Re: virus: The Meme Machine

Dave Pape (davepape@dial.pipex.com)
Thu, 01 Apr 1999 19:22:40 +0100

At 08:38 01/04/99 +0100, Robin wrote:

>In message <3.0.2.32.19990331101434.007dad40@pop.dial.pipex.com>, Dave
>Pape <davepape@dial.pipex.com> writes
>>Has anyone read this yet? Not astonishingly deep science, but I liked it
>>tribally because she's a no-free-willer and even a no-level-3er. Wahey,
>>maybe this is the British school. Robin, she's also coming from the
>>buddhist angle of illusory self, have you had a look at the book yet?

>Yup. Like Dawkins says, I think this is memetics' best shot,
>by a long way. On the other hand, the fact she's a bit
>level-2-bound is a minus for me. E.g., she sees very clearly
>that "self" is a memeplex, but doesn't seem to realise that's
>equally true for consciousness and matter -- she talks about
>"the physical self" as if that would remain once all memes
>had been discounted.

So are you subscribing to the view that the physical world is as illusory as the mental world because we only ever perceive it via our mental faculties? I think I once had a figure-of-8 thought in which I reasoned that the cognitive world is a kind of software running on physical hardware, but that in a way the cognitive world simultaneouslly /underlies/ the physical world because to cognate (cognise?) is the only way for anything to feel the physical world. I guess the buddhist perspective is something like melting that figure-of-8?

>On the other hand, of course, if she had
>gotten all that right, there would have been nothing left for
>me to do! :-)

Don't you do... psychology research or something? Or are you talking in terms of a kind of personal journey?