Message-Id: <199910052031.QAA15841@smtp7.atl.mindspring.net>
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 16:39:40 -0400
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: bbenzon@mindspring.com (Bill Benzon)
Subject: Re: implied or inferred memes
At 2:15 PM 10/5/99 +0000, Mark M. Mills wrote:
>
>>To provide an analogy, you can know all there is to know about logic
>>circuits on silicon chips and still not have the foggiest idea how to
>>program a word processor. And, you can do a bang-up job of programming a
>>word processor without knowing the physical or logical layout of memory
>>chips, etc.
>
>I'm not sure what you mean by this analogy. The circuit designers I know
>can all develop primitive word processors. They are not going to produce
>a 'good' word processor, but I don't think that is your point. Further, I
>don't see the purpose of invoking 'designers'. I haven't dropped a
>homuculus in the L-meme model.
Designers are irrelevant to my point. I'm not worried too much about you
smuggling a homunculus into the model. I'm simply pointing out that we have
a relation of implementation between the language and logic that encodes,
in my example, a word processor, and the physical structure of the system
that runs the code. That physical system can implement any kind of a
program, not just wordprocessors. An examination of the structure of that
physical system won't tell you anything about the structure of the various
things that can be implemented in it. And if you had a complete
nano-second by nano-second dump of what's going on in that physical system
it would be difficult to examine that dump and figure out whether it's
running a word processor or a flight simulator, etc.
Well, a synapse by synapse account of the nervous system isn't likely to
get you any closer to understanding what it's doing.
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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