>Actually I was asking about one core value in particular. It isn't a
>particularly strong claim to suggest a person would become different
>person if their core values (all of them) changed. It is much more
>interesting to suggest someone becomes a different person if any one
>core value changes. Would you still agree with the latter statement?
>
>Here's what I'm thinking: Over the past few weeks of discussion I'm
>getting the impression that a person's identity is defined by some
>core group of memes. If so, it wouldn't be entirely accurate to say
>"you are your memes". Rather, you are a subset of your memes. This
>provides a way of resolving the apparent inconsistency between
>"you are your memes" and "you (can) choose your memes".
>- --
>David McFadzean david@lucifer.com
>Memetic Engineer http://www.lucifer.com/~david/
>Church of Virus http://www.lucifer.com/virus/
I agree with that, more or less. The next stage is to pare down those core values to the bare minimum (Susan Blackmore would seem to argue there aren't any you really need) and let everything else go. Eventually, one of the things each of us will have to give up is <reason>. Everything must go before <I> can go.
Then, you can build upwards ever more complex and beautifully differentiated structure...like the tree on the cover of "Being and Time"...my translation, anyway...
The first path is deconstruction, the second is construction.
If you want, you can go up and down reconstructing a single memeplex tree forever. But the human mind is capable of operating across many more dimensions.
<I> can be the origin of a number of mutually inconsistent differentiated persona trees or memeplexes. <I> don't have to choose just one, beucase <I> am consistent with them all, even if each is not consistent with the others.
Which is used in a circumstance depends. Sometimes, many memeplexes seem to imply that the same action is good for very different reasons and there is a kind of fugue, where one action satisfies multiple inconsistent desires.
Reed
Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------