Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id LAA24552 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 12 Apr 2001 11:00:37 +0100 Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 10:48:42 +0100 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: memes- remember them? Message-ID: <20010412104842.B1323@reborntechnology.co.uk> References: <20010411125051.AAA6886@camailp.harvard.edu@[128.103.125.215]>; <20010411153653.B1232@reborntechnology.co.uk> <3AD4EEDB.28987.83E114@localhost> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.15i In-Reply-To: <3AD4EEDB.28987.83E114@localhost>; from joedees@bellsouth.net on Wed, Apr 11, 2001 at 11:55:07PM -0500 From: Robin Faichney <robin@reborntechnology.co.uk> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On Wed, Apr 11, 2001 at 11:55:07PM -0500, joedees@bellsouth.net wrote:
> On 11 Apr 2001, at 15:36, Robin Faichney wrote:
>
> > Personally, if anyone cares, what I'm here for is to investigate the
> > relationship between objective (deterministic) and inter/subjective
> > explanations of behaviour. I'm sorry if that sounds pretentious, but
> > it's the simple (or maybe not so) truth. Anyway, as I see it,
> > memetics is very clearly on the objective/deterministic side, when
> > taken to its logical conclusion, though as Richard Brodie has shown,
> > the concept can be used humanistically too.
> >
> People may be memetically predisposed by their genes or
I'll assume you mean people may have genetic behavioural tendencies
> memetically influenced by their environment
Here again I guess by "memetically" I guess you mean "behaviourally".
I think it makes most sense to view memetic influences as a subset of
environmental influences.
> without necessarily
> being memetically hardwired or memetically determined. It's not
> an all-or-nothing proposition.
In practice, that's obviously true. Theory, however, is not so easy.
The only relevant theoretical stance I know that's not full of holes
separates objective and inter/subjective explanations, which in practice
are necessarily mixed. This is a "dual aspect" theory: objective
phenomena are dealt with in one way (broadly) and inter/subjective ones
in another, but these are considered different aspects of one homogeneous
universe. The power of the free will and deterministic models of brain
electrochemistry are seen as equally real, but so different in kind
that to imagine conflict between them makes no more sense than to try to
understand a game of chess in terms of the construction of the board and
chessmen. Free will is analogous to the relative freedom of movement of
the queen, and to try to explain it by considering the materials out of
which the set is made is... well, it's obvious, I hope.
Of course, there's absolutely no way you're going to take this on board,
Joe, because you refuse to see the holes in your own stance[1] and so
have no motivation seriously to consider any other. Pity. With your
brains and your drive you'd be a real asset. Your commitment is the
only problem, but it's fatal. Ho hum...
[1] Eg, how does the subjective phenomenon of willpower affect the
objective phenomenon of neural activity? And "top-down causation" is
no explanation -- even if causation across levels was accepted (though
that's inherently contradictory), that would leave the mental/physical
interaction problem, which defeated Descartes and defeats you. While
for dual aspect theory, refusing to confuse subjective and objective
phenomena and explanations, it's a lead pipe cinch.
-- 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
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