Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id WAA07495 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 19 Jan 2002 22:03:49 GMT To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Message-Id: <AA-58D24272F44CB21DAE529FE4BC2EA9A1-ZZ@homebase1.prodigy.net> Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 16:59:55 -0500 From: "Philip Jonkers" <PHILIPJONKERS@prodigy.net> Subject: Re: The necessity of mental memes Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Joe:
>what no one has been able to explain to me is how, in
the absence of a mental storage and percepttion/action
translation pathway between the perception of
another's actions and the replication of those actions
by oneself, how the actions of one could ever become,
by apprehension, learning and imitation, the actions
of another.
I guess your interesting perception is based on a
understandable misconception.
What the guys in the artifact-behavior meme-camp argue
is that it is wrong to speak of memes residing in the
brain for no other reason that the don't fit with any
of the current definitions. They are undetectable,
highly personal and non-uniform in stored form.
And they are right I think, Derek
Gathererer has made a good job argueing that.
They probably don't deny occurrence of those mental
processes which eventually lead to meme-processing
but they just consider them to fall outside the range
of applicability of memetics.
You can then go either two ways. One, is to retain the
definition of the meme and abandon the whole
meme-in-head concept and limit meme-theory to apply to
only cultural artifacts and/or behavior, both of which
classes do fit with definition.
The other one I personally favor is to alter the
definition of the meme in such a way that it also
encompasses memes residing in the head. I think
two steps in the right direction would be:
1) to get rid of the meme-as-unit insistence, as there
are virtually no atomistic memes I contend.
2) admit that memes can assume different forms while
conserving associated meaning and head on to
a more abstract semantic definition of the meme.
Philip.
Cheers,
Philip Jonkers.
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