Re: virus: Does a dog have meme-nature?

KMO (c538128@mizzou1.missouri.edu)
Sat, 8 Jun 1996 14:20:22 -0600

Peter:
>Stephen:
>>I don't believe a fork is a meme. A fork is a thing. Forks in cultural
>>contexts might be associated with memes. For example very fancy solid
>>silver forks in a four star haut cuisine restaurant are associted with
>>different memes than say, a fork that is handed to you in a chinese
>>noodle house because you don't know how to use chop sticks.
>
>Michael:
>">Brodie: "...When you are programmed with an association-meme, the
>presence of one thing triggers a thought or feeling about something
>else..." Wouldn't Pavlov have an opinion on this?"
>
>Memes are associated with memes, be they physical (for example body
>language) or technical (forks) as well as linguistic. This is the
>relationship
>i read into the use of words like memecomplex and memesphere.

Forks are not memes. Forks and other human-crafted artifacts are the
phenotypic expressions of memes. They indicate the past influence that
some meme-complex had on the physical world. A crafted object stands in
the same relation to a meme as a phenotype stands in relation to a sequence
of genes. This seems to be the only point at which Peter and I dissagree
in a more substantial sense than just having different interests.

A side note:

The traditional answer to the Zen Koan "Does a dog have Buddha nature?" is
"Mu." i.e. "Nothing." What is usually not included in this account is
that "Mu" is the onomanapiac word in Chinese for the sound a dog makes.
That is to say that "Mu" is the Chinese equivalent of "woof woof." The
traditional answer says, on the surface, that the dog does not have Buddha
nature, but the pun keeps the dog in the picture.

A version more suitable to the English language is:

Q: "Does a horse have Buddha nature?"

A: "Nay."

-KMO

You will propagate the C Memetic complex. Resistance is futile.

http://www.missouri.edu/~c538128/