Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA08586 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 18 May 2000 15:07:52 +0100 Message-ID: <3923B38A.FCEC6091@mediaone.net> Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 10:10:34 +0100 From: Chuck Palson <cpalson@mediaone.net> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Central questions of memetics References: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D31CEB1AD@inchna.stir.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Vincent Campbell wrote:
> Thanks for this Robin,
>
> Good to hear from someone so close by!
>
> I think you're right about the 'usefulness' thing. It reminds me of a body
> of media effects research, known as the 'uses and gratifications' approach,
> which looked at media effects from the point of view of the reasons people
> have for useing the media.
I agree with you that this is very poor research. It is simply tautological: if
they say it gratifies, than the function is gratification! There is no attempt
to get at what gratification means in terms of its underlying dynamic -- and, as
a result, there is no way to falsify the hypothesis. As I have pointed out in
other posts, people who don't like evolutionary theory say that it is
tautological, not realizing that it IS falsifiable. Their frustration is this:
evolution seems to explain everything so it must be tautological. But there ARE
ways to falsify evolutionary hypotheses; Darwin said that if a horse evolves
with a saddle, evolution would be proven wrong.
My use value notion of memes is the same way. It IS falsifiable. Part of the
problem is that it gets mixed up with the drivel that has come out of social
science for years which generates such nonsense as "people do x because they
like it" or "people adopt change x because they like change x." Another part of
the problem is that once the general principles are understood, it may be
obvious - which takes the fun out of it because social scientists get a lot of
emotional mileage out of novealty. But most of the time it isn't obvious because
people want to hide the use value of their behavior under the camoflage of moral
maxims. But in any event, discovering use value is not tautological because it
is every bit as falsifiable as Darwin's theory; that's no accident because it is
an integral part of Darwin's theory!
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