I agree that as long as psychosociophilosophy is predominant in the field
of memetics the definition of a meme will continue to be elusive. But what
are we looking for exactly and how will we know when we've found it? I
expect that a meme is made up of activity in different parts of the brain,
much like an emotion seems to be. Most of it would be cortical but some of
the more primal memes would show up as red blobs near the brain stem in a
PET scan. What will these studies show specifically that will indicate what
and where a meme is?
That's the fundamental difference between a gene and a meme--a gene is a
discrete and discernible sequence of nucleotides whereas a meme is a bunch
of zipping electrolytes and chemical dumps in a sea of neurons. I think
that before we can tell what a meme is we have to be able to identify
thoughts in general. Physiologically, how is a thought formed, what's its
relationship to other thoughts and where does it go from there? Can we
actually track a thought or meme?
Mark