From: "Aaron Agassi" <agassi@erols.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: i-memes and m-memes
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1999 06:43:34 -0400
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> Of Gatherer, D. (Derek)
> Sent: Thursday, September 02, 1999 4:51 AM
> To: 'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'
> Subject: RE: i-memes and m-memes
>
>
> Derek:
> But to return to the irony-free issue,
> > the question
> > is "what replicates?" To state that everything is a potential
> replicator
>
> Aaron:
> No, replicatee. It can be memetically replicated by an observer. There are
> no memetic self replicators.
>
> Derek:
> Well, that is a separate issue. I know some memeticists prefer
> 'replicandum' or some other usage to 'replicator'. I don't.
>
> [concerning what are replicators] We want to know what is
> actually the case,
>
> Aaron:
> I'm telling you what is actually the case.
>
> Derek:
> No, all you have said is that everything is a meme, which is not true.
>
> Aaron:
> Not potential, but prospective.
>
> Derek:
> So what's the difference?
A potential X is something of an inherent quality to become X. A prospective
X is something that may yet conceivably serve as an X, for whatever
happenstance. Potential X are distinguished from utter non-X. Prospective X
need not be. All phenomena are memetic. Anything may prove perceivable and
conceivable. In this an artifact is no different than a found object. Just
as an Archeologist decodes a Greek urn, re-encoding memetically the
impression from the experience of decoding, into their own brain, likewise
the Geologist decodes the strata of the rocks, encoding the impressions from
the experience decoding into their own brain. The same goes for events,
phenomena, and behavior, all observed and even interacted with. Reception is
perception. Polly-directional communication is interaction.
>I want to know: what is the replicator in
> cultural evolution? Is it a brain entity (Dawkins B) or is it a rougher
> notion of cultural artefact/behaviour etc (Dawkins A). Tell me
> what is the
> case.
The replicater is the perceiver. The transmitter may be the one who performs
behavior. The replicatee is the idea being replicated. Now, obviously ideas
reside in the mind, but are transmitted back and forth within society. The
society, after all, is made up of it's members. And no man is an island.
Ideas are brain entity cultural artifacts.
How can they be both? Why not? Is not a domesticated animal, subject to
selective breeding over generations for culturally selected criteria, both a
biological entity and a cultural artifact all at once? Ideas are certainly
as much shaped by culture as are domesticated animals.
An idea is not so much an entity, but an event, a process that may even be
sustained or repeated from dormant storage. Live idea can no more be
captured then happiness. Memetics is the study of replication and
transmission of ideas. You might as well seek to identify a wind entity.
Weather is an ongoing event.
>
> ===============================================================
> 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