about
mitochondria, chloroplasts etc. We need to decide where memes come on
this scale. If you put a gun to my head I'd put memes with other
commensalistic interactions (more like gut bacteria than mitochondria).
Cheers, Chris.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Taylor (chris@bioinf.man.ac.uk)
http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/ »people»chris
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