From: "Paul Marsden" <PaulMarsden@email.msn.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: i-culture and m-culture
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 15:11:33 +0100
Paul Marsden wrote
>>Trial and error is simply the generation and testing of
>>relationships (instructions) until one fits (i.e.
>>imitates) m-culture.
Nick Rose wrote
>Ah! I see what you mean. However, I don't _think_
>'relationships' and 'instructions' are synonymous (as you
>appear to imply). I'm pretty sure that 'fits' and
>'imitates' aren't synonymous either! That's not what I
>would call imitation anyway.
Okay, sorry, I put it sloppily. Let me think this one through out loud.
Cloak refers to an individual's "cultural repertoire" as i-culture (note 7
p169), ie "a set of cultural instructions", that manifest themselves in the
environment as m-culture, which in turn cue i-culture. Basically i-culture
codes for a specific SR cycle (a behavioural cue will elicit a certain
behavioural response). Now what I was trying to tentatively suggest is that
imitation is central to both social/observational learning and individual
(e.g. operant conditioning) learning within this paradigm because both
involve copying relationships between m-culture, and storing them qua
instructions. This copying involves the internalisation, qua i-culture, of
relations between objectified m-culture. In social learning, stimulus and
third party response must both be m-culture, and the relationship between
the two is copied qua i-culture by the observer. No Problem - social
learning has happened i culture has been imitated via m-culture. Now in
operant conditioning, the generation of the response (variation) by the
individual must also be objectified as m-culture before i-culture is
realised. i-culture realisation is the process imitating the pre-existing
relations between the *appropriate* elements of m-culture (which are
produced through a blind exploration of design space). Now these relations
all exist on nuce, before this realisation in i-culture. Therefore whilst
i-culture *is* the process of selection of the appropriate functional
relationship between elements of m-culture, it is also imitation because it
is *copying functional relationships*. From this perspective, operant
conditioning can surely be understood as "imitation through a process of
selection", and therefore is memetic. Mutatis mutandis, the same would
apply for classical conditioning.
Where did I go wrong?
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: Nick Rose <Nicholas.Rose@uwe.ac.uk>
To: JOM-EMIT Discussion List <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Date: 23 September 1998 13:53
>>>Nick Rose said
>>>PS: I still think we'd be better off with Cloak's
>>>definitions ;)
>
>>Paul Marsden said
>>Agreed, but I don't you think that Cloak account
>>undermines the putative distinction between imitation and
>>"ordinary learning" (which I don't think I accept anyway).
>>Can't "ordinary learning" could be understood as the
>>imitation of i-culture ...
>
>By 'ordinary' learning I mean things like classical and
>operant conditioning. None of these 'ordinary' learning
>mechanisms involve _imitation_ (they arise/are shaped
>whithin One organism) - thus they don't involve _imitation_
>of i-culture.
>
>>...- if you take i-culture (NB i = instruction) to be the
>>functional relationship between two objects of m-culture?
>
>I don't _think_ that's what Cloak says, and I don't
>understand why i-culture (def as fn rel btw 2 m-culture)
>would make 'ordinary' learning an imitation of i-culture?
>
>>Trial and error is simply the generation and testing of
>>relationships (instructions) until one fits (i.e.
>>imitates) m-culture.
>
>Ah! I see what you mean. However, I don't _think_
>'relationships' and 'instructions' are synonymous (as you
>appear to imply). I'm pretty sure that 'fits' and
>'imitates' aren't synonymous either! That's not what I
>would call imitation anyway.
>
>>What I am to say is that, from Cloak's position, can't all
>>learning can be understood as imitation?
>
>No, not imitation - perhaps _selection_?. There can be
>more than one level of selection going on. Shaping and
>fitting responses to the environment I think is like a
>Dennet's Popperian creature. There is selection going on,
>but it's entirely internal to a single organism.
>
>When shaping and fitting responses to the environment are
>shared between organisms (which it seems only humans do
>well) then I would call that imitation. Then I think you
>get natural selection (rather than say, neural selection)
>shaping the behaviours. Then you get memes.
>
>Cloak's theory relates to selection events at the i-culture
>and m-culture level. What I think is interesting is the
>way he describes i-culture shaping m-culture shaping
>i-culture ... etc etc. I think this requires the ability
>to imitate (rather than individually learn) ... but I think
>some more about it :)
>
>----------------------------------------
>Nick Rose
>Email: Nicholas.Rose@uwe.ac.uk
>"University of the West of England"
>
>
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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