Message-Id: <199706181025.GAA22735@global.dca.net>
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 06:26:59 -0500
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: perpcorn@dca.net (Timothy Perper/Martha Cornog)
Subject: Re: Determinism and Fatalism
On 6/17/97, Nick Rose wrote:
>Is there much left to argue here? The only reason I shifted
>topic is that the group appeared to stabilise within two views,
>and there appeared to be very little movement between the camps.
>Does anyone have a good defence for Omar de la Cruz's original
>(and non-shorthand) view that 'people' (as she phrased it)
>'modify memes'? I have no problem with the idea that the 'self'
>as a construct exists, or that the brain (which may include a
>construct of 'self') selects memes. As I said before, if the
>'Self' is supposed to be 'free will' stuff, then memetics can
>reject it.
Why does memetics, hard-line or not, want to reject free will? Why should
anyone saying that people modify memes need to defend the view? Against
what and whom?
I concur that the group contains two viewpoints -- one centering on memes
as self-replicating units that take charge of the mind and the other
centering on memes as one set of units, possibly among many, that are
transferred as information among people. It seems to me that talking
about free will and about human modification of memes is merely restating
one of the differences between these two viewpoints.
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