Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id VAA00748 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 4 Oct 2001 21:31:07 +0100 Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2001 13:27:10 -0700 From: Bill Spight <bspight@pacbell.net> Subject: Re: Memes inside brain To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Message-id: <3BBCC61E.3EC879B3@pacbell.net> Organization: Saybrook Graduate School X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en]C-CCK-MCD {Yahoo;YIP052400} (Win95; U) Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT X-Accept-Language: en References: <200110021509.KAA02195@snipe.biotech.ufl.org> <1002212599.3bbc8cf7cd792@rugth1.phys.rug.nl> Sender: fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
All:
Suppose that we did not have eggs and sperm segregated from other cells,
but produced them on demand, not by copying germ-line DNA, but through
some more general process of construction or reconstruction. Heredity
would be a much more iffy affair. Even if both parents had, say, blue
eyes, there would be an appreciable chance that the child's eyes would
be some other color. There would be no such thing as a gene in the sense
of a stretch of DNA that, barring accident, is passed along to
offspring. We might not even talk about genes, but about inherited
traits.
Such a state of affairs would be more analogous to memetics than actual
genetics is, particularly if we assume that memes reside in brains.
Memory is not a process of copying. In the 19th century psychologists
and neurologists believed that, but by the time of Bartlett's classic,
"Remembering", we knew better. Memory is a process of reconstruction.
Any memory based theory of memes has to meet that fact head on.
Dawkins conceived of memes as residing in the brain and as reproducing
by imitation, i. e., by copying. He's a biologist, not a psychologist.
That view of memory is naive, passe.
It would be great if memory were copying. Then a great deal of genetics
could be incoporated whole hog into memetics. But it isn't, and it
can't.
BTW, in "Remembering" Bartlett studied cultural transmission. I haven't
looked at the book for years, but I think that it will bear a
re-reading. :-)
Best,
Bill
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