Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id IAA03062 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 25 Jul 2000 08:32:15 +0100 Message-ID: <20000725072953.23742.qmail@nwcst280.netaddress.usa.net> Date: 25 Jul 00 08:29:53 BST From: Derek Gatherer <derek-gatherer@usa.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Memetics a pseudoscience? X-Mailer: USANET web-mailer (34FM1.5A.01A) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Once thing which would help win over some skeptical evolutionists (and here
I'm thinking of the likes of Pinker or Maynard Smith, who simply deny that
culture is an independent evolutionary system) would be to show that it does
evolve - insofar as it does satisfy Dawkins' 3 requirements for Universal
Darwinism, ie. variation (preferably in some random mutational-like manner,
but perhaps not necessarily), transmission, and selection.
1) Variation is tricky because cultural novelty seems to many people to have
some kind of 'directedness' about it. Steve Gould and Anthony O'Hear both
think that this is enough to disqualify culture from being evolution. See
Nick Rose's JoM paper for an entree to this.
2) Transmission is tricky because there is some debate about whether one needs
imitation in order for 'proper' transmission to take place. For instance, if
I catch a cold from you, that _is_ transmission, and if you are my father,
then that is also transmission of genes. However the whole issue of cultural
transmission is a very thorny one as we have all kinds of potential learning
processes, some of which are directly imitative and others aren't. See Sue
Blackmore's JoM paper for an entree to this.
3) Selection is tricky because it is hard to establish if a cultural practice
is 'good for' the individual or just for itself. The memetic analysis of
religion is bascially a debate about whether religion or not is 'good for' you
as an individual (ie. does it increase your inclusive fitness in the
Hamiltonian sense). See Mike Best's JoM paper for some possibilities here
(but not to do with religion).
If we could nail these 3 issues, we might have a case for culture being an
evolutionary system which would be acceptable to other evolutionary
scientists.
On the other hand, you could take all these 3 grey areas as assumptions, and
proceed with what I call 'methodological Darwinism' (see my reply to Nick Rose
in JoM). We then come up against another thorny issue, which is how do we
quantify the memes. I think I'll leave it there.
Derek
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