Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id MAA08228 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 7 Dec 2001 12:38:08 GMT Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3102A6D182@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Definition please Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2001 12:23:01 -0000 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Filter-Info: UoS MailScan 0.1 [D 1] Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Hi,
<There's just no
> central processing area for language.>
>
Didn't Ray just mention Broca's area/region? What happens with
people with disorders like Aphasia- damage to the brain I believe?
I really think your "time" oriented arguments show no evidence of
understanding of the relationship between time and space.
Similarly your presumption that information stored in the brain
isn't memory is equally specious. Just because when you recall a memory you
are not conscious of searching your brain for the particular region in which
information is stored doesn't mean that isn't what is happening. In the same
way that you breath without consciously thinking about it, or when you look
at something you're not conscious of the various parts of the brain involved
in that process.
Look for example at those memory experts- the people who can
memorise hundreds of phone numbers etc.- their way of doing this involves
creating a narrative, using images to represent numbers/words/objects
(whatever it is they are trying to remember). By putting things into a
narrative context, and therefore an order, it enables them- and anyone else
who tries this out incidentally- to recall a large amount of information.
This offers a pretty good indicator that there are processes of storage and
retrieval, which if we deliberately train ourselves can be extremely
effective. But, even if we don't, or aren't aware of these processes it
doesn't mean they are not there or aren't going on.
I find your persistent attempts to place much of our empirically
verified understanding at the level of religious wishful thinking, on the
basis that there are gaps in our knowledge, dreadfully unfair. For a start
you relate reasonable hypotheses based on existing bodies of knowledge to
religious beliefs. Second, I don't see you offering a body (or even a
piece) of evidence for your view other than saying "Ahh... this isn't known
therefore the whole of that approach must be wrong and I'm right". And
third, what you appear to be arguing requires a complete rejection of
conventional understanding of time and space, biology and pretty much every
other discipline under the sun. You're making the fatal error that many
make in pseudo-science, assuming that because a phenomena is not immediately
explainable it must mean that the believer's interpretation is true, even if
that belief requires the rest of our knowledge to be utterly flawed (e.g. a
video of a UFO that can't be demonstrated to be faked, automatically becomes
an interstellar spacecraft piloted by intelligent aliens to many
ufologists).
Vincent
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