Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 15:53:03 -0700
From: "Robert G. Grimes" <grimes@fcol.com>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Inernal meme?
Most of us have persisted from the beginning in noting that the meme,
internally, cannot be the same in different individuals, only "similar" because
of the uniqueness of each person's associative network and their unique neural
environment ( which includes the associative network).
The external meme "seeds" represented by spoken word, printed word, graphics,
music, including combinations or what have you, can be pretty close to
"identical" although most of us would deny any identity in nature. Still, as I
have said, it is "close enough for government work."
The "meme structure" within the nervous system would not even be the same from
moment to moment although the rate of change could be from extremely slow to
very rapid, as with most everything else in our makeup...
Still, just as with our language, it functions very well as long as the
participants realize the word is not the thing, the map not the territory, etc.
Most realize this from their fundamental scientific discipline or other
stances...
Even though one could stand a hundred people in a circle who "agree" on a
political position, the minute one has one individual portray their concepts the
others will disagree at one point or another, even though they profess to follow
the same principles. It is the same with any meme complex, even mathematics,
although the latter is probably the most firm because it is an artificial system
where things usually have the property of being able to be declared
"identical."
Personally, I have no problem with not being able to nail the meme down any more
than I can nail a quark down. The similarity is adequate for our current uses
and the conceptual nomenclature is a synergistic addition to my scientific and
reasoning "tool box."
If we have to nail everything down we might as well quit now...
Cordially,
Bob
Bill Benzon wrote:
> 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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-- Bob Grimeshttp://members.aol.com/bob5266/ http://pages.hotbot.com/edu/bobinjax/ http://www.phonefree.com/Scripts/cgiParse.exe?sID=28788 Jacksonville, Florida Bob5266@aol.com robert.grimes@excite.com bobinjax@hotbot.com
Bobgrimes@zdnetmail.com
Man is not in control, but the man who knows he is not in control is more in control...
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore....."
=============================================================== 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