Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id DAA28463 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 30 May 2000 03:07:15 +0100 Message-ID: <3932DB91.8A7B87F3@mediaone.net> Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 22:05:21 +0100 From: chuck <cpalson@mediaone.net> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Cui bono, Chuck? References: <392D46A0.928A1C7B@mediaone.net> <00052621145200.00626@faichney> 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
Robin Faichney wrote:
> On Thu, 25 May 2000, chuck wrote:
> >Robin Faichney wrote:
> >
> >> Could I clarify one point, Chuck?
> >>
> >> You say behaviour has to be useful, but useful to whom, exactly? Must
> >> it be primarily of use to the behaving individual, his/her family or
> >> part thereof, or the wider community?
> >>
> >
> >The individual - which Dawkins calls the Survival Machine. The "community
> >effect" if you will comes from the fact that social animals need to form
> >alliances with each other. So -- the individual can be a legitimate unit
> >of analysis.
>
> Legitimate analysis can happen at any level. So can illegitimate analysis.
> We have to ask, given an analysis type, what is the appropriate level --
> or, given a level, what is the appropriate analysis type?
Nothing I said above is inconsistent with this. I was implicitly answering a
much earlier post of yours that selectively quoted Dawkins to prove to your
satisfaction that the individual is not a legitimate unit of analysis for
studies of selection because selection takes place at the gene level.
> >Although selection takes place at the "selfish gene" level, the aggregate
> >effect must be the creation of a survival machine.
>
> I don't think that's legitimate, because it is too short-sighted to be of
> use.
I was assuming that you read Dawkins because you have quoted him in the same
earlier posting I refer to above. Perhaps you should read again what he means by
that.
>
> Not a survival machine, but a survive-to-reproduce machine.
That is exactly what Dawkins or anyone else who studies evolultion these days
means. --= which includes me.
> You can
> survive to 180, but if you have no kids, your genes have hit a dead end,
> and you're an evolutionary failure. I say that as a 46 year old man (nearly
> 47) with no kids, so this matters to me. My concern with your analysis is
> that, by focussing on the individual, you miss out on *both* the low-level
> genetic factors, and the higher-level interpersonal factors. Ultimately,
> in evolutionary terms, your only use is to (a) have kids, and then (b) help
> them reach the point where they can have kids, and your input into (a) is
> probably a lot more significant than that for (b). What's of use to you,
> as an individual, is of absolutely no evolutionary significance whatsoever,
> except to the extent that it facilitates mainly (a) and then (b).
>
>
> Agreed?
>
You are simply repeating what one of your heroes, Richard Dawkins, says on the
subject. Unfortunately for you, when Dawkins gets into the cultural realm, he,
simply has no idea what he is talking about because he insists on either not
examining the actual data available or, if he does, on lying about it.
I am dead serious when I say that the man is inexcusably ignorant on the subject
of culture. For example, in The Selfish Gene, he assures us that cultures vary
wildly for what he judges to be no valid reasons. He chooses the worst examples
of anthropological explanations of cultural variation to illustrate his point.
Then he uses two ethnographic examples to to illustrate the range of such
inexplicable variation: the Ik of Uganda and the Arapish of the Pacific. If the
poor doctor had taken the trouble to actually read Turnbull's work on the
former, he would have discovered that their "utter selfishness" is not
inexplicable variation in culture, but a result of a years long brutal famine, a
fact that Turnbull makes abundantly clear and that no one disputes. Did Dawkins
even bother to read Turnbull first before making his sweeping pronouncement?
Whether he did or he didn't is not important; he is quite simply a fraud on the
subject of culture.
His use of the Arapish is equally ignorant. The author of the ethnpography on
the Arapish was Margaret Mead, and it has been proven beyond a doubt and
accepted by the entire anthropological community that Mead was lying about her
data to support her ideological biases (see the work of australian
anthropologist Derek Freeman). Although Dawkins can be excused for not knowing
about this at the time (Freeman's expose was published later), I know of no
corection ever issued by Dawkins -- evidently because it suits his purposes.
So Dawkins, the inventor of the meme concept, is by any ordinary measure a very
poor scholar on the subject of culture, and he has managed to reproduce the same
poor quality of observation and scholarship in his followers. No wonder he
praises Blackmore, a person who claims that fax machines and computer operating
systems answer no needs -- (in other words, they are "useless"). Ignorance
begets ignorance, a common disease propogated on many campuses by professors
anxious to keep their positions by manufacturing opaque documents based on their
prejudices. In fact, one might say that the very existence of memetics proves
that useless memes do exist, a direct contradiction to my notion that culture
is of practical value. But of course in the perverse culture of academia, it has
only furthered his reputation in some circles, so it is of practical value,
albeit perversely so.
Now one would hope that besides reading extensively on scientific method, you
actually have read the previous literature written over the last half century on
the subject of culture. After all, a scientist is expected to work with data in
a field, not just pronounce about principles by which others should work with
data in the field -- as you seem to prefer to do. It is quite clear from your
comments that you have so far not seriously studied anything much on the subject
of culture, so until you have some actual scholarship with which to make
pronouncements about culture, you should not mindlessly imitate Dawkins
obviously uninformed nonsense on the subject.
If, after a few years of absorbing the considerable literature on the subject,
you still do not understand why "What's of use to you, as an individual, is of
absolutely no evolutionary significance whatsoever" is another Dawkins-like
pronouncement, I will be glad to explain it to you. Till then, try not to merely
imitate Dawkins' poor scholarship, and just do the hard work necessary to master
a field.
>
> --
> Robin Faichney
>
> ===============================================================
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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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