Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id RAA07150 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 1 Jun 2000 17:17:45 +0100 Message-ID: <393645DD.A03FEEF0@mediaone.net> Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 12:15:41 +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: <20000601075926.69884.qmail@hotmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Paul marsden wrote:
> There are many ways to assess the goodness of a model, but objective
> ontological truth is not one of them
I barely understand what "objective ontological truth" could be. I have already
agreed with you that any theory must have a subjective side. But that doesn't
mean that anything will do. Scientists use the term plausibility all time - it's
a big word that includes lots of standards about what the subjective side of
theory should answer to.
> A good practical example of the potential power of memetics is If Price’s
> book – Shifting the Patterns – that takes a meme’s eye view of
> organisations; although I had problems with the precise operationalisation
> of the meme concept – the book provides an insightful memetic stance into
> corporate life.
>
> Another good example is Richard Brodie’s Virus of the Mind, which provides a
> meme-eye level reworking of the social influence literature providing new
> insight into an old subject
>
> And Aaron Lynch’s Thought Contagion provides a sweeping tour of the
> potential power of memetics – although he and I may disagree (sometimes
> quite publicly) on the details of how a memetic stance might be
> operationalised and memetics made progressive, Aaron demonstrates the power
> of memetics to generate interesting research hypotheses not intuitively
> available when culture is viewed exclusively from group/individual levels.
>
I began reading Aaron's Thought Contagion, so I think it's a useful place to
start my response. I stopped after reading the following:
"Any idea influencing its hosts to have more children than they
would otherwise have exhibits quantity parental transmission.
Because of children's special receptivity to parental ideas,
increasing the number of children increases the projected
number of host offspring. So the Amish farming taboo has a
quantity parental advantage."
Here's why I stopped. The central focus of the field of population studies is
birth rates - which any student of human behavior should know. It is well known
-- and thoroughly supported -- why agricultural peoples have more children. If a
scholar wants to overturn a theory, he should at least demonstrate knowledge of
that theory and why another one is superior. Yet he does not even mention it.
When I asked him to explain further the advantages of his, I never received a
reply.
I have investigated in detail exactly the data he mentions - the Amish as well
as the Puritans in the 1630-1700 period. I am totally mystified as to
why he treats sudden and large population increases as contagion and memic. I
think
that population studies deals with this subject in much more rich and reasonable
ways. In this case, the habit of having large families is not contagion at all
except in the sense that everyone does it. It is a rational response to a
particular ecology. If there was just one Puritan family that had succeeded in
landing, they would have done exactly the same thing; contagion in the sense you
mean it simply is not involved.
I should say that population theorists have not figured out everything about why
birth rates rise and fall. Some of it may very well be faddish -- in the
**short** run. But saying it is faddish does not say that people are not
calculating their acts towards some purpose.
I am assuming that he treats sexuality in the same way, and I would have the
same
question about that. Even Dawkins doesn't apply memics to sexuality. I have
traced American sexuality from 1630 to 1900 (it changed at least 6 times). I
include in sexuality courting, sex, and marriage. I can map each change to the
new conditions of making a living. Sex is by necessity calibrated to the
conditions of the environment.
You said: "What I suggest memetics brings to the table is insight into cultural
dynamics that can be gained, not just by focusing at the level of the
individual (psychology) or the group (sociology), but also the level of
cultural instructions (as one conceptualisation of information) themselves
(memetics) – a concrete example is the account of suicide I offered. Indeed
the reflexive nature of cultural groups/meme (groups may be defined in terms
of memes) provides a model to account for cultural group selection without
the reification of the group (a la Durkheim)"
Chuck: From a sociobiological point of view, studying cultural instructions is
fine if you follow Pinker's notion of the computational mind. The problem comes
in as to what happens once these memes - in the form of sound and light waves -
get into the head. It sounds like memists want an entirely abstracted model to
represent the processes inside the head. In fact, ironically, it almost sounds
like Skinner's black box all over again in slightly modified form. Yes, there is
more than the mechanisms of association and generalization, but not much more.
Skinner snuck in subjectivity all the time with this kind of metaphor (like not
defining danger or complexity), and no one noticed. But it's far easier to see
the memists' subjetivity -- which is one of the reasons reviewers have referred
to it as good science fiction.
As for reification of the group, SB doesn't do that. But it seems to me that
memists do that with memes.
So perhaps you can explain to me why Aaron finds an advantage to memic theory in
explaining birth rates?
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