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in what sense could we consider money to be a meme? or a replicator of its own?
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Re: money as meme
Sat, May 19, 2007 - 5:27 AMAny man-made cultural artifact can be considered a type of meme. That would include money, books, artwork, architecture, clothes and fashion.
This would be an externalist standpoint, which argues that physical things can be memes. Internalists, on the other hand, argue that a meme can only consist of information that can be transmitted between and stored in the human brain. In this case, the idea of money, its usage, and appearance would be the memes involved.
I think that an internalist standpoint is overly restrictive, and just consider physical things to be "external memes" or "memetic artifacts".
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Re: money as meme
Sat, May 19, 2007 - 7:39 AMGeorge - really? Hmmm, maybe it's just closed mindedness on my part but I always considered memes to be non-physical. So, to me, the concept or idea of money is a meme and the actual physical money is an expression of this meme but not the meme itself (so, a symbol of the meme essentially). Virtual money - for example the stock exchange and credit cards - are still part of the meme of money and things like the card, the bill, the stock report aren't the actual meme but are symbols or indicators of the meme (so sort of like the symptoms of the virus or an expression of the gene but not the virus or gene itself). Of course, like I said, this could just be close mindedness on my part but I think the distinction between concept and object is really quite important in regards to memes. -
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Re: money as meme
Sat, May 19, 2007 - 8:46 AM
meme as replicator: "complex ideas that form themselves into distinct memorable units," using "culture" as a medium for replication. the bills don't replicate... but the idea does... as illustrated in "Money as debt:"
video.google.com/videoplay
the coins and paper aren't memes... but the idea that they represent anything is a virulent meme.
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internalists and externalists.
Sat, May 19, 2007 - 10:41 AMThat's why I used the term "memetic artifacts" in order to distinguish from the internal or mental aspect of memes.
That's also why I mentioned the distinction between internalists and externalists. You're obviously an internalist.
Please see wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme...ternalists
"The memetics movement split almost immediately into those who wanted to stick to Dawkins' definition of a meme as "a unit of information in the brain," and those who wanted to redefine it as observable cultural artefacts and behaviours. These two schools became known as the "internalists" and the "externalists."" -
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Re: internalists and externalists.
Sat, May 19, 2007 - 2:05 PMAh- they've modified the wiki page... <<blush>> I was unaware of the "split" within the memetics "movement."
To air a bit of prejudice and curmudgeonry... the "Journal of Memetics" and all the latherdoo about getting memetics to be a "legitimate science" seems to be... well... chicken: www.youtube.com/watch
But artifacts are important. Artifacts are memes in the "dormant" state... rather like spores or eggs. But memetics isn't a "movement," it's a theory... and an important one... because memetics posits that thoughts are alive... and have their own "agency." That's the core of the theory... and its most important contribution to perception.
I was extremely saddened to learn of the passing of Aaron Lynch... one of the best writers and illustrators of the theory. Where have I been? Where is Lynch now?
Yeah, I guess I'm an "internalist," in that I agree that the technology to "test and measure" the theory is forthcoming. BTW... I think ALL artifacts are "memetic artifacts." Can you think of an exception?
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Re: internalists and externalists.
Sat, May 19, 2007 - 8:13 PMThe divide between internal and external seems to me to be a superfluous one, especially with the nature of memetics being much more fluid in interpretation, which is also why it's unable to fit into the "legitimate science" category.
I can't call it a pseudo science, though...I think it's more useful than what I believe pseudo science implies.
Maybe just a useful tool in looking at culture and its underpinnings, even if its not the end all be all answer for those things.
That was a lot of "chicken"s. I'm really glad someone asked a question in the obviously correct manner....
;^)
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Re: internalists and externalists.
Sun, May 20, 2007 - 9:08 AMOkay, I clearly haven't been paying attention! I wasn't aware that of these developments from a theory to movement either. Not that I was ever a memesist ;p Coming from a cultural theory background to me memes are just more cultural theory (so most definitely not a science of either the soft or hard variety) and not that far from plenty of concepts floated around in art for quite a while. And coming from art I'm not sure why it would be necessary to call something a memetic artifact when it seems to me that that would just be renaming what is generally called a symbol (but hey, this could well be a misunderstanding on my part since I'm not a memeticist...sorry, I just like the way that word tastes in my mind.... mmmmmmemmmeticisssst).
Though, I must say, any sort of attempts to position philosophy or cultural theory as "science" always makes me wonder just why they need or want that sort of approval or designation so badly (I wonder the same thing about spiritual people who need to believe that science supports their faith even when it doesn't) Not that theories about memes don't have a place within cognitive science, just that I'm not quite sure exactly how it could be even close to being science or why it would be necessary to try to designate it as one. -
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Re: internalists and externalists.
Sun, May 20, 2007 - 9:50 AMMon Dieu! Plus d' poule:
www.roumazeilles.net/news/nw...0056.php
(more chicken)
a metaphor... nothing more... www.complexsystems.org/commen...01.html ...who's your friend... splat. Here Dr. Corning is most skeptical. Apparently for the Institute for the Study of Complex Systems, memes just aren't complicated enough. (That's what I LIKE about em.)
I think E.O. Wilson would disagree with Corning: www.gnorx.com/Meme Memetics is sure-as-hell more useful than "Postmodernism." I think more work into the nature of Mirror Neurons may reveal Blackmore's assertion that memes are actual physical things... but maybe "things" in the quanta neighborhood where Newton's apple falls up.
Virulent memes is one great way to explain the current state of collective lunacy. -
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Re: internalists and externalists.
Sun, May 20, 2007 - 10:26 AMwald - by memes being "things" do you mean neurobiological events?
Heh, that's got to be the lamest bit of research on the chicken crossing the street I've ever seen! Man, I wouldn't trust that person to research their way out of a paper bag! (Yes, I understand it's a joke....and I've gotten to the other side.)
Heh, why would you even put memetics and postmodernism into a competition?
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Re: internalists and externalists.
Sun, May 20, 2007 - 1:20 PMfeh- what a competition! the "postmodern malaise" has us in the grip of "whatever."
not because of "moral relativism" or any of that authoritarian muck... but because of the relationship between "emperor's new clothes" and "complexity:" it has deadened our ability to see through bullshit. Thankfully, "bullshit" has entered formal intellectual discourse. "Incredulity at metadiscourse" is the way a colleague described it ("postmodernism"). What an artful way to say bullshit! Or maybe redundant... using bullshit to refute bullshit.
"Thought contagion" seems to cut through the bullshit... as a friend described it... the "suit and alarm-clock crowd." Oh... I wear a suit... so I must be "professional." Oh- I arrive at 6am... therefore, I must be "hard-working." No- it means you got a suit and an alarm clock. " Keeping up appearances" is the core of the "postmodern malaise." "Perception is reality" only works when nobody has the guts to say the Emperor is naked (another meme... or trope... there's another term by folklorists that i forget just now).
The memetic "packaging" explains how chicken-shit sellouts can pass themselves off as tough-ass patriots. Emperor's New Clothes. Suit and Alarm Clock.
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Re: internalists and externalists.
Sun, May 20, 2007 - 2:17 PMwald - no, the core of the postmodern malaise is the imperialist and presumptive idea that modernism was this heroic human journey and that genius exists in isolation. Postmodernism is born out of literary theory and is quite interesting and applicable in that context - personally I find it less so in visual art and particularly less so when applied to other disciplines. Of course, the big daddys of postmodernism really did enjoy a good prank and this obviously went wooshing over the heads of many people who take themselves way too seriously (and postmodernism...people, it's just a theory! *lol*). Seriously, most people have no idea of what postmodernism is about and have translated it to a rather simplistic idea simply because this indulges their own beliefs. Not that I'm defending postmodernism here... but to blame people's apathy on it when the general complacency and retardness of the masses has been ongoing throughout history is, well, just looking for something to blame for humans being humans en masse.
People were busy "keeping up appearances" before, during and now after modernism. That's nothing new (and probably has biological basis as well as cultural). Just as manipulating the masses existed before both modernism (though we got more methodical about it during the industrial age). Postmodernism hasn't been necessary for any of this to occur. What I wonder is where the "it was all so much better before..." meme comes from? ;)
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Re: internalists and externalists.
Mon, May 21, 2007 - 2:57 PMmemetics rests on imitation and replication from brain to brain via the brain's imitative architecture. a meme must have the sensory means to enter a brain. a physical cultural artefact evinces meaning and the manner and intent of its manufacture, and these qualities may be memes. the object in and of itself -- an example might be a pebble found on the beach by a person in a culture with no cultural significance assigned to pebbles -- cannot be a meme. -
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Re: internalists and externalists.
Mon, May 21, 2007 - 4:54 PMblue-i - still seems to me as if people are just replacing "symbol" with "meme" in the case of objects - particularly after your explanation. My understanding of meme's is that what makes them different than symbols is that they are not meaning contained within an object - or represented by an object or symbol - but rather are ideas that circulate through contact with other humans or abstract structures (not objects but organizational structures like religion). To me it seems that once an object is necessary then it's just back to being a symbol. -
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Re: internalists and externalists.
Mon, May 21, 2007 - 6:19 PMlawdhavemercy... i aint gonna go down that "postmodern" hole... for fear of stepping in a Sokal Hoax: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_hoax
all memes are not symbols... but all symbols are memes. same thing with "motifs" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif it isn't a meme until it replicates. a hat is just a hat (even with a swoosh)... a hat worn backwards is a meme.
"We do not first see and then define, we define first and then see," says Walter Lippmann.
Observation following definition rather than the opposite would seem to turn the “scientific method” on its head, but in fact it does not. Thesis and hypothesis within science give limited license to speculation. Unfortunately, we have too long imprisoned science in an "iron cage of rationality," serving factoids of "efficiency, predictability. calculability and control” like freedom fries. Like Art, Science as a commodity can become corrupt.
In light of evolution... Art, too, has been mired in a model, a bird in a gilded cage of beauty defined by classicism. As science grasped the Kuhnian paradigm shift, spandrels and other breakout models, so the arts embraced postmodernism, dada, and other methods of escaping the neoclassical cage.
maybe bullshit done well is art, done badly it's kitsch.
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Re: internalists and externalists.
Mon, May 21, 2007 - 10:05 PMMIRROR NEURONS!!!!111
w00t.
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Re: internalists and externalists.
Mon, May 21, 2007 - 2:54 PM"any sort of attempts to position philosophy or cultural theory as "science" always makes me wonder just why they need or want that sort of approval or designation so badly (I wonder the same thing about spiritual people who need to believe that science supports their faith even when it doesn't)"
because science is a reasonable method of lessening personal bias and finding useful patterns among phenomena. i'm a psychologist, and i can tell you that the transition from a pundit model to a scientific model was vital to the field's development.
also, spiritual people DO NEED a scientific basis for their beliefs, and the problem is that they can't because they're largely deluded. -
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Re: internalists and externalists.
Fri, May 25, 2007 - 1:37 PM>>"because science is a reasonable method of lessening personal bias and finding useful patterns among phenomena."
Hmmm... Are you familiar with perspectivism? Rather interesting in the context of memeology...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspectivism -
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Re: internalists and externalists.
Fri, May 25, 2007 - 2:59 PMi am familiar with perspectivism and used to be a bit of a subjectivist myself. now i see that we all have perspectives OF something. good look disbelieving in the train about to hit you...! you'll need to say more though; i need inside your joke on memetics and perspectivism, for one.
i am quite irritable about perspectivism especially in relation to the new age charlatans espousing it in such milieus as the landmark forum or "what the bleep do they know?" and its shadowy cult of ramtha. hypersubjectivism works best as a kind of excuse for oppression and caste, you might note.
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