Message-Id: <v02140b05b33285a5bffe@[128.103.96.185]>
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1999 12:18:30 -0400
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: konsler@ascat.harvard.edu (Reed Konsler)
Subject: Meme Machine
Jake (MemeLab)
>I don't think this follows at all. I don't think this is what Dennet meant
>by his 'universal acid' passage either, though I will try to read it again
>this evening. What evolution doesn't allow for is an intentional agency
>guiding the process from on high. This has no bearing on whether intentional
>agencies can and do occur WITHIN an evolutionary arena. Meanings and
>intentions do emerge, compete, and evolve within evolutionary systems, but
>there is no "ultimate intention" or "ultimate meaning" driving evolutionary
>systems. The lack of such a thing does not make ordinary intentions and
>meanings "illusory", any less real, or even unimportant to the processes.
Could you give me an example within molecular biology and genetics
in which meaning an intention emerges. What I would prefer is the
example closest to the instant where unintentional meaningless happenings
transform from "as if" into "really" meaningful things.
When you reread Dennett, could you do me a favor? Whenever Dennett
speaks of "as if" anything his conclusion...as I understand it...is that there
is not difference between a "real" X and an "as if" X. This same point
crops up in a number of his books and I always thought it was a pretty
insightful point...if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...it's a
duck! If he ever described an evolution from "as if" to "real"
intentionallity in such a way that they were ultimately defined as different
that would be pretty shocking to me.
On the other hand, that would give make my interpretation my idea,
not his...so it might be a happy revelation in any event.
Reed
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Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu
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