Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA14681 (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 14:09:06 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D31CEB15B@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 14:07:05 +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
Blackmore's book is an effort to write a popular science introduction to
memetics, not a detailed academic treatise, and I think she does weaken her
arguments in places through tryig to relate her ideas to the everyday, thus
revealing her particular British academic prejudices (many of which I
share). If you doubt her scientific credentials, I suggest you look at some
of her published experiments in things like the British Journal of
Psychology.
But let me take up your point about fax machines. I don't quite see what
the obsession is with what Blackmore says. She quite clearly does not say
fax machines are useless (just as Bogie doesn't say 'Play it again, Sam' but
that persists). 'Wanting' something is not good enough in a court of law
("I killed him because I wanted to" is not a defence) let alone science.
You have to ask what is the basis of that want. In terms of need, exactly
what kind of need is a fax machine providing that we cannot cope without?
The 'need' is a very particular kind of communication (photocopies down the
phone). Now the next question does leave room for value-judgement, and that
is 'is the need significant enough to warrant the extent of a phenomena that
actually exists?' Blackmore's point is not just about fax machines, but
about how we (in the West at least) are surrounded by a multiplicity of
communication technologies which can't seem to get enough of, even when lots
of the technologies have either very specific functions, or reproduce
functions. Mobile phones seem to me a better example. They are
proliferating at a tremendous rate- is that rate a product of people having
a genuine need that previously hasn't been fulfilled, or is there something
else going on? Is it really true that we couldn't cope before mobile
phones, and now that you can't cope without one? One argument is that the
'needs' provided for by particular technologies are constructed by the
technologies themselves (McLuhan's view) which in turn shape society.
Certainly it is difficult to produce anything more than tenuous genetic
advantage arguments for the prliferation of mobile phones or fax machines,
in the same way as for the extent- not necessarily the existence- of
organised sport or religion.
The problem is that genes are limited by the physics of the Earth, so
animals and plants can only be so small or so big, and only occupy
particular locations. Is the same true of memes? Are there limits on the
extent of a meme's proliferation (presumably the selfplex has achieved the
biological limit, being in everybody's brain- save perhaps those people
"raised" by wolves, and Tarzan!), especially given the nature of the newest
of the communication technologies, that we are all currently communicating
through.
So, it was the extent of fax machines not their use that I feel Blackmore
was questioning.
Vincent
> ----------
> From: Chuck Palson
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Monday, May 8, 2000 9:04 pm
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: Central questions of memetics
>
>
>
> Oliver Kullman wrote:
>
> >
> > Actually she doesn't say these things are useless, she says we don't
> need
> > them (it's a little different):
> > Blackmore The Meme Machine page: 28:
> > "So why do we have fax machines? Why Coca-Cola cans and wheelybins?
> Why
> > Windows 98 and felt-tip pens. I want answers to these specific
> questions.
> > "because we want them" is not a sufficient answer. "Because we need
> them" is
> > clearly untrue. <..> In later chapters I shall explain how a memetic
> > approach can help."
>
> As you say, " It's a little different", and I agree, with the emphasis on
> little. After all - no two words ever have the same meaning. But she IS
> saying
> we don't need them, which is still as strange as saying they are useless.
> Also,
> how do you interpret "'because we want them' is not a sufficient answer"?
> If she
> has no idea of why people need faxes and computer operating systems, then
> at the
> very least how well does she understand human behavior? Did she ever ask
> them
> why they wanted them? Or did she ever ask herself why she uses them?
>
> Frankly, I judge it to be more than just a question of elementary
> observational
> competence. She is presumably a person that has been trained to use words
> precisely in academic contexts, and that's why she has her position.
> Writing
> such stuff makes me seriously doubt if she is interested at all in
> science. She
> may have once been interested, but it looks to me like she has veered off
> into
> some pretty intense fantasy.
>
> I might have let it pass as a joke, however, if I didn't find the book
> liberally
> peppered with many other bizarre statements. Another astounding example
> in a
> much later chapter is her use of the evolutionary term benefit to mean
> relaxation for the organism. Trees, she says, must compete with weeds at
> first
> to grow, so they grow fast to get up above the weeds. But being above the
> weeds
> isn't really a benefit because each tree still has to compete with other
> trees!
> So the trees don't even benefit, only the genes, presumably because the
> trees
> die. I guess she doesn't know that the genes of that tree also die. Nor
> does she
> know that relaxation from competition has nothing to do with the concept
> of
> benefit. This is a woman who claims to be an evolutionary psychologist.
>
> Again, however, this is just one other example that sticks in my mind. She
> never
> justifies anything she says, not even with a thin veneer of scientific
> method.
> Why, for example, does she say that there are many more memes than there
> are
> homes for memes? If memes originate in brains, which is the only place I
> can
> imagine them originating, then they already have a home when they are
> born! Do
> other brains want to use the meme? It depends on how useful they are. It's
> both
> as simple and complex as that. If I invent the meme "cetlle", I know from
> the
> start it won't get anywhere unless I am retarded. But she wants to talk
> about
> homes and memes and shortage of space and how this is the primary reason
> our
> brains are so big. In this regard, she does not even seriously examine
> some of
> the other competing theories on this which are quite credible. If I were
> writing
> a book that claimed to have major implications, I would do my homework,
> and she
> should know by now in her career that she should do the same. It looks to
> me
> like she has chosen to ignore science in her quest for truth -- which is
> fine,
> but it should not be mistaken for science.
>
> >
> > Oliver Kullman
> >
> > ===============================================================
> > 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
>
===============================================================
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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