Message-Id: <199809081047.GAA24346@camel14.mindspring.com>
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 06:52:05 -0500
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: bbenzon@mindspring.com (Bill Benzon)
Subject: Re: On Gatherer's behaviourist stance
>And now to defend memetics. Bill said
>
>>That, alas, is my feeling about much mental/homuncular memetics, that it is
>>advancing substantial claims about the human mind without having read much
>>of cognitive and neuropsychology, much less literary theory, music theory,
>>etc.
>
>Agreed.
>
>>The claims it makes about the mind are simplistic and ill-informed
>>and the whole enterprise seems to rest on faith than introducing the
>>concept of replication into the mix is going to work wonders.
>
>Again I would agree with the first part of this phrase, naive realism of
>mental memetics (to coin a phrase) as exemplified by Aaron's approach may
>lead us down that path, but the rest does not follow for those of us who are
>concerned with human activity. The reason I think you are wrong is because
>memetics, if properly constructed can add an evolutionary dimension to the
>study of influence and more generally socialisation, by using the
>evolutionary loop of variation, replication and selection. This also opens
>the door to allow us to draw from evolutionary psychology, helping social
>science drop the ridiculous notion of the mind as tabula rasa (or RAM) and
>in so doing memetics might identify the propensity for certain types of
>culture to be objectified - and passed on - with varying degrees of
>fidelity.
>
>
>Paul Marsden
>Graduate Research Centre in the Social Sciences
>University of Sussex
>e-mail PaulMarsden@msn.com
>tel/fax (44) (0) 117 974 1279
>
>Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission:
>http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>===============================================================
>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
William L. Benzon 201.217.1010
708 Jersey Ave. Apt. 2A bbenzon@mindspring.com
Jersey City, NJ 07302 USA http://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