From: "Aaron Agassi" <agassi@erols.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: i-memes and m-memes
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 14:33:06 -0400
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.95q.990829134634.117A-100000@marlowe.umd.edu>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> Of Lawrence H. de Bivort
> Sent: Sunday, August 29, 1999 1:58 PM
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: RE: i-memes and m-memes
>
>
>
> Greetings,
>
> On Sun, 29 Aug 1999, Aaron Agassi wrote:
>
> >Ideas, behaviors, and artifacts. If these are indeed already memes, then
> >they don't need new names.
>
> I would say that ideas, behaviors and artifacts CAN be memes IF they have
> the architecture and functions needed to 'displace' competing memes, and
> if they are provided with the requisite distribution channels. This
> provides that many ideas, behaviors and artifacts are not memes, because
> they lack the above characteristics.
Not reproductively failed memes? After all, a perfectly viable meme can
mutate into form that reproduces poorly or fails entirely to reproduce. Does
it then cease to be a meme? Or has it simply mutated into oblivion?
>
> >But are certain genes memes?
>
> I would say not, unless it is argued that genes can produce beliefs that
> shape behavior, etc.
This can be argued, inescapably. The way we sense certainly engenders
belief. Emotions with basis in physiology influence value judgment. And so
on.
>The key, in the way we
No, the limited (and perhaps more useful) way in which you
>use the term, is that a meme
> is above all else a belief, or a belief-creating structure.
Others say that the meme replicates as a behavior observed by others, there
by making precious little of any other specification.
>The beliefs of
> a culture are memetic, and subject to memetic manipulation.
>
> To the extent that behavior encodes AND manifests a belief, the bhavior
> can be held to be a channel for the expression and (if successful)
> replication of a meme. But any behavior is not and of itself memetic.
This is an important specification. Nervous twitches and the way one eats
one's food have been sited here as memes!
>A
> memetic engineer might encode a belief-meme into a behavior, in order to
> disseminate the idea, but, again, the behavior itself would only be viewed
> as the channel for the belief that has been embedded in it.
>
> >mediation. Indeed, it has been suggested that all memplexes must have a
> >needed instinctual basis as an indispensable component.
>
> Well, that is what one is forced to consider if we insist on attributing
> to memes a gene-etic structure and model. Which is why I find it not
> useful to do so.
No. Even without attributing genetic structure.
If all behaviors are built upon some innate impulse, then, well, all
behaviors are built upon some innate impulse. Without innate impulse there
is no motivation what so ever.
>
> Lawrence de Bivort
> The Memetics Group
>
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> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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===============================================================
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