From: "Paul Marsden" <PaulMarsden@email.msn.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: On Gatherer's behaviourist stance
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 20:31:53 +0100
Bill wrote
>But they are abstract models of a process that is happening somewhere.
Now, it
>could be that they are happening in an immaterial soul; but I doubt that
many
>cognitive scientists believe in such things. They probably believe that it
is
>happening in the brain. Now, they may not believe that they are modelling
the
>bottom-level brain processes. But they are, at some level, brain
processes.
>A computer program written in, for example, C++, is certainly executed in a
>computer. Now, the instructions which are actually executing on the CPU
aren't
>C++ instructions; they're machine code, machine code that implements C++
>commands and constructions.
Yes I agree with all this, but the point I was trying to make that it makes
little sense to conceptualise memetics as the study and manipulation of real
internal thought things inside heads. The chances that our linguistic folk
psychology of thoughts qua serial instructions bear any relation to the
instructions operating in our brain are so infinitesimally small that it
makes little sense to start doing mathematical operations on them in the
hope that they will produce anything more useful than a pair of fetid
dingos kidneys.
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/
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Benzon <bbenzon@meta4inc.com>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Date: 11 September 1998 18:01
Subject: Re: On Gatherer's behaviourist stance
>
>
>Paul Marsden wrote:
>
>> Precisely it is just a model and has nothing to do with what is occurring
in
>> the brain, so it makes no sense to talk of them as internal mnemons or
>> whatever - they are not internal at all they are abstract models.
>
>But they are abstract models of a process that is happening somewhere.
Now, it
>could be that they are happening in an immaterial soul; but I doubt that
many
>cognitive scientists believe in such things. They probably believe that it
is
>happening in the brain. Now, they may not believe that they are modelling
the
>bottom-level brain processes. But they are, at some level, brain
processes.
>
>A computer program written in, for example, C++, is certainly executed in a
>computer. Now, the instructions which are actually executing on the CPU
aren't
>C++ instructions; they're machine code, machine code that implements C++
>commands and constructions.
>
>Bill B
>
>--
>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
===============================================================
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