From: "Paul Marsden" <paulmarsden@email.msn.com>
To: "memetics" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Re i-memes and m-memes
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 19:15:29 +0100
A point of clarification on Cloak's paper on i-culture and m-culture,
(i-memes and m-memes) which started this thread. I agree is a very useful
distinction, but the mistake should not be made to assume that
i-culture/i-memes is ideational when it is an instructional heuristic.
Specifically, according to Cloak, i-culture is a behaviour (m-culture) plus
an environmental cue, which may be *understood* as an instruction. i.e. the
interneural instruction is developed as a heuristic device for
behaviour+cue. This is very different to the thinking that has been
developed in this thread on i-memes and m-memes, and should not be confused
with it. Specifically, the former has the advantage of being a
non-ideational theory of culture, thereby eschewing the problems of
introspection. It is, in other words, a heterophenomenological approach -
and in my opinion all the better for it.
Paul Marsden
Graduate Research Centre in the Social Sciences
University of Sussex
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/hbpe2/darwinia.htm
Tel 07967 175626
Fax 07967 175636
p.marsden@sussex.ac.uk
paul.marsden@newscientist.net
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