Structure of memes Modelling meme units The main criticism that can be raised against the memetic approach is that memes are difficult to define. What are the elements or units that make up a meme? Does a meme correspond to a complete symphony, or to a symphonic movement, a melody, a musical phrase, or even a single note? In order to model meme structure, we may use some concepts from cognitive science. Perhaps the most popular unit used to represent knowledge in artificial intelligence is the production rule. It has the form "if condition, then action". In symbols: If A, then B or A represents a condition that is distinguished, B represents an action that is executed or another condition that is activated. The action leads in general to the activation of another condition. In fact a production rule can be analysed as a combination of even more primitive elements: two distinctions (which discriminate between presence and absence of the condition and the action respectively) and a connection (the "then" part, which makes the first distinction entail the second one) (Heylighen, 1991d; see also Heylighen, 1990). For example, a meme like "God is omnipotent" can be modelled as "if a phenomenon is God (distinction of God from non-God), then that phenomenon is omnipotent". A similar model applies to genes. A gene corresponds to a string of DNA codons, which respond to the presence of certain activating proteins, or the absence of certain inhibiting proteins (condition) by manufacturing new proteins (action). This may in turn activate further genes, depending on the present of specific chemicals in the cell, and so on. This leads to complex networks of "if... then" productions ( Kauffmann, 1992). | |
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