Message-Id: <199909301830.OAA08682@smtp6.mindspring.com>
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 14:38:31 -0400
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: bbenzon@mindspring.com (Bill Benzon)
Subject: RE: Inernal meme?
At 3:45 PM 9/29/99 -0500, Aaron Lynch wrote:
>
>As with black holes and prions, there will be those who demand a lot more
>evidence before being persuaded. You may demand more evidence than many
>memeticists on the matter of internally-stored threat-word vocabularies and
>internal information hypotheses.
>
Just a quick interjection. I don't have any problem with
"internally-stored threat-word vocabularies" or with "internal information
hypotheses" etc. I just don't think those things in the brain a memes, none
of them. Whatever is replicated in cultural processes, it's not the stuff
inside our heads.
Come to think of it, Walter J. Freeman, a neuroscientist at Berkeley, has
ideas about brain dynamics which suggests that internal representations are
unique to us as individuals. If he is correct--and I'm by no means sure of
it--then none of them, no matter what the source, could possibly be memes.
Walter J. Freeman, "The Physiology of Perception," _Scientific American_.
Vol, 264, NO. 2, February 1991, pp. 78-85.
Walter J. Freeman, _Societies of Brains_, Lawrence Erlbaum, 1995.
William L. Benzon 201.217.1010
708 Jersey Ave. Apt. 2A bbenzon@mindspring.com
Jersey City, NJ 07302 USA http://www.newsavanna.com/wlb/
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