Date: Tue, 05 Aug 1997 15:11:37 -0400
From: Bill Benzon <bbenzon@meta4inc.com>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Explanatory coherence
Mark Mills wrote:
> >All the stuff which memeticists think of as being
> >extrasomatic meme vehicles are, for me, the memes themselves. They
> are
> >outside the brain and the body, out there in the physical world where
>
> >they are publically available to all members of the social group.
>
> Bill,
>
> If memes are outside the body, publically available to all, where did
> they first come from?
Well, you speak and the air vibrates. You pound on a log and the air
vibrates. You put some pigment on a cave wall and there's a picture.
A child is born with a rich biological complement which includes a
nervous system which undergoes growth into the early 20s (at which point
the skull sutures finally set). Everything the child assimilates about
culture comes by way of physical input from the external world. It makes
sense of this input with a brain which is biased to process all sorts of
things in certain ways.
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