Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id CAA27798 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 26 Jan 2002 02:23:42 GMT Message-ID: <006001c1a617$e7004de0$2503aace@oemcomputer> From: "Philip Jonkers" <philipjonkers@prodigy.net> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> References: <200201251407.g0PE7VS21224@sherri.harvard.edu> Subject: Re: sex and the single meme Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 18:16:51 -0900 Organization: Prodigy Internet Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Wade:
> The external stance simply lets the brain do what the brain does, in all
> its complexity and mystery, and, when behavior (so far, human behavior),
> produces a quantum unit of culture, and that quantum unit tunnels over to
> somebody else, and they produce a quantum of culture that's highly
> similar to the extent of being undifferentiable, that's a meme.
Consider the memes:
1. Terrorism.
2. Terrorism causes pain and grief
3. Terrorism causes pain and grief and should be combatted.
4. Terrorism causes pain and grief and should be combatted with all the
resources
we can muster.
All are memes, but which ones are units? The most tempting guess would be
`terrorism' right? So then 2 is a meme which contains 1, the unit. But if
you regard
memes to be units than 2, is a unit containing a unit and therefore can't be
a unit.
A contradiction in terms... To make matters worse, 4 contains 3 and 3
contains 2:
so meme-unit 4 would contain unit 3 containing unit 2 containing unit 1.
This
nullifies the meaning of the concept of meme as a unit.
Clearly better alternatives have to be thought of. My recursive definition
of the meme fits the profile.
Philip.
===============================================================
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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Jan 26 2002 - 03:14:03 GMT