Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id QAA09215 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 7 Jun 2000 16:01:23 +0100 Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2000 07:59:39 -0700 From: Bill Spight <bspight@pacbell.net> Subject: Re: Criticisms of Blackmore's approach To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Message-id: <393E635B.75E14C0E@pacbell.net> Organization: Saybrook Graduate School X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en]C-PBI-NC404 (Win95; I) Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-Accept-Language: ja,en References: <20000607121232.42571.qmail@hotmail.com> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Dear Diana,
> The meme as a "unit
> of cultural transmission" as Dawkins first put it may be a much more useful
> definition than the later "unit of imitation".
In the FWIW department, I think that the problem stems from
Dawkins, for a good, but flawed, reason. He had imitation in mind
as the means of replication. In fact, the word "meme" is meant to
reflect that connection, by its similarity to "mime" ("The
Selfish Gene"). As a biologist, I do not think that he gave much
thought to the details of the psychological processes involved.
Blackmore adopts a very broad definition of "imitation", one that
seems a strain to me. ;-) My guess is that she wants to avoid
quibbles over terminology by keeping the same term but
interpreting it broadly.
The good reason for saying that memes propagate by imitation is
fidelity. Without worrying about the details of the process of
memetic replication, if it results in a faithful copy with very
high probability, we can call the process imitation. With high
fidelity we can apply well established ways of thinking about
evolution, by analogy to genes.
This is flawed, I think, because cultural transmission occurs not
just through imitation. Learning is much more. In addition, memes
are altered much more freely than genes, and this alteration
occurs during transmission as well. Transmission has relatively
low fidelity. Lessons learned about genetic evolution have
limited application to memetic evolution. Attempts to apply the
genotype-phenotype distinction to memes muddy the waters much
more than they shed light, for instance.
Best,
Bill
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