Date: Sat, 04 Sep 1999 01:02:04 -0700
From: Bill Spight <bspight@pacbell.net>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: i-memes and m-memes
Dear Aaron:
Aaron:
Okay, you got me! Sorry for the confusion.
Bill:
I did find it confusing.
Aaron:
That was before I read the post denoting how original usage differentiates memes from memetic objects and phenomena, and rephrased, making the distinction, in accordance. The observation was that some have expanded the usage of the word 'meme' to cover the memes manifestations.
Bill:
I think that there has been disagreement about the meaning of "meme" for a couple of decades.
Aaron:
According to the old usage I can only deem a dust particle memetic. According to current expanded usage that I too had fallen into, it might even be called a meme in and of itself. Perhaps you can advise me on the Semantics, the fine distinction, which has become the more confusing since I intentionally challenged the idea that natural objects and phenomena are not memetic (or memes, in the newer looser usage).
Bill:
I don't think that there is a looser usage here.
The reason that natural objects and phenomena are not memes, by any definition that I know of, is that they are not cultural, per se. A natural object or phenomenon along with its cultural significance may be a meme, under some definitions.
Aaron:
Meaning is transmissible subject to comprehension. Meaning is an
intellectual artifact, information content, that is decoded and re-encoded, thus comprehended. But then, so is sensory input from
reality. Meaning derived from information in the physicist's sense is
understanding. It has to do with concepts and interrelationships as opposed to rote learning of detail without meaning. Accurate meaning is truth, correspondence to reality, of interrelationship, Gestalt, as opposed to the truth of one to one correspondence of every point, meaninglessly. My point is that receptivity to communication is only a special case of perception. That comprehension is comprehension. Decoding messages is only a special case, just another instance of problem solving and that aspect of that part of the Phenomena which is ongoing simulation of reality from input. It's the same operation, perhaps with some variation, in confronting culture as in confronting nature. If there is any such variation, then what is it? A fine point, I'd expect, and not a difference in kind.
Bill:
Well, there does seem to be a general distinction between social and instrumental intelligence, and differences between how we confront natural and cultural phenomena. Some believe that the mind is highly modular (the Swiss Army knife model). I think that there is a good bit of exaptation, that is, that skills evolved in one area are applied to others.
Aaron:
Thus all is memetic
Bill:
Because anything may be endowed with meaning, and that meaning may be culturally transmitted?
Ciao,
Bill
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