What, Why & How do we Know ?
Talking of Australian intellectals as we were very briefly in the previous post, by some spooky coincidence, I’ve been reading Bennett & Hacker “Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience” for the last couple of days. Hacker is P M S Hacker the Oxford philosopher, whereas M R Bennett is chair of physiology in Sydney. Where to start … Continue reading “What a Difference 4 Years Make”
I’ve mentioned the idea of the “memetic arms race” (after Dennett) and the devaluing of subtle terms that get simplistically mis-represented in rhetorical argument, and this is simply another example.
Why am I reading “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” (Edward Gibbon 1776, D M Low 1960 abridgement, 910 page , 1974 edition by Chatto & Windus) ? I picked it up from my father’s book-case a couple of years ago because the Neil Hannon / Divine Comedy lyric “Gibbon’s divine decline and fall” … Continue reading “The Divine Gibbon”
A main thread of my work is that what passes for sense, knowledge and rationality in communication and decision-making with any “what should we do” qualitative, ethical or moral element, is essentially memetic. A western meme that dominates western society and western dominated worlds; a meme that focusses on quantifiable values and discrete objects than … Continue reading “ECT – A Fine Meme”
Plus c’est la meme chose. Vive l’Anglais. It’s a memetic evolutionary loop, but English is a very expressive language because it is used for global communication above and beyond trans-atlantic drivel, and yes it will evolve into “Globish” in the process and even lose the tag “English” if it offends the French. Defenders of English … Continue reading “Plus Ca Change”
I made a reference to this book by Chris Wilson earlier and started a more thorough review … below. Chris responded before I had published … so appended below is our initial exchange to my incomplete review. We can use the comments below to continue the public dialogue. Psybertron asked “What am I missing ?” … Continue reading “Healing The Unhappy Caveman”
Tickled by this. One of my agenda items is that so much low quality memetic confusion reigns because communication (with copying & referencing) at the speed of light propagates what is said / symbolized infinitely faster that what is truly meant valuable. But this form of mediation is maybe a bit extreme ?
I see Sue Blackmore coined the idea of a third level of replicator above genes and memes, termed (so far) “temes” in her recent presentation to TED2008. Not entirely convinced yet that this form of technology enabled memes are fundamentally different to memes. As she says herself, in discussing whether “artificial-meme” might be a better … Continue reading “Temes – Techno-memes or what ?”