"A single neurone firing" is a meme. A single neurone firing is a
single
neurone firing.
>Martz suggests that the
>smallest meme is the smallest thing that means anything to us, but then
>we have the problem of what is meaning?
Data has meaning (is information, is a meme) if it affects behaviour.
>I'd still have to wonder, what meme would
>cause
>you to chose scratching over your right nostril?
The "scratch your right nostril" meme. (But it doesn't cause you to
chose
to do it: *it* does it.)
>Surely this is more
>fundamental
>than the action itself.
You're talking apples and oranges. An action is not a meme. A
reductionist
would say that any action is more fundamental than any meme, but that's
fairly meaningless in fact.
I don't see a significant difference between the search for a formal
definition of an atomistic meme, and speculation about the number of
angels that could dance on the head of a pin. Don't forget memetics
is just a screen through which we (sometimes) view reality. Seems
to me it's much more significant on a personal level than on a
scientific
one. Getting rid of your parasitic memes and knowing the symbiotic
ones for what they are looks pretty close to heaven-on-earth to me.
And I don't see isolation of a meme-atom as helping with that, at all.
--
Robin Faichney
r.j.faichney@stirling.ac.uk
http://www.stir.ac.uk/envsci/staff/rjf1/