Re: The Demise of a Meme

From: Robin Faichney (robin@reborntechnology.co.uk)
Date: Thu Mar 22 2001 - 13:41:10 GMT

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    Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 13:41:10 +0000
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    Subject: Re: The Demise of a Meme
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    In-Reply-To: <20010322122152.AAA13805@camailp.harvard.edu@[205.240.180.87]>; from wade_smith@harvard.edu on Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 07:21:55AM -0500
    From: Robin Faichney <robin@reborntechnology.co.uk>
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    On Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 07:21:55AM -0500, Wade T.Smith wrote:
    > Hi Robin Faichney -
    >
    > >So is my claim about how I feel scientific or not?
    >
    > Yes, it is.

    OK, so how would you go about testing it?

    > >Ethical systems are no more memetic than is science.
    >
    > This however, loses me. If science is an observation without judgment,
    > how can the basis of judgment, ethics, be similar?

    Science is certainly not an observation without judgement. It is a body
    of theory supported by observation. Observation without theory doesn't
    come within a million miles of being scientific. Most animals (maybe all,
    depending on how you define "observation") are capable of it.

    > The facts (science) need to come first, and there are no facts in ethics
    > (judgments).

    As I said before, don't confuse science with reality. Science is a
    bunch of theories about reality, and theories -- any and all of them --
    are nothing but memes.

    -- 
    Robin Faichney
    Get your Meta-Information from http://www.ii01.org
    (CAUTION: contains philosophy, may cause heads to spin)
    

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