From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Fri Aug 16 2002 - 21:27:48 MDT
On 16 Aug 2002 at 16:27, Jkr438@aol.com wrote:
>
> <From the end of the article>
> The inner conscious self that has free will, and can rebel against the
> selfish replicators, is an illusion. The self is a memeplex created by
> and for the memes.
>
> <snip>
>
> If the theory of memetic drive is correct then this body here has been
> created by the combined replicator power of genes and memes. But what
> about the 'real me'? Just by calling this 'my body' and 'my brain' I
> seem to imply that 'I' am something else. Certainly it feels as though
> there is a self inside who owns this body and controls it - a
> conscious self who experiences the world and has creativity and free
> will. Do you feel this way too?
>
> <snip>
>
> If so you face a problem. Either you must accept the existence of a
> mysterious soul, spirit, or separate mind - with all the philosophical
> and scientific problems that poses - or you must reject it. But if you
> reject it, it is no good putting your head in the sand and saying 'the
> self just is the physical body' because it doesn't feel that way. You
> have explain why we are all deluded into this illusion of self that
> seems so much more than just the cells of our bodies. <end quotes>
>
>
> [rhinoceros]
> That seems to be... well... not rigorous thinking. If one restricts
> the meme concept to replicated information, and excludes genetic
> traits, emotions, and ideas obtained through practice, the above
> claims about memes being solely accountable for the self do not seem
> so convincing.
>
> Did I miss something?
>
>
> [Jake] No you heard Blackmore correctly. And I think this is one area
> that her ideological musing really make for more distractions than
> clarifications. I see no compelling reason to make issues of self and
> selfhood some sort of pivot stone for memetics. Certainly given
> memetics we can look at selfness in new and interesting and ways, but
> going on about selves themselves doesn't really do anything
> interesting for the progress of memetics. Unless you want to
> intellectually masturbate the next phenomenological narrative free
> will chaos magick memeplex into existence. In which case allow me to
> recommend this Email list that I am subscribed to called "Church of
> the Virus".
>
Blackmore is attempting to Buddhize memetics (it is her faith system).
It is a strategy that cannot succeed, for good reasons. The central
contention of the no-self school is that the belief that people have that
we have selves is a delusion; however, this contention gets its throat
pinched shut between the horns of a lethal dilemma. Either we possess
selves or we do not. If we possess selves, then the belief that we do is
no delusion; OTOH, if we do not possess selves, then there is no self to
be deluded, hence also no delusion, for delusion, to exist, requires a
deludee. The basic problem consists in the Buddhistic analysis of the
human into the skandhas, and the observation that the self is not to be
found in any one of them. This is akin to demolishing a wall and then
being unable to find that wall in any single brick. The self is a
dynamically recursive interrelation of all these constituent parts; a
synergistic whole that is greater than the sum of the parts, precisely
because it is comprised of those parts plus their interrelations, and it is
precisely that interrelational dynamic that is destroyed in reductionistic
skandha analysis. The Zennists have a better handle on it when they
interpret the statement that the self is nothing to mean that the self is
no-thing, that is, not a thing. It is not simple, fixed and frozen, but
dynamically evolving, recursive and complex. The idea that the self
does not have independent existence, in contiguity with the theory of
codependent origination, is true enough; the self is necessarily
incarnate, embodied, and in the absence of a material substrate brain in
which to inhere and from which to emerge, there can be no human
mind. I actually think that the doctrine of no-self has been
fundamentalistically misinterpreted; what the authors were really trying
to warn people against is the belief in a transcendant self or soul that
can exist independent of the body, and that can reside, personality
intact, in some sort of heaven or hell in the body's absence. The flawed
fundamentalist misinterpretation was to read this doctrine as
maintaining that selves could not even immanently exist supported by
material substrate incarnation in bodies and brains, and Blackmore has
been sucked, or suckered, into it, but even worse, into claiming
scientific status for her fundamentalist misinterpretation of her favored
religious belief/faith system.
>
> -Jake
>
> ;-)
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