as far as I'm aware, Richard Dawkins is most interested in going back to
studying snails.
On a wider perspective, I feel there are several threads going on at once.
Chief among these is the comparison between "memes" ( :self replicating
ideas) and "Quality" (: THE self replicating [because 'self-evident'] Idea).
The difficulty in finding common terms of reference may well be akin to the
difficulties encountered when any two specialisations attempt communion. for
example, when psychologists, neurologists, philosophers and physiologists
get together, it often transpires that each discipline doesn't just have
different terms, but that the different levels of 'magnification' reveal
different "concept-margins" ; the overlap may often seem arbitrary. This is
certainly exacerbated by imprecision of terms and woolly thinking in
general, and that's why people like Struan are really useful (if trying).
Struan recently pointed out the difference between 'the truth' and 'the
true' ; the latter does not pretend to be all-inclusive, whilst the former
does, and is therefore EX-clusive, with respect to other 'truths'.
This is an old problem, exhibited in every conflict between religions,
faiths, beliefs, or schools of thought.
My personal way of dealing with this is to privately believe that any such
school which professes to be in position of exclusive truth is, by
definition, wrong. I could give a variety of plausible rational arguments
for this position, but, push comes to shove, those who score high on
Rokeach's dogmatism scale will never be persuaded by such arguments, whilst
those who would be swayed would never be unmovable in their support; so it
comes down to a methodological convenience, and subjective viewpoint.
Which is what I was arguing a few months ago is all there is.
However, we being a communicative species, do actually take in others'
perspectives as part of our own, and a useful dialogue between Q and Meme
might throw up interesting descendants.
cheers
Peter Lennox
Hardwick House
tel: (0114) 2661509
e-mail: peter@lennox01.freeserve.co.uk
or:- ppl100@york.ac.uk
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