Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA25372 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 2 Aug 2001 15:53:09 +0100 From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 09:54:19 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: RE: Macguffin Message-ID: <3B69234B.6363.10004E@localhost> In-reply-to: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745FE3@inchna.stir.ac.uk> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Was there a "self" in the primordial soup? Isn't self a macguffin
> (Blackmore thinks it's a memetic macguffin, or more accurately concurs
> with Dennett's notion of the self as a benign user illusion).
>
> Vincent
>
Self is no macguffin; nether is it an illusion, or your message was
not selt, since it lacked a sender (artificial and arbitrary yet widely
comprehensible construction requires what natural evolution does
not, i.e., an intentional constructor, living among other such beings
with shared understandings rooted in a common symbolic system).
It was not, however, present in the non-recursive primordial soup,
but emerged after eons of evolution. Of course there are strange
monsters born, hopeful and otherwise; that's how random mutation
works. Of course, most of them die very quickly in an environment
in which we can live and thrive; that's how natural selection works.
Together these two comprise evolution.
>
> --
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> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
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===============================================================
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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