Message-Id: <v02140b08b334115250c0@[128.103.96.185]>
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 16:38:12 -0400
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: konsler@ascat.harvard.edu (Reed Konsler)
Subject: The Meme Machine
>From: bbenzon@mindspring.com (Bill Benzon)
>Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1999 15:00:16 -0400
>Subject: Re: The Meme Machine
>
>
>No, as Jake (I think) pointed out, one's belief about the intentional
>nature of human action has nothing to do with one's analysis of large-scale
>cultural process. One can believe, as I do, that humans act intentionally
>without having to believe that cultural evolution involves intentionality.
>It doesn't, no more so than biological evolution. Nations can form and
>execute 5-year plans and such, but that is not what cultural evolution is
>about.
Where does this individual-level intentionality go? Is it ineffectual
becuase it gets diluted statisically? Maybe I'm confused about
intentionality. If you are claiming that humans act with willful
forethought, what happens to the force of those actions?
Are they irrelevant to culture...would the world go on it's merry
way whatever the individual humans decided to do?
>Remember that I don't think memes are in the mind. They are in the
>environment. The mind provides the environment to which the memes adapt
>(or not).
If this is the case, why not think of the memes as intentional?
Reed
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Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu
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