Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id GAA00290 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 20 Nov 2001 06:49:44 GMT Message-ID: <00a301c1718e$93982140$6824f4d8@teddace> From: "Dace" <edace@earthlink.net> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> References: <001001c16c62$3552d3e0$3524f4d8@teddace> <01111517170100.01109@storm.berkeley.edu> <001b01c1709b$3bcfcb00$d187b2d1@teddace> <01111821171500.01100@storm.berkeley.edu> Subject: Re: Debunking pseudoscience: Why horoscopes really work Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 22:27:15 -0800 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Philip:
> > > In this case, the self-plex is still mostly a clean sheet,
> > > not defined by cultural influences and programs. If this is what you
> > > would like to call the ego, our interpretations seem to be compatible
to
> > > some extent. If not, then it seems that we differ on a fundamental
> > > level.
> >
> > Self-plex is a newfangled term for ego. It's not the same thing as the
> > self. It's a product of human imagination, ingrained so deeply in our
> > collective memory that we can't function intellectually or emotionally
> > except in the context of this primordial self-image. As a
hallucination,
> > it therefore requires a hallucinator. Equating the self with the ego
> > requires positing a hallucination that hallucinates itself. And if this
> > the case, then evidently there is such a thing as the self after all.
> > There's just no way to logically deny self-nature. One way or another
it's
> > going to bite you in the ass.
>
> I don't deny there is such a thing as the self being the individual. That
> would be silly. All I claim is that if the individual would be stripped
> from its cultural baggage (i.e. its cultural education and upbringing) an
> animal-like self would remain. I used the phenomena of the feral children
> to support this view. It speaks for itself that wolf-children may bite me
> in my ass if I'd deny their possible existence.
Then why refer to the self as a "self-plex?" If it's real, then why regard
it as an ego-like structure fabricated in the course of memetic competition?
The self is the field within which memes are the particles. There are no
memes without conscious selectors. Like a tune that won't stop playing,
memes must first be consciously selected. Only then do they dip into
unconscious to plague us. Selfish memes become ingrained because they
exploit a deep, psychic need. So, for instance, American football has
thrived-- relative to traditional football-- by playing on our love of
regimented, militaristic behavior, which is rooted in our collective
predation reflex (Ehrenreich, 1997). Without a conscious self, and its
corresponding subterranean dreck, memes don't exist. This is no different
than to say that photons have no self-nature apart from electromagnetic
fields. It's not that photons exist "inside" e-m fields; they're the
particularizations of the field. You can't reduce consciousness to memes
(or vice versa) any more than fields to particles.
> Philip:
> > > I don't see why science and politics have to be mixed necessarily. At
> > > least pure science should be able to detach itself from political
> influences,
> > > anyway. Technology, a product of science, may be more politically
driven
> > > and biased since it receives funds from industry and governments.
> > > I don't think it's fair to consider science and politics to be
> > > coupled inherently.
>
> Ted:
> > It's a fact of history that science developed in the shadow of
capitalism.
> > See Luciano Pellicani, The Genesis of Capitalism and the Origins of
> > Modernity, Telos, 1994.
>
> Any form of science? What about the ancient greek and byzanthium(?)
> scholars, didn't they virtually invent science while capitalism was still
> an unknown word?
The ancient scientists are known to us as philosophers. (Even the early
modern scientists were known as "natural philosophers"). As Pellicani
notes, the first "philosophers," such as Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras,
Heraclitus, Xenophon, and Parmenides, were all born and worked in Magna
Graecia, which was an expression of the colonial, market-based economy that
spread out from the Aegean to the Adriatic and the Black Sea. It was the
original, Western-style empire, formed by individuals not so well-connected
back home who set out to make something of themselves as pirates and
traders. Like modern Europe it was the commonors, not the aristocrats, who
forged the new world, and they accomplished this by means of a ruthless
rationalism. The ideal of science-- the pursuit of knowledge-- has always
been tangled up with its historical roots in predatory economics. While
genuine science is a sort of applied philosophy, in reality it carries the
ideology of the market, with its irreconcilable split between materialistic
individualism (atomism) and the abstract principles by which the market is
said to operate (mathematical idealism). You might say it's the Platonic
pseudo-science, where astrology and numerology and Tarot are but shadows on
the cave wall.
Ted
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