Re: What/who selects memes?

From: Kenneth Van Oost (Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be)
Date: Sun Oct 07 2001 - 17:42:02 BST

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    From: "Kenneth Van Oost" <Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be>
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    Subject: Re: What/who selects memes?
    Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 18:42:02 +0200
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    ----- Original Message -----
    From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk>
    To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>

    > <We can't demonstrate memes in brains direclty because
    > > we aren't that far in science yet. But every person can remember
    > > memes and can find some of them conscious in his mind.>
    > >
    > No, we can't find memes in brains because they aren't in brains.
    > Remember the specific point is about memes as replicating entities, and as
    > replicating entities memes need to retain their form in transmission.
    Yet,
    > it seems quite reasonable to suggest that 'god is dead' sits in your mind
    in
    > a completely different way to the way it does in my mind- which means that
    > inside our heads there aren't replicating entities. That's the point.

    Salice,

    What Vincent is trying to say is that memes as entities as such are not in
    the
    brain, we won 't find ( we don 't know yet, see earlier on the suggestion
    of the possible existence of a memetic sequence isomorphism) any " meme"
    there.
    What we find and hopefully will find are structures whereby their appeal,
    their context, their contents, their structural lineage how on earth they
    repli-
    cate, propagate and transmiss themselves can get explained.
    Those things are in a way inscripted in our thinking process, but " memes "
    can 't be found.

    Regards,

    Kenneth

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