Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 08:30:38 +0200
From: "Gatherer, D. (Derek)" <D.Gatherer@organon.nhe.akzonobel.nl>
Subject: RE: Terminology and Quantification
To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Lawrence:
A quick question regarding your meaning of the term 'fitness.' Is this
term taken to mean the fitness of a meme per se to transmit it self or to
influence the host system in which it lodges?
Derek:
The latter. In Cavallian cultural evolution theory (ie. memetics, since
Cavalli's main disciple Kevin Laland uses the word meme now interchangeably
weith the Cavallian 'cultural trait'), phenogenotypes have fitness. A
phenogenotype is produced by an underlying genotype coupled with a cultural
trait. The maximally fit phenogenotype has fitness w=1, and the less than
maximally fit phenogenotypes have fitness w=1-s, where s is the selection
pressure against them. The relative survival/reproductive success of the
fittest phenogenotype will result in more of its genes, and also more of its
cultural trait[s] (dependent of course on how transmissible the cultural
trait[s] is/are).
Lawrence:
>Or is the term taken to mean
>the fitness of a host to accept or reject foreign memes?
Derek:
No, but that is what Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman call cultural selection. It
impinges on the transmissibility of cultural traits, but does not directly
affect the fitness of the phenogenotypes that result from those traits.
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