RE: Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science

From: Vincent Campbell (v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk)
Date: Fri Apr 20 2001 - 11:20:38 BST

  • Next message: J. R. Molloy: "Re: Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science"

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    From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk>
    To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
    Subject: RE: Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science
    Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 11:20:38 +0100
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    You're right here Robin, it wasn't necessarily the best choice of phrase-
    without qualification anyway. It's that old point that beliefs don't have
    to be "true" and Gods don't have to exist to have effects and consequences.
    In that sense gods are still entities whether or not they really exist (in
    the material sense of something you could, as the monkey king did in
    'Journey to the West', pee on. In his case he thought it was one of the
    five pillars at the end of the universe, only to find out it was Bhudda's
    fingers, and for his arrogance he was imprisoned under a mountain. at least
    that's what happened in the TV version).

    Vincent

    > ----------
    > From: Robin Faichney
    > Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    > Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2001 3:16 pm
    > To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    > Subject: Re: Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science
    >
    > On Thu, Apr 19, 2001 at 02:06:55PM +0100, Vincent Campbell wrote:
    > > <Religion is typically about following after entities which possibly
    > > don't
    > > > even exist. Memetics could be in the same ballpark, but I wonder if
    > this
    > > > means memetics too is dangerous and insiduous.>
    > > >
    > > Indeed, indeed. This is I think what some ignore, others embrace,
    > > and some of us worry about constantly.
    >
    > I think that in some cases at least, an entity must be considered to
    > exist, for some purposes, and not to do so, for others.
    >
    > Don't those who feel strongly against that proposition need to find very
    > clear definitions of "entity" and "existence"?
    >
    > --
    > 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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