Thursday, September 29, 2005
EMAILS ON MEMETICS
I have exchanged several Emails with two British professors, one Derek Gatherer, and the second Susan Blackmore. I have decided to post these emails here to give the readers an idea about what problems many professors think, and what are my ideas about these qustions. I hope you will try to understand and maybe even think about that too.
Emails to and from Prof. SUSAN BLACKMORE
From:
"Susan Blackmore" susan.blackmore@blueyonder.co.uk
To:
"borek borek"
Subject:
Re: memetics, semiotics, Borek from the Czech republic
Date:
Thu, 29 Sep 2005 10:48:05 +0100
Look - I can;t keep replying at length (am away tomorrow for 3 weeks) but I totally disagree about signs. Think of copying a gesture, a facial _expression, or even something like eating with chopsticks. What's the sign? if you say that my screwed up mouth is a sign then you losing any usual sense of the word. And you say memes get from one brain to another ... well ?? Do they? As I explore at length in MM I prefer to call the memes the information that is copied. What is copied is how to use chopsticks. What is in my brain may be completely different from what is in yours that enables this behaviour.
Sorry this is tricky stuff and I have to go, but I still don't see that invoking signs helps at all. What we need to do is to understand what is copied and how it is done - which may be very different in different examples - some involving signs in some ways but many not.
Sorry for the haste,
best wishes,
Sue.
----- Original Message -----
From: borek borek
To: Susan Blackmore
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2005 5:20 PM
Subject: Re: memetics, semiotics, Borek from the Czech republic
Dear Susan,
thanks a lot for your prompt answer but I would like to turn your attention to the topic once more.
I am not quite sure, but I would assume that I have not expressed my ideas too well. I do not say that memes are signs, no way. What I say is that a meme needs a sing to be transported.
You say that a meme is something copied from one man to another. BUT a huge question is how will one meme get from one brain into the other. The only possibility is using signs!!!! there is NO cable between two brains like between two PCs. so a meme needs a vehicle to be transported, and such a vehicle is a sign!!!!!
Try to understand linguistics: if I write this email for you it includes my memes which I want to be transported into your brain. This functions only using English language, a very specific system of signs. If I wrote this in czech language, a different system of signs, you would not get it. And in English language as wel as in all other languages a word, a letter, a sound and compounds of the letters and words and sounds, / if spoken / create sentences and using sentences I can transport my memes into your head!!!!! It is the only way.....using sings.
Copying is nothing else as reproducing what I have seen, really some birds do that, and dogs do that too, so far their body and the set of their memes enables that. Dogs have dreams, so one can conclude that theri brain "sort of clears" itself in sleep exactly as the human brain does.
I maintain that memes have no transport vehicle, like genes do not, therefore memes NEED signs to get transported.
A meme cannot transport itself, no chance.!!!! but using a sign it can be transported!!!!!!!!
What do you think of this ????? Is that a clearer statement than it was before????
Sorry to bother you, but I think the only way to understand memetics is to understand semiotics and evolutionary psychology, and a few more sciences...only memetics, taken out of the practical context of life is only a dull science as economimcs can sometimes be, if the teacher of economics actually does not understand whats going on in economics, and thats people, their brains and their signs transporting their memes!!!!!!
Sorry, for stressing this idea so much but I would really like to get in touch with you and to discuss that really a bit more into depth, surely , only if you care.
If you have SKYPE on your Pc we might even talk about the problem, you may find me on skype as Borek1259
Once more thanks a lot for your answer.
Hoping to hear from you again
Yours
Borek
Susan Blackmorewrote:
Dear Borek,
Thanks for your ideas - but I think you have broadened the idea of memes too far. As you know, memes are cultural replicators - information copied from person to person etc. In my opinion they have to be very carefully distinguished from signs. A sign has an effect on some one or something. It isn't, itself, copied, and if it is not copied then it is not a meme. This is the very important difference between communication and copying that I talk about in the book. This is why I say other species (with a very few exceptions) cannot have memes and certainly singled celled creatures cannot because they are not capable of imitation (or any kind of copying of information). Dogs are not capable of imitation and so cannot have memes - and they have been studied extensively for this. They can communicate very well (single cells do this and even intracellular bodies do so), but not imitate. Fierce arguments are going on about whether chimps can imitate and maybe they can but certainly not very well. Only whales, dolphins and some birds can, it seems.
I hope this helps,
with best wishes,
Sue.
----- Original Message -----
From: borek borek
To: Susan Blackmore
Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2005 4:10 PM
Subject: memetics, semiotics, Borek from the Czech republic
Hi Susan,
you do not know me. I have been studying memetics, semiotics and many other sciences for last few years. I have also exchanged 2 emails with Derek Gatherer, unfortunately, he has not answered some of my further emails.Hopefully, he has not become a victim of the bomb attacks in London.
I live now in the Czech republic, I used to teach economics at ERAU, Florida, where I became a professor in 1989. Now I teach languages at different schools in the Czech republic.
I just feel it necessary to write you some of my ideas about memetics. What I liked about Derek were 2 of his papers in Journal of Memetics, in the internet. Especially, as he wrote about Axelrod SIM. This was new to me, but I have realized that I had experienced this phenomenon as I changed my social environment / escaping from former communistic Czechoslovakia to Germany, and teaching Americans and then returning back to the Czehc republic after the political turn over in 1990 /.
I have also read your book "The meme machine", and some of your ideas brought me to "my ideas" about memetics. You write there about the fight between genes and memes. I have come to the conclusion that you are right about this "fight".
What I really think about the interaction of genes and memes is as follows:
Sometimes in really far past, maybe several billion years ago, the first one cell organism had to have some memes already. This simple organism had to recognize and orient itself in its surroundings. Its genes wanted that. But genes have no direct access to the outside world, they are only inside the organism. So the genes had to develop a system of communication with the outside world in order to survive. It was necessary for genes to know whether the surrounding conditoins are good for them or whether they are hostile to them.Genes had to have this information in order to survive. If the one cell organism moved toward a dangerous surroundings there had to be a warning system providing for retreat of the organism, or it had to start some other "reasonable" reaction. But how to get such information? only through a set or a system of receptors "understanding certain type of encrypted information about the outside world. The system of transportation of scuh information occurs by signs /SEMIOTICS/.
There is no chance for memes to get passed over from one brain to another without a certain type of signs. Pictures, what we see, are only light wave signals which our brain "translates" into pictures in brain. Words and noices which we can hear are nothing else than pressed air waves, which as signal, as sign are again "translated" in our brain into memes. E.g. some kind of music, it is a meme but it is transported by signs.
The same are languages, these are only systems of signs, extremly complex with plenty of regulations /grammar rules/ and they differ from language to language, but there are pricipal similarities inside the grammar rules of different languages, we all have objects, subjects , prepositions and endings in our languages.
So in short what I believe is that genes are sort of prisoners of their own, they cannot get in touch with the outside world directly, only indirectly using memes as a "picture" of the outside reality, and they need signs to transport the information about the about the outside world into their "intern" system. Genes do not understand the information by themselves, so they need memes to do this job for them.
I also believe that it is wrong to simplify memetics only to the human "animal, other animals have that too, just watch properly your dog. Just few days ago I have seen on German TV that even plants can make the difference of being attacked by some insect and being "hit" by rain drops or hails. Which must necessarily mean that even genes in plants must have a system of memes and a system of signs in order to recognize what is going on around them and to start the proper responce.
I would really highly appreciate if you could answer me, though I can imagine you get plent yof such emails.
I would just like to mention that English is not my mother tongue, and I would like to ask you to excuse imperfections in describing my ideas. Thanks.
Greetings
Borek
Emails to and from Prof. SUSAN BLACKMORE
From:
"Susan Blackmore" susan.blackmore@blueyonder.co.uk
To:
"borek borek"
Subject:
Re: memetics, semiotics, Borek from the Czech republic
Date:
Thu, 29 Sep 2005 10:48:05 +0100
Look - I can;t keep replying at length (am away tomorrow for 3 weeks) but I totally disagree about signs. Think of copying a gesture, a facial _expression, or even something like eating with chopsticks. What's the sign? if you say that my screwed up mouth is a sign then you losing any usual sense of the word. And you say memes get from one brain to another ... well ?? Do they? As I explore at length in MM I prefer to call the memes the information that is copied. What is copied is how to use chopsticks. What is in my brain may be completely different from what is in yours that enables this behaviour.
Sorry this is tricky stuff and I have to go, but I still don't see that invoking signs helps at all. What we need to do is to understand what is copied and how it is done - which may be very different in different examples - some involving signs in some ways but many not.
Sorry for the haste,
best wishes,
Sue.
----- Original Message -----
From: borek borek
To: Susan Blackmore
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2005 5:20 PM
Subject: Re: memetics, semiotics, Borek from the Czech republic
Dear Susan,
thanks a lot for your prompt answer but I would like to turn your attention to the topic once more.
I am not quite sure, but I would assume that I have not expressed my ideas too well. I do not say that memes are signs, no way. What I say is that a meme needs a sing to be transported.
You say that a meme is something copied from one man to another. BUT a huge question is how will one meme get from one brain into the other. The only possibility is using signs!!!! there is NO cable between two brains like between two PCs. so a meme needs a vehicle to be transported, and such a vehicle is a sign!!!!!
Try to understand linguistics: if I write this email for you it includes my memes which I want to be transported into your brain. This functions only using English language, a very specific system of signs. If I wrote this in czech language, a different system of signs, you would not get it. And in English language as wel as in all other languages a word, a letter, a sound and compounds of the letters and words and sounds, / if spoken / create sentences and using sentences I can transport my memes into your head!!!!! It is the only way.....using sings.
Copying is nothing else as reproducing what I have seen, really some birds do that, and dogs do that too, so far their body and the set of their memes enables that. Dogs have dreams, so one can conclude that theri brain "sort of clears" itself in sleep exactly as the human brain does.
I maintain that memes have no transport vehicle, like genes do not, therefore memes NEED signs to get transported.
A meme cannot transport itself, no chance.!!!! but using a sign it can be transported!!!!!!!!
What do you think of this ????? Is that a clearer statement than it was before????
Sorry to bother you, but I think the only way to understand memetics is to understand semiotics and evolutionary psychology, and a few more sciences...only memetics, taken out of the practical context of life is only a dull science as economimcs can sometimes be, if the teacher of economics actually does not understand whats going on in economics, and thats people, their brains and their signs transporting their memes!!!!!!
Sorry, for stressing this idea so much but I would really like to get in touch with you and to discuss that really a bit more into depth, surely , only if you care.
If you have SKYPE on your Pc we might even talk about the problem, you may find me on skype as Borek1259
Once more thanks a lot for your answer.
Hoping to hear from you again
Yours
Borek
Susan Blackmore
Dear Borek,
Thanks for your ideas - but I think you have broadened the idea of memes too far. As you know, memes are cultural replicators - information copied from person to person etc. In my opinion they have to be very carefully distinguished from signs. A sign has an effect on some one or something. It isn't, itself, copied, and if it is not copied then it is not a meme. This is the very important difference between communication and copying that I talk about in the book. This is why I say other species (with a very few exceptions) cannot have memes and certainly singled celled creatures cannot because they are not capable of imitation (or any kind of copying of information). Dogs are not capable of imitation and so cannot have memes - and they have been studied extensively for this. They can communicate very well (single cells do this and even intracellular bodies do so), but not imitate. Fierce arguments are going on about whether chimps can imitate and maybe they can but certainly not very well. Only whales, dolphins and some birds can, it seems.
I hope this helps,
with best wishes,
Sue.
----- Original Message -----
From: borek borek
To: Susan Blackmore
Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2005 4:10 PM
Subject: memetics, semiotics, Borek from the Czech republic
Hi Susan,
you do not know me. I have been studying memetics, semiotics and many other sciences for last few years. I have also exchanged 2 emails with Derek Gatherer, unfortunately, he has not answered some of my further emails.Hopefully, he has not become a victim of the bomb attacks in London.
I live now in the Czech republic, I used to teach economics at ERAU, Florida, where I became a professor in 1989. Now I teach languages at different schools in the Czech republic.
I just feel it necessary to write you some of my ideas about memetics. What I liked about Derek were 2 of his papers in Journal of Memetics, in the internet. Especially, as he wrote about Axelrod SIM. This was new to me, but I have realized that I had experienced this phenomenon as I changed my social environment / escaping from former communistic Czechoslovakia to Germany, and teaching Americans and then returning back to the Czehc republic after the political turn over in 1990 /.
I have also read your book "The meme machine", and some of your ideas brought me to "my ideas" about memetics. You write there about the fight between genes and memes. I have come to the conclusion that you are right about this "fight".
What I really think about the interaction of genes and memes is as follows:
Sometimes in really far past, maybe several billion years ago, the first one cell organism had to have some memes already. This simple organism had to recognize and orient itself in its surroundings. Its genes wanted that. But genes have no direct access to the outside world, they are only inside the organism. So the genes had to develop a system of communication with the outside world in order to survive. It was necessary for genes to know whether the surrounding conditoins are good for them or whether they are hostile to them.Genes had to have this information in order to survive. If the one cell organism moved toward a dangerous surroundings there had to be a warning system providing for retreat of the organism, or it had to start some other "reasonable" reaction. But how to get such information? only through a set or a system of receptors "understanding certain type of encrypted information about the outside world. The system of transportation of scuh information occurs by signs /SEMIOTICS/.
There is no chance for memes to get passed over from one brain to another without a certain type of signs. Pictures, what we see, are only light wave signals which our brain "translates" into pictures in brain. Words and noices which we can hear are nothing else than pressed air waves, which as signal, as sign are again "translated" in our brain into memes. E.g. some kind of music, it is a meme but it is transported by signs.
The same are languages, these are only systems of signs, extremly complex with plenty of regulations /grammar rules/ and they differ from language to language, but there are pricipal similarities inside the grammar rules of different languages, we all have objects, subjects , prepositions and endings in our languages.
So in short what I believe is that genes are sort of prisoners of their own, they cannot get in touch with the outside world directly, only indirectly using memes as a "picture" of the outside reality, and they need signs to transport the information about the about the outside world into their "intern" system. Genes do not understand the information by themselves, so they need memes to do this job for them.
I also believe that it is wrong to simplify memetics only to the human "animal, other animals have that too, just watch properly your dog. Just few days ago I have seen on German TV that even plants can make the difference of being attacked by some insect and being "hit" by rain drops or hails. Which must necessarily mean that even genes in plants must have a system of memes and a system of signs in order to recognize what is going on around them and to start the proper responce.
I would really highly appreciate if you could answer me, though I can imagine you get plent yof such emails.
I would just like to mention that English is not my mother tongue, and I would like to ask you to excuse imperfections in describing my ideas. Thanks.
Greetings
Borek
# posted by Dalibor @ 11:45 AM 
