From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Thu 29 May 2003 - 18:24:56 GMT
> > From: joedees@bellsouth.net
> >
> > Since I cannot acces this article, I would greatly appreciate its
> > being posted in its entirety.
>
> So would I. But since I don't have a scanner and don't feel like
> typing in another 3000 words on top of the fifteen hundred I already
> typed in, it's probably not going to happen.
>
> However, I will type in a bit more. Polichak presents a powerful
> argument against memetics, one which cannot be ignored by those of us
> who wish to see it taken seriously by the larger scientific community.
> Until memetics stakes out its own territory, it cannot get a
> foothold. If it simply provides an alternative explanation for a
> phenomenon-- transmission of cultural information-- already well
> accounted for in conventional science, it will remain a fringe
> science.
>
> But Polichak's article also comes across as a hit job. He seems to be
> attacking memetics on every possible front, even where he's clearly in
> the wrong. You get the sense he's just another reptilian academic
> defending his turf. Here's a telling excerpt, from pp 47-48 of
> Skeptic (Vol 6, No. 3):
>
> >>>
> Scientific investigation of culture and information processing by
> humans is still in its infancy. Numerous attempts to examine and
> model how genes interact with the environment and influence cultural
> development have been made (e.g., Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby, 1992;
> Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman, 1981; Richerson & Boyd, 1992). These works,
> as their authors or editors acknowledge, are only beginnings and are
> necessarily incomplete. We clearly do not yet understand the full
> extent to which genes and environment can account for human culture
> and human brain activity. As such is the case, it might seem
> premature to many to postulate an entirely new class of replicating
> entities to account for the as-yet-unknown inadequacies of the more
> widely accepted approaches to the development of the human brain and
> culture. Yet this has been the method of memeticists from the very
> start. Dawkins writes, "we do not have to look for conventional
> biological survival values of traits like religion, music, and ritual
> dancing, though these may also be present. Once the genes have
> provided their survival machines with brains that are capable of rapid
> imitation, the memes will automatically take over" (1976/1989, 200).
> Dawkins postulates the existence of a new class of entity, then
> assumes its existence and decides that we can therefore ignore the
> effects of genes and biological evolution, whatever they may be. It
> seems that we should look for conventional survival values for
> religion, for example, before we decide that it makes any sense to
> look for non-conventional survival values. Dawkins and his later
> followers have failed to present any strong evidence that conventional
> approaches are inadequate. They have instead asserted this as if it
> were a fact and used this assertion to then assume the existence of
> memes. >>>
>
> Here Polichak argues that we shouldn't try to come up with an
> alternate, evolutionary explanation for human culture when it's still
> possible that culture will turn out to be a product of our genes
> interacting with environment. Does he actually believe that cultural
> developments are in some sense reducible to our genes? Even the
> arch-reductionist, Dawkins (Mr. "Survival Machines"), rejects this
> ludicrous approach. I think we've gotten past the point where anyone
> takes seriously the notion that there are genes for hula hoops or
> wearing baseball caps backwards. Polichak is way out of the loop
> here, and his credibility is seriously eroded in this passage.
>
> But his most revealing error is his attack on memetics for its
> avoidance of the unconscious. Here he is on page 50:
>
> >>>
> Cognitive psychologists regularly hypothesize and find evidence for
> thought processes that are largely or entirely unavailable to
> conscious introspection. For example, Allbritton and Gerrig (1991)
> hypothesized that when people read stories with unfavorable outcomes
> (e.g., a bomb exploding) they are mentally generating alternate
> outcomes that affect their ability to recognize the actual outcome.
> These alternate outcomes are not generated in any way of which readers
> are necessarily aware... With regard to memetics, one can then ask:
> Does subconscious mental activity (which comprises most of the
> activity of the brain, Baars, 1988) count as memetic in any way? It
> does not seem to. The Memetic Lexicon states that "an idea or
> information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone else to
> replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted
> information is memetic" (Grant et al., 1995, 2). Ignoring the
> inconsistency of this quotation (certainly information can be
> transmitted without causing someone to repeat it; most information
> falls into this class), it implies that the mental alternatives
> generated are not memes, and similarly that most of the mental
> activity that occurs in the human brain is not memetic. However,
> difficulties with this position arise when we consider that the
> consequences of these counterfactual thoughts were demonstrated by
> Allbritton and Gerrig, suggesting that they were then transmitted. >>>
>
> In the course of his attempt to refute memetics, Polichak has
> identified a meme. We might call it the tragedy-counterfactual meme.
> When we read a story or see a movie with a painful outcome, we
> generate scenarios in which the character we identify with gets a more
> favorable outcome. I know exactly what Polichak is refering to, and
> I've been doing this all my life. The end of Chinatown is a perfect
> example. If only the bullet had gone a little to the left or the
> right. Ah, but it's Chinatown, so what can you do?
>
> What Polichak has identified is a specifically Western meme. Unlike
> the passive Buddhist, who accepts as inevitable the wheel of suffering
> and merely tries to escape it, the Westerner can't tolerate painful
> outcomes. This can have negative consequences in terms of emotional
> adjustment, but it also produces a more "proactive" culture with
> greater survival value. Polichak is certainly correct that this
> cultural habit is transmitted, and it has played an important role in
> the rise of the West (Guns, Germs, and Steel notwithstanding).
>
> Just when he thinks he's driving the final nail into the coffin,
> Polichak reveals the potential of memetics for explaining human
> culture. The unconscious is the fertile field in which memetics can
> take root. What is the unconscious but a living fossil of human
> culture? Memes are specifically those habits that are collective
> rather than personal. Indeed, we may regard memes as the particles
> comprising the collective unconscious. This is the portion of our
> unconscious minds that reflects our cultural background as opposed to
> our personal habits. Whether personal or collective, what begins
> consciously is repeated and habitualized in the unconscious. The
> cultural unconscious is the kingdom of memes.
>
> The success of consumer capitalism can be ascribed, in part, to its
> systematic exploitation of our unconscious vulnerability to memes.
> But we must recognize the two-fold nature of memetic engineering. An
> ad is just an idea to the people who create it and make money from it.
> But the ideas of sex and youth and belonging are memes to the
> consumers who buy into them. What is idea for the engineer is meme for
> the engineered. Of course, we're all vulnerable to memes, and
> sometimes even the engineers get taken in by their own creations.
>
> Culture is primarily a product of human consciousness. But what is
> conscious today is habit tomorrow. We depend on memes, as we depend
> on personal habits, to keep our cultures running smoothly without the
> need for continual, conscious input. Human agency gives way to
> memetic agency. To claim that all culture is memetic is to make
> memebots of human beings. Keith doesn't see the distinction between
> conscious agency and memetic agency because he doesn't recognize human
> self-determination in the first place. The unfortunate result is to
> claim for memetics not only culturally-transmitted habits but the
> intelligent thought that generates them. Memetics becomes a theory of
> everything and therefore of nothing.
>
> Ted
>
Thanx much. I found your comments upon them more interesting than
the article excerpts themselves.
>
>
> ===============================================================
> 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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