re: #567 Salamantis

Sal2: Because the term meme indicates things that the term idea does not. Replicating between minds by means of communication, for one thing.

So ideas aren’t routinely passed from person to person? Why, dawkins is more brilliant than I thought! LOL!

And by means of other action, also. Is it an idea when you open a Zippo lighter with a snap of your fingers?

And learned behaviors are often imitated and…..(gasp) Learned! And taught! Its a whole new world of SCIENCE! I have been so BLIND!

Also, memes are also replicated in artifacts. Bibles and Qurans can be described as physically instantiated memeplexes, but as ideas?

You mean ideas and stories can be put into books for people to read and copy? GASP! This is incredible. Tell me more! Before, we had to do with referring to books, films, tapes and media of communication, but now we have the MEMEPLEX! Is that like a cineplex where you can just buzz like a fly between movies to get your altogether subjective impression, and then call that a unit of cinema? SCIENCE!

The fact is that when something becomes the object of focused study, a specialized vocabulary develops as a means to exclude the baggage that might be otherwise insinuated by the connotations found in common discourse. Phenomenology did this, Hermeneutics did this. Semiotics did this. Why should memetics be any different?

Yeah, the word “book” has all this baggage associated with it. Better call it a physcally instantiated memeplex. So much more informative.

Ummm…maybe because meme doesn’t add anything and its a sloppy, poorly defined term? I think you were going to tell me how something that is only subjectively defineable and you can’t ever count or have a limited number in any physically instatiated memplex can be a “unit”. I’m waiting on this, I really am.

I’m killing myself laughing, is what I am. I haven’t had so much fun since my creationist baiting days. The difference is that I regret that, but will not regret this.