Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id LAA11204 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 13 Jan 2001 11:45:55 GMT User-Agent: Microsoft Outlook Express Macintosh Edition - 5.0 (1513) Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 06:42:36 -0500 Subject: Re: DNA Culture .... Trivia? From: William Benzon <bbenzon@mindspring.com> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Message-ID: <B684A536.688B%bbenzon@mindspring.com> In-Reply-To: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745BC7@inchna.stir.ac.uk> Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
on 1/12/01 11:29 AM, Vincent Campbell at v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk wrote:
> <Their favorite stories seem to be about religion and cultures. And
> the
>> stories they tell indicate that they have a very shallow conception of
>> human
>> nature and society. The orthodox memetic position is that the most
>> important thing about religion is that it is irrational. That's what they
>> want to explain. How do they explain it? By saying those pesky memes are
>> working juju on the minds of otherwise unsuspecting adults.
>>
>> That's a pathetic explanation. It tells me these people simply do not
>> have
>> any deep conception of human nature. They aren't interested in explaining
>> human behavior. Rather, they want to explain it away by palming it off on
>> memes.>
>>
> So why is religion so widespread? And, more particulary, why are
> some religions significantly more widespread than others? Why do people
> follow one religion over another? Why do people persistently engage in
> practices which they can often be consciously aware of as being irrational,
> e.g. reading one's horoscope? Why do people engage in practices that seem
> antithetical to adaptive behaviour e.g. giving up your child or yourself for
> sacrifice, or celibacy?
Well, on these last, Freudian and Jungian psychology has quite a bit to say,
as do other psychologies. and there's quite a bit of psycholgically-oriented
anthropology. I find some of that stuff quite useful. If you've read it
and reject it, there's nothing I can do about that, but I don't intend to
try to summarize those kinds of arguments. It is clear to me, however, that
most memeticists have not read that literature and have not formulated any
principled objections to those ideas.
On why some religions are more widespread, etc. you might try reading some
of the standard literature on the origins of the state, not to mention some
standard histories of religion. I'm not terribly interested in this
subject, so I can't give you references. But at least some of this surely
involves historical conquest. That may not be all there is to it, but it is
part of the story.
As is the result that Derek reported about the correlation between
agriculturalism and monotheism. There is a standard literature on that
subject, some of it couched in terms of cultural evolution. You should at
least read some of it so you can formulate principled objections. The Hays
book I mentioned would be one place to start, though it's not focused on
religion.
>
> Tell me what disciplines have unequivocally answered such questions,
> and what the answers are, and we can all go home and put our feet up.
I'm not claiming that anyone has unequivocal answers. I'm claiming that you
are inventing new and, to my mind, trivial, answers without having examined
and arrived at principled rejections of existing answers.
>
> There's a major difference between shallow and reductive. People
> who don't like things they hold dear explained in reductive terms call such
> explanations shallow.
Such a defensive move would only, in principle, apply to people who hold
religious beliefs. It doesn't hold water against those of us who reject
both religion and orthodox internalist memetics.
>
> <I make no such assumption. But I know enough about literature,
> art, music,
>> cognitive and neuropsyhology (and have published on several of these) to
>> know that memeticists don't know much about those things.>
>>
> Again, gives us the answers then, and I'll go home and shut up. I'd
> be interested in what you constitute as knowledge about literature, art and
> music, though, as these in my experience are fields of profound and dramatic
> disagreements about all sorts of fundamental elements not least questions of
> intepretation and meaning (e.g. the Fish/Iser debates in literature).
There are obviously lots of ways to have substantial knowledge of these
disciplines. I don't have quick and easy answers. But I've been looking at
these issues for some time. You can find some of what I know in the
library; see the list at the end of this reply.
>>
> Like sociobiology, there will be communities of researchers and
> disciplines that will entirely ignore memetics perhaps feeling that it
> threatens their authority and autonomy.
Or perhaps feeling it is of little consequence.
> people may have gathered already :-)) [Just a quick aside, often educated
> people watch very little television, but those of you who may be like that
> should reconsider, it's a very under-rated, and under-valued medium]
I agree with you here.
>
> I don't, now, buy the neural meme model so maybe on that point
> you're right.
Well, you agree with me, which is not the same as being right.
[snip]
>
> Since not a lot of work like this has been done thus far, it may be
> fair to criticise because of this lack of activity, but it isn't appropriate
> to criticise on the assumption that nothing new will be found or added to
> previous research. We just don't know yet.
No we don't. But I'm sure not holding my breath until internalist memetics
produces results.
>
> To my mind the central question of memetics, what processes drive
> culture are important and worthy, even if memetics itself is a cul-de-sace
> rather than the right path to a better understanding of that set of
> questions.
>
Yes, the questions are very important. I just don't see that orthodox
memetics has yet produced any worthwhile answers and I don't think it will
because it's basic assumption -- memes in the head -- is wrong.
That doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't think about culture as an
evolutionary phenomenon. I've been doing that for 25 years (see the
publication list below) and I don't intend to stop any time soon.
*******
Note that some of these publications are explicitly about cultural evolution
(*) and some of them are explicitly about psychology and/or neuropsychology
(#). By explicit I mean those subjects are discussed in a substantive way
in the paper.
Cognitive Networks and Literary Semantics. MLN 91: 952-982, 1976. #
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Semiotics of Ontology. Semiotica
21: 267 - 293, 1977.
Cognitive Science and Literary Theory. Dissertation, Dept. of English, SUNY
Buffalo, 1978. * #
Computational Linguistics and Discourse Analysis. Centrum, New Series 1:
57 - 64, Spring 1981. #
Metaphoric and Metonymic Invariance: Two Examples from Coleridge. MLN 96:
1097 - 1105, 1981. #
System and Observer in Semiotic Modeling: An Essay on Semiotic Realism. In
Michael Herzfeld and Margot D. Lenhart, compilers, Semiotics 1980,
Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Semiotic Society of America.
New York: Plenum Press, 1982, pp. 27 - 36. #
Lust in Action: An Abstraction. Language and Style 14: 251 - 270, 1981. #
Articulate Vision: A Structuralist Reading of "Kubla Khan." Language and
Style 18: 3 - 29, 1985. #
Metaphor, Recognition, and Neural Process. American Journal of Semiotics 5:
59 - 79, 1987. (with David G. Hays) #
Principles and Development of Natural Intelligence. Journal of Social and
Biological Structures 11, 293 - 322, 1988. (with David G. Hays) #
A Note on Why Natural Selection Leads to Complexity. Journal of Social and
Biological Structures 13, 33-40, 1990. (with David G. Hays) *
The Evolution of Cognition. Journal of Social and Biological Structures 13,
297-320, 1990. (with David G. Hays) * #
Visual Thinking. Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology. Volume
23, Supplement 8. Marcel Dekker, 1991, 441 - 427. #
Ontology of Common Sense. Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology.
Philosophia Verlag,1991.
The Evolution of Narrative and the Self. Journal of Social and Evolutionary
Systems, 16(2): 129-155, 1993 * #
Stages in the Evolution of Music. Journal of Social and Evolutionary
Systems, 16(3): 283-296, 1993. * #
The United States of the Blues: On the Crossing of African and European
Cultures in the Twentieth Century. Journal of Social and Evolutionary
Systems, 16(4), 401-438, 1993. * #
Culture as an Evolutionary Arena. Journal of Social and Evolutionary
Systems, 19(4), 321-362, 1996. #
Music Making History: Africa Meets Europe in the United States of the Blues.
In Nikongo Ba'Nikongo, ed., Leading Issues in Afro-American Studies. Durham,
North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press, 1997, pp. 189-233. * #
Culture's Evolutionary Landscape: A Reply to Hans-Cees Speel. Journal of
Social and Evolutionary Systems, 20(3), 314-322, 1997. * #
At the Edge of the Modern, or Why is Prospero Shakespeare's Greatest
Creation? Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems, 21(3), 259-279, 1998.
*
First Person: Neuro-Cognitive Notes on the Self in Life and in Fiction,
PSYART: A Hyperlink Journal for Psychological Study of the Arts, August 21,
2000, URL:
http://web.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/articles/psyart2000/benzon01.htm *
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