From: "Chris Lofting" <ddiamond@ozemail.com.au>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: facets of meme-talk
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 00:32:36 +1000
-----Original Message-----
From: Robin Faichney <robin@faichney.demon.co.uk>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Date: Sunday, 29 August 1999 7:52
Subject: Re: facets of meme-talk
>Let's face it, memes have many more degrees of freedom than genes. I
>expect great strides will be made in "neuropsychobiology", but I'll be
>immensely surprised if it has any direct application to memetics. There
>has to be a layer of general bio-info processing in there somewhere, I
>suspect between "neuro" and "psycho". Memetics is about information,
>not about neurobiology, excepting only to the extent that the latter
>supports computation and communication.
>
The 'middle' of the neurology/psychology is the same 'middle' as that
between physics and biology -- it is chemistry where in the neuro/psycho
link we are dealing with information chemisty in that we take the
fundamental neurologically based distinctions of objects (what) and
relationships (where) and 'mix' them such that we get meanings based on the
patterns of emotion that this creates.
At the neurological level the neurons serve as warp and the
neurotransmitters/neuromodulators as weft and from this comes 'patterns' ---
thus uptake problems with a neuromodulator can generate 'dark' thoughts as
well as 'god in the head' syndrome -- these both linked to the too fast or
too slow uptake of serotonin.
Here is your 'middle' area an in that are operates the what/where dichotomy
for filtering information into patterns of 'meaning'.
best,
Chris.
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