From: Steven Thiele (sthiele@metz.une.edu.au)
Date: Wed 11 Feb 2004 - 22:21:15 GMT
>I see no deficiencies inside the frame of memetics. It is just too simple
>to be wrong. The "memetics frame" though is only a small part of the
>landscape. If you want to be able to put even a tentative answer to *why*
>the xenophobic class of memes emerges in ecological situations leading up
>to war, you have to look at the larger sociobiology/evolutionary
>psychology picture.
>
>Incidentally, I don't claim particular brilliance in figuring this
>out. Motivation was more of a factor. If you want a share of the same
>motivation, I would be happy to give you explicit directions. :-)
>
>Keith Henson
How is it possible to support both memetics and evolutionary psychology?
The former aims (at least this was Dawkin's aim) to replace genetics as an
account of social life. It argues that memes are the basic element of
social life, not genes. Evolutionary psychology/sociobiology is basically a
branch of genetics and argues that social life is an expression of genes.
One of the fundamental problems facing memetics is the relations between
genes and memes. Did memes arise out of genes? If genes are central to
biological life (which was Dawkin's argument at the time he came up with
the idea of memes), and memes are central to social life, then surely memes
must have evolved from genes - where else could they have come from?
Memetics is supposedly derived from an evolutionary outlook, yet one of the
most fundamental evolutionary issues, the evolution of memes, has not been
attended to.
Steven Thiele
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