Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 01:34:50 +0100
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: "Mark M. Mills" <mmills@htcomp.net>
Subject: Re: implied or inferred memes
In-Reply-To: <199910042340.TAA29903@smtp10.atl.mindspring.net>
Bill,
At 07:48 PM 10/4/99 -0400, you wrote:
>I don't think such a macro brain area as Broca's area is a useful analgue
>to some chunk of DNA tissue.
I understand. It is an odd image. I think it works, though. A
chromosome was not thought to be capable of holding an organism's critical
genetic information 60 years, ago. One of the early arguments against
chromosome involvement in genetics related to the apparent uniformity of
DNA. If you can't see the bases, it looks like it bears no information at
all.
>>There are probably millions of ways for L-memes to produce G-memes, just as
>>there is many combinations of cells capable of producing blue eyes from
>>DNA.
>
>But how many blue pigments are there?
I'm not an expert on blue pigments, but my own blue eyes are rather grey.
doesn't seem to be one color, but a average of many pigments.
>Well, if folks like Walter Freeman are correct, then the correlation you're
>looking for may not be possible, even in principle. It may not be a matter
>of instrumentation at all. It may just be that the relationship between
>the neural schemas and patterns of synaptic excitability is indirect and
>fairly abstract.
Fairly abstract? Is that like fairly pregnant?
>Well, yeah, certainly the mind/brain is a product of development. But it's
>not at all clear to me that this development involves mental memes. It
>involves the development of neural structures capable of imitating the
>G-memes required by the local culture.
I'm puzzled by the object of your final sentence, 'neural structures
capable of imitating the G-meme.' I think we agree that a G-meme is
something in the environment, an object quite often. How will a neural
structure 'imitate' an object?
DNA is not a protein. It just contains information used during protein
synthesis. The information carried by DNA is 2 dimensional, while proteins
are 3 dimensional. The information recorded in DNA is transformed into a
3d protein via various ribotypes.
I don't see why an L-meme has to bear any physical or process relationship
to a G-meme, all it has to do is store the transformation of the G-meme
induced sensation and make that transformation available to processes
capable of triggering behaviors to reproduce it.
Mark
Mark
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