>I don't know anything about Objectivism.
In objectivism there can be no ultimate truth, just improving (or making more
useful) models of reality, since we have limited knowledge in an infinite
universe. It appears that memetics got influenced by a line of thinkers, known
sometimes as "nominalists", who say the same thing. However, while objectivists
focus on objective reality itself, the nominalists focus on subjective notions
of reality.
>You are backing yourself into an EXTREMELY narrow definition of "sense."
>You seem to think there is a sensory layer, the same in everyone, which
>infallibly receives raw data about the world. It's only the next layer,
>you seem to be saying, that starts sorting and distorting. Even if that
>were a useful model, we have no access to that first layer except
>through the sort-and-distort layer, which is affected by your meme-set.
The senses differ in everyone and they can be deceptive. But, the "next layer",
related to the mind, puts together the bigger picture of what the senses
communicate and can construct useful or reality approximating models, even if
the sense data has inaccuracies. This first layer of the senses has primacy over
the second layer of consciousness, since the perceptions come first, then
concepts follow.
>No one is "affected" by memes. There's no such thing as a meme. Meme is
>an abstraction used to approximate a phenomenon that seems to occur so
>that we can make useful predictions and gain power over our environment.
In that context, there's no such thing as an axiom, as it too is just an
abstraction which refers to a phenomenon that seems to occur, but then again,
the abstraction in the mind must be 'something'. BTW, ability to determine
usefulness implies the axiom of consciousness, nyah, nyah. --David