Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id MAA14212 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 9 May 2000 12:52:58 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D31CEB158@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Central questions of memetics Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 12:51:05 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Thanks for this Robin,
I'd agree with most of your points, especially what Blackmore actually says
about fax machines. If I remember correctly, she was making the point that
the excess of communication devices in the home (loads of TVs radios,
phones, faxes, computers etc.) needed explaining, not that such things were
useless.
As I think will be clear from other comments on the list, I'm more
sympathetic to Dawkins on religion, and less on Blackmore's Buddhist
'solution' to memetics, although I'd again agree with your comment about the
problem of trying to describe memes as either malignant or benign (what was
Dennett's phrase for the self... 'benign user illusion'?). Both terms imply
two things, the first is intent, which ironically so many of the scientists
writing about memes can't get away from in their attempts to explain
memetics (or genetics for that matter). The second, is the net
consequences. As a Buddhist, Blackmore already sees 'doing' as a less
enlightened form of living than just 'being' (to ape Fromm's distinction).
But the problem with this is it makes no sense. It's like saying natural
selection is malignant because it produced sharks, tigers, and viruses, or
benign because it produced flowers, butterflies, and cuddly bunny rabbits.
Similarly the idea of memes will spread or not regardless of whether or not
it genuinely helps or hinders the human species. For Sartre, discovering
that there was only existence and nothing more was a 'horrible freedom'; for
Buddhists realising this is enlightenment. Our memetic context will shape
our response to the idea of memes, as either a 'good' or 'bad' thing.
Currently, at least amongst the authors writing books on the subject and
contributing to this list, we've been bitten by one aspect of the 'good'
side- memetics as an interesting and potentially useful theory applicable to
a whole range of disciplines. So I would expect the good thing/bad thing
debate around memetics to continue for a while yet.
Vincent
> ----------
> From: Robin Faichney
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Monday, May 8, 2000 8:06 pm
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: Central questions of memetics
>
> On Sun, 07 May 2000, Chuck Palson wrote:
> >Blackmore in Meme Machine writes
> >that two memes that have infected our brains are the fax and the windows
> OS. She
> >says that the only reason these memes have been widely accepted is that
> they
> >have been mindlessly copied because they are useless. How does she know
> they are
> >useless? Because she finds them useless, period.
>
> I didn't think Blackmore was quite that simple-minded, so I looked up fax
> and
> Windows in the index. Windows isn't there. Fax has three entries, and in
> none
> of them, as far as I can see, is it called useless. In fact, she has two
> fax
> machines in her house! Can you give page references for these claims?
>
> >This ability to copy accounts
> >for the spread of inventions according to her. She does not once mention
> the
> >possibility that people find inventions usefull because they solve
> problems by
> >multplying efficiencies of our efforts -- which happens to be the actual
> reason
> >why most inventions are eventually accepted.
>
> Are you sure she doesn't take forgranted the fact that being useful is a
> good strategy for memes? That's certainly what I'd have assumed, and
> Blackmore does not strike me as in any way stupid.
>
> >She then spends the last two
> >chapters picturing memes as nasty little viruses that she is trying to
> get rid
> >of, and makes suggestions on how to do this. She never makes it clear why
> they
> >are nasty, and one gets the impression it is just that she doesn't like
> them.
>
> Blackmore, to the best of my knowledge, was a Buddhist long before she
> became
> interested in memetics, and so had a profound appreciation of the benefits
> of
> a *relatively* meme-free mind, I suspect even before she knew what a meme
> was.
> Her attitude to them goes a *great* deal deeper than just not liking them.
>
> >For
> >example, to Dawkins, the only thing that matters in regards religion is
> that
> >there is no God, and therefore religion is a lie. That is far too facile
> and, I
> >dare say, straight ideology.
>
> Here I agree with you. Dawkins' attitude to religion is highly
> unscientific.
> He just lets his feelings run away with him.
>
> >> - how does culture evolve, given the model of Darwinian selection of
> memes?
> >
> >You are assuming the Darwinian selection of memes a la Dawkins, Blackmore
> etc.
> >The whole model is, as far as I can see, based on the faulty methodolgy
> and
> >value judgements I have described above. People choose to hold on to
> memes
> >because of some well described reasons. And they get rid of them for
> other well
> >understood reasons. As far as I can see, describing them as having a life
> of
> >their own simply mystifies the problem.
>
> It does indeed. But your big mistake -- shared with many, many others
> including Blackmore despite my defence of her above -- is to assume that
> explanations are mutually exclusive. Memes survive *because* people
> choose
> them (among other reasons). Genes have no life "of their own", either --
> they're totally reliant on the phenotype for their survival and
> reproduction.
> Both genes and memes are essentially passive: all they do is survive. It
> so
> happens that such survival is at the centre of the most complex systems we
> know, and almost certainly ever will know, which is why the gene and meme
> are
> such important concepts to us. But they are obviously no kind of "active
> agent". And there's no conflict whatsoever between memetic explanations,
> and
> people making choices. In real life, that is, as opposed to pure theory.
> The
> things people choose naturally tend to proliferate. To focus on these
> things,
> and call the more common ones "successful", *as if* they'd engineered the
> situation, can be quite an enlightening exercise, like most radical shifts
> in
> perspective. But it is just that: another point of view. You're right
> that
> many people who adopt it, even the biggest names, tend to take it too
> literally, but that, in itself, does not invalidate it. The model is most
> certainly *not* based on faulty methodology and value judgements -- at the
> most
> basic level, it is too simple, even tautologous, for that to be so -- it
> just
> encourages them. Whether it can survive them, I don't know.
>
> --
> Robin Faichney
>
> ==============================================================This was
> distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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