re: #592 Hhar

Sal1: 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 absece of the second, would be the SECOND four notes of the symphony.

Hhar1: Most people who can remember the second four notes also remember the third phrase. How can you be sure that the second four notes is a unit, other than just by your say so?

Sal2: How can you be sure that most of those who remember the first two prases remember the third? It is, after all comprised of 12 notes, and is linked, via musical theme, to the next 26 notes, so I most sincerely doubt it; besides which, by your own criteria, ALL of those who remembered the second phrase would have to also remember the third for them to be part of a single meme.

Sal1: 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 significative characteristics.

Hhar1: LOL! So the first three notes of Beethoven’s 5th have no independant sgnificance? If a meme is composed of a cortical pattern, and my experience of the first 4 notes is strikingly different from (say) a native of Borneo, or a prfessional musician, then presumably our cortical patterns will also be different. So they aren’t really the same meme, are they?

Sal2: The first three notes are the same note repeated; this happens in a number of songs, not just the 5th. And the cortical patterns in gestalt context of the received four tones would be the same - same pitch, same length - but they would not constitute a meme for the Borneo native, unless there exists a native song employing them of which he was aware, or unless he decided to employ them to create such a song, in which case he would be creating a meme, not apprehending one. But for both you (if you recognized the sequence) and for the professional musician, the sequnce would have the selfsame memetic significance as the first four notes of Beethoven’s 5th.

Sal1: Kinda like you can’t split up a hydrogen atom and have it still exhibit atomic characteristics.

Hhar1: If by “kinda” you mean “nothing”, yes.

Sal2: No, the analogy stands; just as the shattered components of a hydrogen atom would be unrecognizeable as the components of any particular atom, because they all have protons and electrons, the first three notes of Beethoven’s 5th are unrecognizeable as components of a particular song, because many different songs begin that way.

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: Yes, learned behaviors and culturally significant artifacts can be pointed out, but that des not mean they are causally efficaceous units.

But they are. Many people immediately notice the first four notes of Beethoven’s 5th as exactly that, and ascribe vapid vacuous inanity to a serial repeater of ‘you know’ in conversation…

to be continued…