Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id QAA25354 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 2 Oct 2001 16:13:54 +0100 Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 10:09:13 -0500 (EST) From: "Derek Gatherer" <gatherer@biotech.ufl.org> Message-Id: <200110021509.KAA02195@snipe.biotech.ufl.org> Re: What/Who selects memes? Content-Type: text Sender: fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Apparently-To: memetics-outgoing@alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk
Salice,
you ask me where else are memes stored if not in brains? What makes you think
that memes _are_ stored in brains? Memes aren't stored - that's why memetics
has struggled to make the same scientific impact as, say, genetics. Memetics
doesn't lack good theoreticians - Cavalli-Sforza, Richerson, Feldman, Laland etc
but it does lack the element of tangibility that genetics has.
You gave me a handful of sentences, and then say that whwn I read them, they
are 'somewhere in my head'. Really? What neural correlate can you point to
that corresponds to any of those sentences? clearly something must be going on in my head - but whatever it is, it certainly isn't storage of sentences.
You ask me 'if memes have nothing to do with your brain....
' but I didn't say that memes ahve nothing to do with the brain. Clearly a
brainless animal would have to be acultural, and culture only exists in
fairly brainy animals. But that doesn't mean that culture is a mental
phenomenon.
As to 'what or who lets [memes] survive in the population' there is no 'thing'
letting memes survive. they survive because they provide some kind of
advantage to the organism exhibiting them, or of course, because they tend
to be transmitted well even if deleterious to the organism (hence 'selfish memes').
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