Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 15:45:35 -0400
From: Paul Marsden <PMarsden@compuserve.com>
Subject: RE: challenge?
To: "INTERNET:memetics@mmu.ac.uk" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
>Paul Marsden's assertion that memetics is not dualist is philosophically=
>highly questionable. Insofar as it is realist and empiricist it is, as =
I
>suggested in my former posting, caught in a dialectical relation with
>idealism, one that assumes that a "material world of objects" is
observable
>as such and not always already constructed by our intellectual and
>appetitive predispositions. This can hardly be asserted without careful=
>argument.
You are completely and utterly right on both counts, and different =
memeticians will continue to have different ontological and epistemologic=
al
positions, this is good and healthy. I did not want to embark on a major=
treatise on these points because I think that there is no definitive
solution, but I was anxious to answer to the repeated plea of where doe=
s
the philosophical heritage of memetics lie. Functionalism Realism and
Evolutionary theory. If you want to debate this then contact me directly=
,
or read Dennett's Consciousness Explained, and his article on the web "Re=
al
Consciousness." Meanwhile I echo the recent calls to reposition this =
discussion list around concrete examples of how memetics could be applied=
to help interpret, understand and explain the world in which we live in.
Paul Marsden
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