Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 10:19:50 +0200
From: Mario Vaneechoutte <Mario.Vaneechoutte@rug.ac.be>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Ontology (and the culture-meme-mind interface)
Dan Plante wrote:
> At 06:53 PM 18/05/99 -0400, Jake Sapien wrote:>
> Undeniably the existence of selves has profound impact on
> >memetic/cultural evolution, and in turn memetics plays an important role, in
> >determining the characters of selves.
> >
> >But "having a self" (perhaps "selfishness"?) itself is not a meme. It is
> >resultant of a degree of complex awareness which is inscribed not only
> >memetically, but also and initially genetically into each human organism.
>
> As far as ascribing the phenomenon of "mind" or "awareness" solely to memes
> is concerned, I have to agree. When viewing the mind, at a specific level
> of functional abstraction, as the emergent "thing" that arises out of the
> dynamic interplay between memory, intellect and emotion, it becomes evident
> that the previous interpretation cannot be correct, since it attributes
> only one aspect of the mind (memory/memes) with cognitive awareness, and
> relegates the rest of it (intellect and emotion) to a kind of neutral
> substrate upon which memes operate. This ignores the fact that the basic
> operational unit of culture is the individual mind which, as a thing which
> is *greater* than the sum of its parts, cannot be treated simply as the sum
> of its parts (or, as in this case, one of its parts). It should also be
> seen that, without intellect and emotion, the causality of individual
> actions cannot be traced solely through memes.
>
> Dan
Agreed
Mario.Vaneechoutte@rug.ac.be
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