Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id XAA10908 (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 23:44:26 GMT To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Message-Id: <AA-EEEDB1113765001F3D3425D58E480C29-ZZ@maillink1.prodigy.net> Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 18:40:33 -0500 From: "Philip Jonkers" <PHILIPJONKERS@prodigy.net> Subject: Re: Knowledge, Memes and Sensory Perception Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Philip:
>>With potential memes I mean
>>memes laying dormant in the brain, abstractly
>>speaking, waiting to be called upon and expressed
>>or utilized if needed. Until that moment there is
>>no way of telling whether the host contains them.
>
>Kinda why I wanted to know 'what'. Potential energy
is recognizably
>harnessable and, yeah, measurable, from physical
conditions.
>
>Potential memes, (hey, let's be strict, internal
memes...) are not. Until
>they become apparent in behavior, there is no way to
know if they are
>there.
>
>However, culture itself is a set of physical
conditions that set up
>potentials.
>
>When at a formal dinner, if you have the potential
meme for using a
>fingerbowl, you will. If you don't, you will,
perhaps, have the potential
>meme of asking about things you are ignorant of, and
find out through
>questioning, preferably someone who just used one....
(But, don't ask
>that guy who just put out his cigarette in it....)
>
>Most memetic experiments, and indeed, most 'memetic
engineerings', are
>just that- setting up situations where expected
responses,
>(internal/potential memes), will be realized. And,
making little or
>drastic changes in the parameters of the variables to
get differing
>responses, but, not, in any real sense, creating new
memes.
>
>(I remember, back in the good old days of
experimental music, how every
>performance was called a 'realization'.... Ah, art.)
>Culture is the matrix of memetic behavior.
Yeah well and that behavior is made possible by that
big bulby protrusion on top of your shoulders.
The brain baby, that's where are the excitement lies
and that's where culture come from.
But okay, potential meme is a somewhat weak analogy
to memes lying dormant in the brain but which
one does possess nonetheless. Potential refers to
possible, which means it may very well refer
memes to be discovered and or acquired in the future
and thus not (yet) reside in the brain.
Instead, let's stick to the slogan `latent meme' to
describe memes already in-brained but not
expressed and or utilized in some meme-process
at the time of being...
Philip.
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