Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id EAA23620 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 16 Jan 2002 04:53:12 GMT Message-Id: <200201160448.g0G4mgS06229@sherri.harvard.edu> Subject: Re: Knowledge, Memes and Sensory Perception Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 23:48:44 -0500 x-sender: wsmith1@camail.harvard.edu x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, Claritas Est Veritas From: "Wade T. Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu> To: "Memetics Discussion List" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Hi Grant Callaghan -
>You seem to be saying the act of the jazz player by itself is the
>meme.
Yup.
>I say it's the idea he was striving to express.
What if, upon cross-examination, he were to say he had no idea what he
was doing? Or, if he were to say he had an idea, but failed to express
it? Or, if he were to say he was following a preset pattern of altering
chromatic progressions?
>What I get from
>listening is a corrupt approximation of that idea.
Or something else, entirely. (Music is way too complex a formation to
begin to simplify for any example.)
There is no way for you to show me that idea ("meme in your head")
without a behavior on your part to express it.
Because of your skill set, your expression can be accurate or not, with
varying degrees of satisfaction to your intent. And, I might understand
it with enough cultural completeness to replicate it. You wear rubber
soled shoes and walk quietly across the library floor, and I get some
rubber-soled shoes to also walk quietly.
I suppose there may be some reason to say that the idea we try to
transmit and the different if not faulty idea one might have after
receipt are the same meme, ain't there? Everyone seems to want to call
'em both the same meme.
Sounds fishy to me.
>Or is it merely the act of trying by itself?
There's a lot more than just 'merely' in a memetic behavior.
But, I do want to leave to semantics what is semantics. It's all got to
do with _how_ we _can_ know, not _what_ we can know.
- Wade
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