Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id DAA07948 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 20 Jan 2002 03:37:23 GMT Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 19:32:53 -0800 Message-Id: <200201200332.g0K3WrN07816@mail9.bigmailbox.com> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary X-Mailer: MIME-tools 4.104 (Entity 4.116) X-Originating-Ip: [65.80.162.26] From: "Joe Dees" <joedees@addall.com> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: The necessity of mental memes Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk('binary' encoding is not supported, stored as-is)
> memetics@mmu.ac.ukDate: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 16:59:55 -0500
> "Philip Jonkers" <PHILIPJONKERS@prodigy.net> Re: The necessity of mental memesReply-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.
>
A third is to access the PET scan and fMRI studies that indicate particular cortical energy usage changes in specific areas correlated with the performance of particular tasks, both physical and mental. the gun is smoking, and internal meme location no longer may be dismissed on the grounds of a lack of empirical evidence. Of course, we are not able to decode thses indications in a fine-grained manner, but we DO know that when a person listens to music, or reads poetry, or reads text, or imagines a landscape, or performs mental mathematical calculations, or remembers a word string, that in each case, a different portion of the brain burns more sugar (meaning that it needs more energy because it is being used).
>
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>This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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