From: Dace (edace@earthlink.net)
Date: Fri 23 Jan 2004 - 22:07:49 GMT
> From: M Lissack <lissacktravel@yahoo.com>
>
> where is the question in this question?
>
> all you have said is that racism exists and has existed
>
> how has it "propogated'? what is the mechanism of that propogation?
>
> is your explanation of mechanism testable? or even disprovable?
>
> f you have no mechanism or if your mechanism is not disprovable then all
you > have is tautology
The mechanism of cultural evolution is exactly the same as natural
evolution. The environment of the meme, which in this case is the human
mind, selects some memes over others. Those that survive do so because they
are more adaptable to changing environmental conditions.
Memetics is a historical science. This means that testing of ideas is not
necessarily carried out in current experiments. The same is true of any
evolutionary theory. For instance, our theories of how galaxies form are
tested by looking out into space and viewing galxies at various levels of
development. The theory of biological evolution is entirely dependent on
our studies of geological strata and past-preserving genes. Even before
gene studies emerged, we knew species evolved simply on the basis of what we
found in the earth's strata. One species existed at a certain era and a
"new and improved" version existed at a later era. That's not to say
Darwin's theory wasn't tested many times over. But the testing didn't occur
in the form of laboratory experiments. Darwin's hypothesis was about events
in the past and was tested by searching for signs that these events happened
the way Darwin suggested. If we hadn't found signs of one species yielding
to a more adapted form-- if instead we found that all the species were
created in the present form at roughly the same time-- then the hypothesis
would have failed the test.
Incidentally, creationists have often labeled evolutionary biology a
tautology because we can't conduct experiments to test whether evolution is
occuring right now or predict what kinds of species will evolve in the
future. Elliott Sober thoroughly refutes this view in *The Nature of
Selection* (University of Chicago, 1984).
If cultural evolution is propelled, in part, by autonomous, self-replicating
units called "memes," then we ought to see irrational elements in culture.
After all, memes are not human and do not reason. If memes have causative
power in the development of culture, then we should see cultural forms that
make no sense and are potentially harmful, that don't promote the social
good but simply follow their own imperative to survive. We ought to see
pathological developments in culture that resist all efforts to stamp them
out.
Indeed, this is exactly what we find in the historical record. We see a
great many examples of cultural trends that take on a life of their own,
that refuse to die even after the social context in which they once made
sense have disappeared. Barbara Ehrenreich provides an excellent example of
this phenomenon from the late Paleolithic. Up until the end of the last Ice
Age, humans were commonly preyed upon by wild animals, especially the big
cats. We developed weapons with which to fight and kill these beasts. But
when their populations were decimated at the end of the Ice Age, along with
the great herd populations they mostly fed on, instead of putting down our
weapons, we began wielding them against each other. The battle mentality
took on a life of its own. Ehrenreich's thesis can be tested against the
historical record. Indeed, the evidence for warfare goes back about 12,000
years, to the end of the Ice Age, where it abruptly leaves off. She
describes war as a meme that was unleashed 12,000 years ago and has
successfully adapted to changing conditions ever since.
To take a more current example, NATO was devised to defend against a
possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Yet, after the collapse of the
USSR, NATO remained in place and even expanded into Eastern Europe. The
idea of NATO is no longer subject to intelligent scrutiny but has taken on a
life of its own. It's due to the success of the pro-NATO meme that our view
of the world has been re-framed such that NATO's continued existence can no
longer be questioned. This meme has been selected as a result of its
exploitation of the desire of US elites to maintain and extend their
influence over Europe. The meme has exploited its mental environment in the
same way that an organism exploits its natural environment.
As science is a facet of human culture, we should find persistent
irrationalism even among the scientifically-minded. Again, this is exactly
what the historical record reveals. Though the Michelson-Morley experiment
long ago refuted the existence of a universal "ether," many theorists, who
call themselves "natural philosophers," continue to reject Einsteinian
physics. Ever since Einstein, physics has grown increasingly at odds with
common sense. The "natural philosophy" meme succeeds because it exploits
our desire to maintain a common sense physics. Thus a discredited school of
physics persists on the basis of memetic propagation rather than logic or
sense.
The dominance of physics in today's science has caused many researchers to
assume that scientific evidence must resemble the sort of evidence derived
from physics experiments. We might call this the "scientism" meme. Thus,
instead of looking at the historical record for evidence of cultural forms
that persist despite no longer making sense, we redefine memes as semiotic
signs of environmental niches, because these can be analyzed in terms of
"resources, energy flow, constraints, external and internal pressures, life
and death cycles and rates, competition, cooperation etc." This way we can
look like real scientists as we make lots of precise measurements and
conduct statistical analyses while ignoring actual memes altogether. Memes
are "repackaged as symbols" and "stripped of their causal role," losing all
significance as they become subject to proper, "scientific" study. In other
words, we save the meme by killing it.
Ted
> Dace <edace@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > From: M Lissack
>
> >
> > Ted:
> >
> > Questions of cause and prediction are shifted from the memes to the
> environmental niches of which they are a semiotic sign. There exists a
huge
> literature on causation and prediction regrading environmental
interactions
> at the level of niches and agents. The shift to meme as catalytic
indexical
> means we not only look to the environmental niche but also to the
> functionality of the meme as a catalyst and to its carrying capacity as an
> indexical. Both carrying capacity and catalytic fuction can be studied and
> statistically examined. Replication and resilience become
characterizations
> of the environmental niche not of the meme. The environmental niche
> embodies a much richer set of variables than does the meme. Thus, we can
> look at resources, energy flow, constraints, external and internal
> pressures, life and death cycles and rates, competition, cooperation etc.
> >>>
>
> Are you saying that we should look for causation and prediction in
> environmental niches because there's already a vast literature on the
> subject that can be mined for useful nuggets? Sounds like the guy who lost
> his keys in the road but is looking for them on the sidewalk because
that's
> where all the light is. What if, despite how promising the sidewalk is,
the
> keys just aren't there?
>
> Perhaps your thesis would be more clear if we approached the question with
a
> specific example in mind. Here's an example of a meme I came upon a few
> days ago:
>
> It's widely believed among white Americans that racial minorities often
have
> children at a young age because they're sexually unrestrained and
therefore
> "immoral." In fact, it's advantageous to a black woman in the ghetto to
> reproduce at a young age-- even as a teenager-- because she's still got a
> support network in her family to help raise the child. In other words,
> there's a simple economic explanation as to why poor minorities reproduce
at
> a young age. But many white Americans resist an explanation that doesn't
> confer a sense of superiority to them. White racism is a meme that has
long
> held a niche in the mental "environment" of many Americans. It propagates
> from one generation to the next by exploiting the unconscious desire to
feel
> superior to others. It has adapted to changing social conditions by
> becoming more subtle, less obvious, but otherwise still the same old
racism.
>
> How would you approach such an example with your semiotic method?
>
> Ted
>
>
> > Dace wrote:
> > M. Lissack,
> >
> > > the question is do memes replicate or are they the semiotic sign of
> > > something else that replicates?
> > > if they do not directly replicate then we can instead consider their
> role as
> > > catalysts which effect the success, resilience, and replication of the
> things
> > > of which the memes are semiotic signs
> > > memes as replicators has been a marvelous way to talk about memes but
> > > not a useful approach for research or prediction (thus Bruce's three
> > > challenges)
> > > if memetics can meet Bruce's challenges without a redefinition
great --
> i do
> > > not believe it can and so have offered an alternative
> >
> > Can you explain how substituting memes-as-replicators with
memes-as-signs
> > of replicators enables causal explanation and prediction?
> >
> > I've read the article, and it's just not clear to me.
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > Ted Dace
> >
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