Message-Id: <199905210017.UAA12979@mail1.lig.bellsouth.net>
From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 19:18:50 -0500
Subject: Re: JCS: Of memes and witchcraft
From: <JakeSapien@aol.com>
Date sent: Thu, 20 May 1999 20:02:20 EDT
Subject: Re: JCS: Of memes and witchcraft
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Copies to: Mary.Midgley@sol.zynet.net, owner-jcs-online@lists.zynet.co.uk
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
How does one subscribe to the jcs list?
>
> In a message dated 5/20/99 2:32:47 PM Central Daylight Time,
> robin@faichney.demon.co.uk forwards a message from Mary Midgely from the JCS
> list to the memetics list:
>
> >>Two kinds of thing can be wrong with this story. First, of course, it
> may not be seriously meant, it may just be a casual way of talking that
> has accidentally been expanded into a piece of ontology. In that case it
> should promptly be checked for meaning and, since there is none, be cut
> off with Occam' s Razor. On the other hand it may be seriously meant.
> The intention may really be that we should believe that all our own
> opinions, ideas, attitudes etc. - including, of course, those that we
> approve as well as those we disown - are simply alien beings pursuing
> their own ends on our premises. What we call our SELVES are then merely
> empty sites or mechanisms where they can grow and reproduce. We are no
> more responsible for harbouring these ideas etc. than we are for
> catching measles or being struck by lightning. Indeed 'we' are items too
> vacuous to be responsible for anything.<<
>
> I think Midgely is hitting damn close to the core of what is going wrong with
> memetics. I don't share her judgement, but I do think that that ontology is
> the problem. Some have grown so enamored with the shiny new paradigm that
> they have abandoned perfectly fine-functioning ontological premises, for new
> and unneccessary ontological premises that have highly questionable function
> (other than perhaps serving as a "scientific" sounding confirmation of their
> personal religious beliefs). We don't need memetics to turn the universe
> upside down to be useful, but unfortunately many have decided that is exactly
> what needs to be done. At best it is philosophical voodoo grandstanding, and
> very irresponsible at that. At worst some even believe it and seek to
> legitimate it.
>
> Turning to Midgely, however, responsibility is an issue of control, and
> selves are not vacuous in this regard. Memetics on the other hand engages
> more issues of causation, instead of control, and thus are more useful for
> broader contexts beyond the individual domain (though clearly and necessarily
> interacting with and including it). Midgely seems to have lost sight of the
> fact that issues of free will ARE issues of control and NOT causation (or
> perhaps she never saw in the first place? I dunno - I am not that familiar
> with her). If that is the case, perhaps her confounding of those issues
> causes her to erroneously see the "danger" that thinking in terms of memes
> will deprive (or exonerate) people of responsibility. That just isn't so.
> Not all entities are entities of control to the extent and or in the manner
> that selves are. Unfortunately some in memetics have recently made it seem
> as if memes are by suggesting that *having selves* is only a meme illusion.
> As long as they continue to do so, Midgely continues to make sense.
>
> -JS
>
> P.S. I would be interested to hear what she might have to say if someone
> wants to forward this to the JCS list. I personally do not subscribe to it.
> I may also try to EM a copy of this directly to her if that EM address in the
> headers can actually recieve it. I am including those in the CC of this EM
> and hope that they do not kick it back to me. If it makes it onto the that
> list, may the participants understand that I won't see their responses there.
>
> -JS
>
> ===============================================================
> 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