From: "Richard Brodie" <richard@brodietech.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: Papers critical of memetics
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 19:05:14 -0800
In-Reply-To: <36AF8DA1.DA9B0278@niu.edu>
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Dr. (Mr.) Salsbery wrote:
I would like to hear some discussion about Polichak and some of the
other critics of memetics.
His article really raises a number of important questions. In fact, I was
going to send out a list of his questions/criticisms to this list to see if
anyone had any answers for them. Many of the points he raised should really
be covered in the memetics FAQ. Can anyone answer these points? They could
be the death-blow to memetics.
1a. Why do so many people interested in memetics have different definitions
of the meme and what is the real definition?
1b. The examples Dawkins gives in The Selfish Gene---"tunes, ideas,
catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or building arches"--
don't even seem to fit most definitions. Why not?
1c. Does a chunk of information have to be in the brain to be a meme? Why
isn't being transmitted, say, from computer to computer just as good as
being transmitted from brain to brain?
1d. Is there any direct evidence for the existence of a meme?
1e. How exactly are memes like or unlike viruses, computer or biological?
2a. What is the best example of a cultural phenomenon in which the meme
concept is necessary to explain it?
2b. ...because biological selection does not explain it?
2c. ...because traditional cultural studies can't explain it?
2d. Can't traditional biological Darwinism explain religion? Why do we need
memetic Darwinism to explain religion?
3a. Why does memetics appear to ignore the entire field of psychology?
3b. Don't memetic approaches ignore the extent to which environmental
factors influence human memory, e.g., drug use, similarity of physical
environment, same people in room?
3c. Doesn't the tendency of people to make up false memories speak against
the validity of memetics?
3d. Since experiments show that people severely alter information before
passing it on in most cases, doesn't that invalidate the memetic approach to
human information processing?
3e. Hundreds of experiments in social and cognitive psychology show that
thoughts can be predictably called into existence without an idea actually
being repeated aloud. Does memetics recognize this?
4. Isn't memetics just a circular argument? Is it good for anything, or
simply a collection of just-so stories?
Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/
Author, "Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme"
http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/votm.htm
Free newsletter! Visit Meme Central at
http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/meme.htm
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