Date: Tue, 07 Oct 1997 13:27:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: Valla Pishva <vpishva@emerald.tufts.edu>
Subject: Re: Machiavellian Memes
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On Tue, 7 Oct 1997, N Rose wrote:
>
> Your definitions were interesting, but by calling a human or a
> photocopier a 'replicator', you are only changing the emphasis
> from the element to the machinery. Traditionally (as far as I
> know) the element has been called the replicator (by convention
> if you like). This use of emphasis was to move people away from
> thinking in terms of the individual or the species as the unit of
> the evolutionary process. "We are just the vehicles for our
> genes, we live and die, but our genes have potential immortality
> through their copies." - to paraphrase Dawkins. I don't agree
> that this is a major obstruction to further work on memetics, but
> the call for a change in emphasis is an interesting point, and
> one perhaps worth pursuing.
>
> Nick
>
Regarding genes, it's our bodies (brains included in our case)
that are the vehicles. Regarding memes, it's the subsets of our brains,
that allow use to spread memes that are the vehicle, or the genes that
allow our brains to spread memes that are the vehicle. Our bodies are
only the underlying system on which the vehicles of memes as replicators
are dependent, just as the environment conducive to life is the underlying
system upon which genes are reliant, but we dont include the environment
in the domain of the genetic vehicle. The abstraction of the vehicle (ie
the information that is necessary and sufficient to pass it on) is what
the vehicle consists of. There are multiple ways of inducing certain
vehicles, but they all have an abstraction in common.
-val
>
> ===============================================================
> 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