Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id GAA21666 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 24 Jan 2002 06:22:40 GMT Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 22:18:20 -0800 Message-Id: <200201240618.g0O6IKZ20999@mail23.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: [65.80.161.183] From: "Joe Dees" <joedees@addall.com> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: RE: Selfish meme? Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk('binary' encoding is not supported, stored as-is)
> "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu> <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> RE: Selfish meme?Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 09:24:13 -0500
>Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>
>Hi, Ted. You may be thinking of the term 'motile' or 'motion'. 'Motive' is
>a term readily used and understood by psychologists to refer to intent.
>
>> Lawrence wrote:
>>
>> > Hi, Ted -- fortunately, 'that memes are or may not be 'selfish'
>> is not the
>> > whole idea of memetics. 'Selfish' implies motive, and to ascribe motive
>> > to unthinking things seems useless.
>>
>> You sure about that? Motive is a physical concept. It's all about force
>> and movement. Psychological motive is no different than a lot of other
>> terms that originated in the lingo of our physical experience. Far from
>> being confined to human intelligence, motive is universal to life. To be
>> animate is to have motive and to express it, though at first these would
>> have been indistinguishable. Bacteria are surely unthinking, but they're
>> self-organized, self-referent in their behavior, and
>> self-propagating, in a
>> word, self-determined. Life itself is self-generated, as are all species
>> (evolution not creationism) and all individuations of them, including
>> ourselves. Not only are humans self-existent, but so is the culture that
>> emerges from our self-conscious interaction and the self-propelling memes
>> that carry it.
>>
>> > Now, if we were to say that memes -- like
>> > everything else -- simply do what they do (a cybernetic view)
>>
>> In cybernetics everything is conceptual.
>
>You'll have to convince people like Bill Powers that their feedback and
>control mechanisms are merely 'conceptual.' Or the folks who invented ways
>of keeping gun barrels on ships steadily pointed toward their targets. Of
>course, I'll have to agree that contemporary conferences on cybernetics are
>overwhelmed with an outre' and as far as I can tell unproductive insistence
>of conceptualization... But this is not the 'real' cybernetics. I refer you
>also to the pragmatic and important uses to which the work of such
>cyberneticians as Weiner, Ayres and Beer have been put.
>
And then there are thermostats. humans are characterizeable not be homeostasis, or the maintainence of a baseline setting, but by homeorrhesis, or the maintainence of coherency through evolutionary change.
>
>Lawrence
>
>
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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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