Re: virus: Re: Rationality

David McFadzean (david@lucifer.com)
Fri, 28 Feb 1997 18:09:39 -0700


At 11:00 AM 28/02/97 GMT, jonesr@gatwick.geco-prakla.slb.com wrote:

>Rationality is subjective, surely. Everyone's style of rationality will
>be different, but I suspect that it is inherant at some basic level.

Are you talking about rationality or "rationality". Is logic objective?

>I'm sure that you could not find any individual who is totally and
>utterly irrational, and even if they were, could not justify to themselves
>that they were acting irrationally.

Yes, someone like that would be completely insane (from our perspective :).

>> #2. If #1 is true, then (paraphrasing) "all mechanisms of thought and reason
>> are memes". No, what about hormones, genetic neural structures, and innate
>> behaviours like the sex drive?
>
>What was that thread about memes and genes?
>
>I think it depends how far you are willing to take the concept of
>memetics. Does memetics describe why a baby will try random patterns
>of muscle movements, to establish how to operate it's body? Is the
>final solution the meme, or is the initial reaction a meme?

I was leaning that way a few months ago but have since backed off. I now
think that memes and instincts are types of a more general category of
behaviour-generating patterns (learned and innate, respectively). I don't
think the general category has a name yet. (Maybe "agent" as in Minsky's
Society of Mind.)

--
David McFadzean                 david@lucifer.com
Memetic Engineer                http://www.lucifer.com/~david/
Church of Virus                 http://www.lucifer.com/virus/