Sal2: Okay; I empirically define the first four notes of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony as a widespread meme. Not the first five, and not the first three. Prove me wrong. it will be hysterically funny when you try to deny it; practically everybody who reads the passage will have Da-Da-Da-Dummmmmm! echoing in their ears, but far fewer of them will have the entire symphony for an earworm.

Um, no, you have to demonstrate that you are RIGHT. Its your theory: you need to show the use. Show that calling this catchy phrase a “meme” has any utility. You have already said that a someone from Borneo might have a different impression of the symphony. I’ll take you at your word. Then show that this “unit” is actually a “unit”, and what is unitary about it. If one persons earworm of the first notes represents all the chords, and the person can even pick out the different instruments, and another only remembers 4 simple tones and the rhythm, what is the meme? I’ve had that played to me as 4 notes with the rhythm on a recorder and I didn’t recognise it. So what’s the unit?

Sal2: When you have no legitimate answer, you compulsively resort to attempts to ridicule. I explained to you the distinction between always memetic words and the frequently but not in all instances nonmemetic things to which they refer. This is a distinction that you cannot deny.

Its a distinction that is pointless if a meme is an entirely subjective entity. I keep saying “So what?” and you keep throwing perfectly silly jargon at me. We went over it: symbols are not the things they represent. Some things are symbols. I won’t deny it because its bleeding obvious, and rephrasing it in sciency language is pointless. The fact that you are getting hot under the collar for me saying “So what?” is really interesting, true beleiver.

You cannot define a meme in brains generally, because different brains contain different memes. But you can empirically verify the presence or absence of a particular meme in an individual brain by means of a simple recognition test. And when the brain in question recognizes, say, the Golden Rule, but not Great Commission, or vice-versa, you can confidently say that for that brain, the one recognized is a meme, distinguishable from the Biblical memeset of which it is a part, and that, for that brain, the unrecognized one is not.

LOL! So all ideas that a person recognises as having learned are units? How do you know? Often people mix up and get ideas confused: they get the (say) Jewish and Christian forms of the Golden Rule mixed up, and get neither of them straight. Where’s the unit? Ans: it isn’t a unit if it doesn’t turn out to be. Its only a unit when it fits the pattern.

Are you telling me that fire doesn’t exist, or sand grains, or stars? I can point to individual examples, but I cannot point to ‘fire’ or ‘sand grain’ or ‘star’ in general.

Yeah, and that is just so like me asking “Where is the second Meme in Beethoven’s symphony number 5.’ and “If a meme is a subjective ezxperience, how do you know it is a unit, and what is it necessarily composed of?” I mean, this isn’t deep metaphysics, its simple stuff.

This is because tokens exist, but types for them - words or phrases like ‘star’ or ‘sand grain’ or ‘fire’ - are purely memetic, and have no physical existence ourtside of cognitive patterns in minds and their coding in gestures, speech and texts.

Makes it hard to call them “units”, doesn’t it?

Likewise, one cannot point to ‘memes’ in general, but individual memes, such as the first four notes of beethoven’s 5th Symphony or the tendency for some people to cover conversation gaps by compulsively saying ‘you know’, can indeed be pointed out.

I can empirically define the composition of a star. The first 4 notes of Beethoven’s 5th symphony are a subjective experience: you CAN’t empirically define that.