From: "Aaron Agassi" <agassi@erols.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: implied or inferred memes
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1999 13:48:02 -0400
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> Of Bill Spight
> Sent: Sunday, September 12, 1999 12:52 PM
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: implied or inferred memes
>
>
> Dear Raymond:
>
> Raymond:
>
> This got me thinking about Susan Blackmore's description of birds
> that were pecking open bottles of cream. According to her, this
> was not a meme because the birds did [not] obtain the information
> by imitating other birds but simply by learning it on their own.
>
> This caused me wonder what we would have called it if the one the
> things that was necessary for the birds to learn how to peck open
> cream bottles was observation of other birds pecking things other
> than cream bottles.
>
> Bill:
>
> I think we would refer to a meme for pecking in general.
Or pecking as the instinctual component in any larger pecking memplex.
>
> Raymond:
>
> Stated more abstractly, aren't there going to be situations in
> which we can say that if Meme A and Meme B are transmitted, then
> Meme C will arise.
One word for this is 'Syllogism'.
>Meme C is not directly transmitted, but is an
> indirect consequence of the transmittal of A and B.
>
> Bill:
>
> It is cleaner to say that C is *not* a meme in such a case. In
> fact, C is a memetic analog to a phenotypic effect.
This opens the question of the same conclusion from different premi.
>If A and B
> were genes, we would say that A and B are genes for C. I think
> that we can do the same with memes. A and B are memes for C. <s>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Bill
>
> ===============================================================
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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