Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id CAA04799 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 30 Mar 2001 02:41:49 +0100 From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 19:44:05 -0600 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: The Demise of a Meme Message-ID: <3AC39085.23753.645169@localhost> In-reply-to: <20010329125905.A1365@reborntechnology.co.uk> References: <3AC31511.ED22A7C2@bioinf.man.ac.uk>; from Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk on Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 11:57:21AM +0100 X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 29 Mar 2001, at 12:59, Robin Faichney wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 11:57:21AM +0100, Chris Taylor wrote:
> > > If you want to know why people are susceptible to irrational
> > > beliefs, on the other hand, the answer lies in psychology, not
> > > memetics.
> >
> > Uh-uh. Can't agree. You need the total memetic perspective. There is
> > no 'you', there is just another island of memes in the global
> > archipeligo.
>
> That is just one perspective. (Joe will say it's not even that, but
> let's not let him dominate here.)
>
How can I, if I don't even exist? But it is in fact very difficult to label
same a perspective when it presupposes that there can be no
issuing point for the view.
>
> > These islands sometimes prove viable habitats for 'irrational
> > beliefs' (i.e. not validated by testing) because the nature of the
> > other inhabitants cause them to be so.
>
> That's fine, at that level of generalisation. The problem is when you
> try to get down to specifics. That is simply impossible using the
> super-sparse conceptual toolbag of memetics. You end up talking about
> what is going in someone's mind, and despite your old-fashioned and
> ignorant prejudice against it, probably uncritically copied from older
> but not wiser biologists, nothing better than psychology has yet
> arisen for explaining what's going on in an individual mind. The
> suggestion that memetics has the potential to do that is no better
> than any other speculative fiction.
>
Memetics is, like semiotics, phenomenology, existentialism,
hermeneutics and genetic epistemology, a philosophical stance.
> --
> Robin Faichney
> Get your Meta-Information from http://www.ii01.org
> (CAUTION: contains philosophy, may cause heads to spin)
>
> ===============================================================
> 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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