Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 16:11:33 -0400
From: Bill Benzon <bbenzon@meta4inc.com>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: On Gatherer's behaviourist stance
Paul Marsden wrote:
>
>
> 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.
This I agree with. Now the question for someone like Aaron is just what
assumptions is he making about his mnemons. He is certainly trying to minimize
his assmptions. But he is, it seems to me, assuming that they are discrete
entities and that these discrete entities can somehow combine. Perhaps he is
also assuming that when several mnemons combine that they combination can be
dissolved and the constituent mnemons recovered. And so forth. The assumption
of discrete entities is problematic.
BB
> 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
-- 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