re: #578 Hhar

Sal1: You cannot define a meme in brains generally, because different brains contain different memes. But you can empirically verify the presence or absence of a particular meme in an individual brain by means of a simple recognition test. And when the brain in question recognizes, say, the Golden Rule, but not Great Commission, or vice-versa, you can confidently say that for that brain, the one recognized is a meme, distinguishable from the Biblical memeset of which it is a part, and that, for that brain, the unrecognized one is not.

Hhar1: LOL! So all ideas that a person recognises as having learned are units? How do you know? Often people mix up and get ideas confused: they get the (say) Jewish and Christian forms of the Golden Rule mixed up, and get neither of them straight. Where’s the unit? Ans: it isn’t a unit if it doesn’t turn out to be. Its only a unit when it fits the pattern.

Sal2: if they get them mixed up, they still possess a meme, but a mutated one. This is one way that memetic evolution occurs.

Sal1: Are you telling me that fire doesn’t exist, or sand grains, or stars? I can point to individual examples, but I cannot point to ‘fire’ or ‘sand grain’ or ‘star’ in general.

hhar1: Yeah, and that is just so like me asking “Where is the second Meme in Beethoven’s symphony number 5.’ and “If a meme is a subjective ezxperience, how do you know it is a unit, and what is it necessarily composed of?” I mean, this isn’t deep metaphysics, its simple stuff.

Sal2: You didn’t answer my question, because you can’t, without impugning your own position, since it is a good analogy. But the second meme in Beethoven’s 5th, almost always found linked with the first, but less prevalent than it, because the first meme does appear in the ansece of the second, would be the SECOND four notes of the symphony. As to what an individual meme is composed of, it is composed of a cortical pattern that corresponnds to information or meaning, and it is a unit when it cannot be further subdivided and still maintain significatice characteristics. Kinda like you can’t split up a hydrogen atom and have it still exhibit atomic characteristics.

Sal1: This is because tokens exist, but types for them - words or phrases like ‘star’ or ‘sand grain’ or ‘fire’ - are purely memetic, and have no physical existence ourtside of cognitive patterns in minds and their coding in gestures, speech and texts.

Hhar1: Makes it hard to call them “units”, doesn’t it?

Sal2: No it doesn’t. Just as particular stars can be found in some spaces and not in others, so it is with memes and minds.

Sal1: Likewise, one cannot point to ‘memes’ in general, but individual memes, such as the first four notes of beethoven’s 5th Symphony or the tendency for some people to cover conversation gaps by compulsively saying ‘you know’, can indeed be pointed out.

Hhar1: I can empirically define the composition of a star. The first 4 notes of Beethoven’s 5th symphony are a subjective experience: you CAN’t empirically define that.

Sal2: Actually, you can do no better. The tones corresponding to those notes can be objectively quantified as to frequency, sequence and length, while the composition of a star comes down to peoples’ subjective readings of electrospectroheliographs. And while people can intersubjectively agree on those readings, they can also intersubjectively agree that a particular tonal sequence is an example of the first 4 notes of Beethoven’s 5th, too. Unless they are ignorant of it, and then they could make mo more heads or tails of it than could a scientific illiterate trying to read an electrospectroheliograph.