Date: Mon, 08 Jun 1998 13:39:28 -0400
From: Bill Benzon <bbenzon@meta4inc.com>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: To have a mnemon
Aaron Lynch wrote:
> I certainly have not claimed that anything like a full understanding of the
> human mind can result purely from the study of memes as Dawkins defines
> them. Neither has Dawkins.
What's at stake is whether or not those sorts of mentalist memes have any
meaningful existence at all. If they don't, then trying to study them is
pointless.
And I fail to see the cognency of quoting Dawkins' definitions. As far as I can
tell, Dawkins has never undertaken the sort of rigorous and systematic
investigation that would give his definitions real force. He coined a term, a
very good one, and has made some interesting but fairly casual statements about
these memes as replicators. That's it.
-- William Benzon Senior Scientist Meta4 Incorporated 33-41 Newark Street Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA voice: 201.656.0906 fax: 201.656.0901 home page: www.newsavanna.com/wlb/
=============================================================== 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