Memes and you

[Silas Thorne]

A lot of people I know believe that ideas and concepts are things called 'memes' (a concept created by Dawkins), and that ideas and concepts evolve and become extinct in the same way as biological organisms do, in accordance with Darwinian ideas of evolution (if I'm correct about the idea). I'm a bit suspicious of this. I'm wondering if there are any among you that feel the same as me about this meme idea, or if I am rejecting something which is accepted by almost everyone?

[FozzieFunk]

Evolution of the mind is fact. The concept that you brought up, ideas are in a sense separate entities from the ones constructing them, is very thought provoking to me. If you think about a very common meme of the past it can serve as an example of an idea that no longer worked and due to it not being most apt to surviving dismissal, it was replaced. The idea that I'm referring to is the nature of the world; it's rotation, location in the universe and ultimately it's shape. In today's society we have seen the movement towards the eradication of ideas of racism as truth as well as traditional ideas regarding homosexuals. The history of Marijuana prohibition can be seen as the evolution of an idea. Going from misconceptions and lies , eventually making way for skepticism, and finally to truth.

[YesNo]

A lot of people I know believe that ideas and concepts are things called 'memes' (a concept created by Dawkins), and that ideas and concepts evolve and become extinct in the same way as biological organisms do, in accordance with Darwinian ideas of evolution (if I'm correct about the idea). I'm a bit suspicious of this. I'm wondering if there are any among you that feel the same as me about this meme idea, or if I am rejecting something which is accepted by almost everyone?

Just checking out Wikipedia, it seems that you are not alone in your skepticism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme#Criticism_of_meme_theory

Thinking about the idea of a "meme" as something inside your brain that replicates itself through teaching and imitation makes me wonder what this entity is made out of?

I'm not opposed to the existence of entities that are not part of our matter-energy reality, but I don't think the proponents of memetics expect us to view them as angels or devils or some various kinds of spirit guides. But that is what they sound like, unless there is some matter-energy foundation for the entities. That, I suspect, is the objection to memetics that Luis Benitez-Bribiesca is making when he calls memetics a pseudoscientific dogma in the Wikipedia article cited above although I haven't read his original paper.

[billl]

In the brief summary at that Wikipedia link, I don't see any objections to the "physical existence of memes", but rather to their definition (or the usefulness of their conceptual role). We see ideas replicate, spread, die away, etc., but they don't have an internal code (like DNA). So a meme is different from a gene in that way, and thus perhaps genetics (and all of the processes involved in genetics) is not a suitable metaphor for them. There is also, at the end, an objection made by a semiotician, who seems to basically think that memes sort of make a mess of a conceptual system he's already been involved in (but he isn't wondering about what the material manifestation of memes would be, because it would be of the same nature as the signs that he speaks of).

When people study or talk about memes, there should be no question about what memes are made of: they are made of brain cells, ink on paper, sound waves, etc., even made of something like (in a "famous" Susan Blackmore example) the triangular fold at the end of a roll of toilet paper in a freshly cleaned hotel bathroom. To wonder where memes materially exist, and to be skeptical on such a basis, is similar to wondering where ideas and traditions materially exist and therefore being skeptical about those.

[Mr.lucifer]

I thought this thread was about internet memes.

[Silas Thorne]

In the brief summary at that Wikipedia link, I don't see any objections to the "physical existence of memes", but rather to their definition (or the usefulness of their conceptual role). We see ideas replicate, spread, die away, etc., but they don't have an internal code (like DNA). So a meme is different from a gene in that way, and thus perhaps genetics (and all of the processes involved in genetics) is not a suitable metaphor for them. There is also, at the end, an objection made by a semiotician, who seems to basically think that memes sort of make a mess of a conceptual system he's already been involved in (but he isn't wondering about what the material manifestation of memes would be, because it would be of the same nature as the signs that he speaks of).

When people study or talk about memes, there should be no question about what memes are made of: they are made of brain cells, ink on paper, sound waves, etc., even made of something like (in a "famous" Susan Blackmore example) the triangular fold at the end of a roll of toilet paper in a freshly cleaned hotel bathroom. To wonder where memes materially exist, and to be skeptical on such a basis, is similar to wondering where ideas and traditions materially exist and therefore being skeptical about those.

So is it all definition then, whether someone chooses to call an idea or culturally-inherited trait a 'meme' ? Anthropologists and sociolinguists can talk about the influence of geography and other contraints on the development of particular civilisations and cultures, and not mention the word.

Perhaps my problem is viewing ideas and cultural artifacts as 'memes,' that behave in the same way as genetic information. And actually, to view the whole of history in terms of what actions and behaviours were evolutionary successful for us as a species, as some evolutionary psychologists do, seems pretty strange, and sometimes rather awful to me.

[Theunderground]

A Meme is an abstraction. Just like god. But with more substance behind it. Still it is only a theoretical concept.

[YesNo]

It looks like "meme" is a new way of saying "idea" or "word" with the added feature that memes provide an external entity that is responsible for human communication, like a photon provides the means for the transmission of light.

Here is a Susan Blackmore talk where she mentions the triangular fold on toilet paper: http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes.html

However, there seems to be something internally contradictory with the idea of memes being independent entities running the show: on the one hand, they are portrayed as wanting to use us to get replicated; on the other, they can't possibly want to do anything because all they are is information.

Among these talks there is one by Michael Pollan, http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pollan_gives_a_plant_s_eye_view.html, which is about plants, in particular, grasses. Both Pollan and Blackmore describe external entities they claim are trying to manipulate us to replicate them.

I find Pollan's ideas more realistic than Blackmore's because plants are definitely living entities outside of the ideas in our minds and it is easy to see how plants could conceivably care enough to do whatever is in their power to manipulate us to replicate them. How that manipulation occurs is mysterious, but so is how we are able to communicate at all with each other.

[Theunderground]

Blackmore is a quack. Do we really think ideas have some form of 'mind' and wish to attach themsleves to be replicated!!! Dawkins idea is a metaphor really,he even says so himself.
Plants obviously have some instinct to attach to certain materials. But i think 'manipulate' is too strong a word and 'humanises' the plant. Anthromorphism run wild...

[YesNo]

Blackmore's talk was entertaining and Halloween is coming up. It makes for a good ghost or meme story.

I also don't see how plants manipulate us, but I have been amazed by the relationship between some orchids and wasps which makes me think the orchid is deliberately messing with the wasp to get itself replicated: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h8I3cqpgnA

So how does the orchid know what will turn on the wasp?

How does one orchid get the bright idea to imitate a wasp and then tell other orchids to do the same thing so this kind of pollination can occur?

I once read, but can't remember where, that orchids have such beautiful flowers because they know we like them. So they "manipulate" us, as some do to the wasp, to move them to a nursery and replicate them.

Regardless whether plants are doing any of this deliberately, they at least might conceivably have a motivation to use us. Memes, and likely genes as well, have no motivation since they are just information.

[Theunderground]

Yes,i can agree with all of that. I just think the world 'manipulate' is a little strong. The plant has obviously learned 'fishing' for its needs from experience.

[YesNo]

While thinking about memes it occurred to me that the "selfish gene" may be just as fanciful as the meme. That is, it may not exist at all. This is not to say that genes don't exist. They do. What doesn't exist is selfish information, selfish computer control files, selfish memes, genes, temes that are trying to manipulate us to replicate themselves.

When I found that the copies of Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene were checked out of the local library, I ran into Niles Eldredge's Why We Do It: Rethinking Sex and the Selfish Gene where he basically stated back in 2004 what I thought was an original idea of mine.

Here is a quote to tempt you to explore the interactions of economics, reproduction and sex from an evolutionary standpoint, but without Dawkins' over-emphasis on reproduction, aka "replication", if you happen to be a piece of information:


It is even harder to see (and a bit ludicrous to believe) how bits of information encoded as genes on chromosomes can in any meaningful sense "care" about leaving relatively more copies of themselves to the next generation. The selfish gene is a metaphor predicated on the assumption that the purpose of life is to reproduce. Au contraire: if life can be said to have a purpose at all, it is simply to live.

[Theunderground]

Im more into the 'mans will-power is supreme school'. I think genes are just certain patterns identified by scientists,the 'effect' so to speak. Man is the ultimate cause. (Tempered by the physics around him,of course.)
All these theories are excuses to say behaviour is determined by 'material causes'. Hogwash. Every newborn baby disproves these theories by its unique personality,characteristics and fearsome displays of independent will.

[OrphanPip]

While thinking about memes it occurred to me that the "selfish gene" may be just as fanciful as the meme. That is, it may not exist at all. This is not to say that genes don't exist. They do. What doesn't exist is selfish information, selfish computer control files, selfish memes, genes, temes that are trying to manipulate us to replicate themselves.

When I found that the copies of Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene were checked out of the local library, I ran into Niles Eldredge's Why We Do It: Rethinking Sex and the Selfish Gene where he basically stated back in 2004 what I thought was an original idea of mine.

Here is a quote to tempt you to explore the interactions of economics, reproduction and sex from an evolutionary standpoint, but without Dawkins' over-emphasis on reproduction, aka "replication", if you happen to be a piece of information:

The gene-centric view of selection follows inevitably from what we know of biology now. You are misunderstanding the concept, it is not that the genes "manipulate" us to replicate themselves, it is simply that the basic unit of selection is the gene and not the organism. Thus, we go back to the concept of the survival of the fittest organism, and we have to think about the survival of the fittest genes.

The gene-centric view opens up new avenues for explaining what we see in nature, like kin-selection, which is vital for explaining the evolution of eusocial insects like bees and ants, and may explain certain altruistic behaviours in humans. It also helps us understand the evolution of viruses, how we understand horizontal gene transfer in bacteria, and how we can understand cases of co-evolution, like the emergence of eukaryotic life from endosymbiosis.

Also, replication and reproduction are not the same thing, genes do not reproduce, only organisms reproduce, and reproduction when it is sexual does not result in replication of the parent organisms.



All these theories are excuses to say behaviour is determined by 'material causes'. Hogwash. Every newborn baby disproves these theories by its unique personality,characteristics and fearsome displays of independent will.

That doesn't disprove anything. I'm curious how you think varied personalities and individuality somehow contradict materialism. Behaviour is determined by a combination of, to borrow loosely from Steven Pinker, many aspects: their genes (determine the building blocks of the potential future brain), the anatomy of their brain (brain damage causes personality changes, and of course linked with the genes), the current physiology of their brain (think stress hormones, depression), their developmental history (maternal hormones, childhood malnutrition, early education), their life history (learned and cultural attributes, which also effects the developmental history, which in turn can effect the physiology and the anatomy of the brain), and of course the current environment at any given moment (we behave differently with a gun in our face vs. when we're watching tv, don't we?).

[YesNo]

The gene-centric view of selection follows inevitably from what we know of biology now. You are misunderstanding the concept, it is not that the genes "manipulate" us to replicate themselves, it is simply that the basic unit of selection is the gene and not the organism. Thus, we go back to the concept of the survival of the fittest organism, and we have to think about the survival of the fittest genes.

The gene-centric view opens up new avenues for explaining what we see in nature, like kin-selection, which is vital for explaining the evolution of eusocial insects like bees and ants, and may explain certain altruistic behaviours in humans. It also helps us understand the evolution of viruses, how we understand horizontal gene transfer in bacteria, and how we can understand cases of co-evolution, like the emergence of eukaryotic life from endosymbiosis.

Also, replication and reproduction are not the same thing, genes do not reproduce, only organisms reproduce, and reproduction when it is sexual does not result in replication of the parent organisms.

I don't think I'm following your argument.

I'm getting the term "replication" from Susan Blackmore. I find the term odd as well. The only thing I know about her, however, is from the video I cited earlier, but she seems to be someone who promotes memetics which is what this thread is about: http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes.html

In the introduction to her talk she said: "We are the ones who let the second replicator out of the box." The first replicator was the gene.

One of the criticisms that Niles Eldredge makes against Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene is that sexual reproduction is not an efficient way to replicate an individual's genes and should not have evolved if genes were truly "selfish". If genes were selfish, reproduction would have been all asexual.

So, just a couple of questions to see if we basically agree or disagree.

1) Do you believe that genes are "selfish"?

2) Do you believe in "memes"?

[OrphanPip]

I don't believe in memes, but I can understand how memetics might be a useful way of thinking how particular ideas change over time in gradual ways, and how they compete with other similar ideas.

It's not really productive to think of genes as selfish, although that is how Dawkins chooses to present it metaphorically. It is just that certain genes may be in competition with the fitness of the organism they are carried in. For example, the genes that cause worker ants to forgo reproduction and put all their energy into feeding the queen and future queens. In this sense it is not the genes of the individual ants clearly do not benefit the individual organism, they benefit the queen, or themselves. How can these types of social organisations develop, the answer is genes which favour their own selection over the selection of the individual.

I personally think selection operates at several levels, from the gene level (the selfish gene concept), to the organismal and possibly the group level (although it is arguable that group selection is redundant and anything explained by group selection can be explained by selection of individuals, and in turn it is arguable that gene selection renders the selection of individuals redundant). If we think of selection operating at the level of the gene, even when they are genes that survive because they allow the organism they are found in to survive, it explains the same thing as looking merely at the selection at the level of the organism. These things are not actually separate concepts, but different perspectives on the same mechanism of natural selection. Ultimately, gene-centric selection explains more than older models, that is why it has grown to become dominant in the biological sciences, when it was perhaps about 50/50 back in the 70s when Dawkins first published the Selfish Gene.

In essence the concept of a "selfish gene" is no different than the concept of a selfish individual.

Now for the question of the evolution of sexual selection. This is a place where we might look at how selection at the level of the organism may be more explicative than selection at the level of the gene. Because, as conventional wisdom goes, populations with sexual reproduction are capable of evolving faster and dealing with environmental change better than asexual reproductive organisms, so they out compete most asexual organisms. This is just with complex eukaryotes though. Even some bacteria reproduce sexually, except they swap genes with each other directly without producing offspring. Although, I'm not sure sexual reproduction can't also be explained by gene-centric selection, for example the genes involved in sexual selection certainly benefit from the success of the phenomenon, even if perhaps individual alleles don't benefit from possibly being left out of the reproductive line by the randomness of the meiotic process.

[Theunderground]

This shows me how 'concepts' and 'words' become bigger than plain reality.
Those who dont want to accept a personality as distinct from 'the determined by biology class' are really ignoring the biggest empirical evidence there is...Aka,themselves. Unless you have no distinct personality that is?

[Ian VotV]

A lot of people I know believe that ideas and concepts are things called 'memes' (a concept created by Dawkins), and that ideas and concepts evolve and become extinct in the same way as biological organisms do, in accordance with Darwinian ideas of evolution (if I'm correct about the idea). I'm a bit suspicious of this. I'm wondering if there are any among you that feel the same as me about this meme idea, or if I am rejecting something which is accepted by almost everyone?

I dont think most people reject the idea of memes (theres a pun in itself). It is generally, i would think, understood that ideas and trends come and go and evolve. The internet is the best breeding ground !

I love the term memes and have used it wheneverpossible for a long time, but i do also think that some people might see it as a fancy new term, allbeit one that describes a process that most people can grasp.

ian

[YesNo]

I think we basically agree, OrphanPip, and I like the idea you mentioned of selection operating on different levels. Thanks for the response.

[OrphanPip]

This shows me how 'concepts' and 'words' become bigger than plain reality.
Those who dont want to accept a personality as distinct from 'the determined by biology class' are really ignoring the biggest empirical evidence there is...Aka,themselves. Unless you have no distinct personality that is?

Once again, I fail to see how a materialist understanding of human cognition in any way contradicts diversity of personality.

[Theunderground]

Ok,to clarify. what 'causes' the difference in personality? Is it a 'material cause' or the fact that every person has an intrinsic independent personality. ( ie,independent from material causes.) Hope you understand what i am saying.

[Heteronym]

Memes seem to me like a simple thing that was blown out of proportions. Humans have throughout history exchanged ideas and information, and around the 1970s Dawkins coined the term. I really don't see how saying meme is more special than saying idea.

[YesNo]

The way I see the difference between "meme" and "idea" is that an idea originates within human consciousness and can be considered a product of it while a meme has its existence, assuming it exists at all, outside of human consciousness.

[Heteronym]

I've been reading Mary Midgley's The Myths We Live By, an excellent philosophy books that confronts a lot of modern muddled thinking. One of her many targets is memes. She devotes many essays to memetics, taking the matter far beyond what's been discussed here so far. She begins by lamenting the fact that methods used in physics have extended to other areas of knowledge where they make no sense. When Newton, in the 17th century, discovered the laws of nature, philosophers believed that they could find sweeping big ideas that could explain the whole of the social sciences too. Apparently what worked for planetary orbits also worked for humans. This is called scientism, the belief that only science can explain things. From this Midgley explains that:

"Standards are now set that concentrate on form, not on the suitability to the subject-matter, This makes it necessary to use methods which closely imitate the forms of physical science. And among those forms, a prime favourite is, of course, atomism."

So memes are analagous to genes because it makes the study of culture and human ideas sound more scientific. In the same way that genes are the basic building blocks of life, memologists think memes are basic building blocks of culture. The problem, as Midgley points out, "is that thought and culture are not the sort of thing that can have distinct units. They do not have a granular structure for the same reason that ocean currents do not have one - namely, because they are not stuffs but patterns."

What are memes? According to Dawkins, they are 'tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes-fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches,' just about anything really. So she asks:

"If memes really correspond to genes of culture they cannot be its units. These are completely different ideas. Considered as genes, they would not be the cultural phenomena themselves but, instead, a set of hidden entities which were their causes. In that case they must indeed be fixed units, unchanging causes of the changing items that appear in the world. But all the examples we are given correspond to phenotypes. They are the apparent items themselves. Moreover, most of the concepts mentioned cannot possibly be treated as unchanging or even as moderately solid."

So if memes are "hidden causes of culture rather than its units, what sort of entities are these causes supposed to be? They are not physical objects. But neither are they thoughts or ideas of the kind that normally play any part in our experience. They seem to be occult causes of those thoughts. How then do they manifest themselves? What makes us think they are there? It does not help to say that they are are bits of information in the infosphere. Information is not a third kind of stuff. It is not an extra substance added to Cartesian mind and body or designed to supersede them. It is an abstraction from them. Invoking such an extra stuff is as idle as any earlier talk of phlogiston or animal spirits or occult forces. Information is facts about the world, and we need to know where, in that world, these new and causally effective entities are to be found."

The problem with Susan Blackmore's assertion that we're just 'meme machines,' a very reductive way of conceiving people, is that ultimately it means we just follow the purposes of alien viruses and have no purposes of our own. "If anyone actually did try to believe this," Midgley argue, "it is hard to see what practical consequences could follow other than helpless fatalism, quickly followed by general breakdown. It is clear that the suggestion is, like so many other learned suggestions about selves, merely a peper doctrine about other people, not one by which anyone could live." I should add, it's just replacing God with memes.

Midgley continues: "As William of Occam observed, varieties of entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. When human beings think and act, no extra entities need to be present in them besides themselves." For me this is the crucial point of her argument. Before memes we already had the language and the concepts to study and understand the way ideas changed, and we also had awareness that some ideas survive and others don't - and it happens because we change them in reaction to the context of our world. Memes are just a redundant entity to explain human motivation.

She then addresses one of Daniel Dennett's points about memes, namely that it explains why people sometimes have ideas contrary to their well-being; so it follows that they serve someone else's reasons - this someone else is the meme. The idea that our self-destructive thoughts are not our own but caused from outsider entities is most appealing, if you're interested in stealing people of all agency and personal responsibility. This of course is what Midgley warns against when she points out that social sciences have borrowed natural sciences propensity for sweeping big ideas that explain everything. Science has the habit of explaining things in simple ways. But humans are very complicated, messy things. Midgley quickly explains why Dennett's approach to memes is not to our advantage:

"The fact that our thoughts and customs are not always to our advantage is not a new scientific discovery. It is a familiar platitude, both in daily life and in traditional humanistic thinking. We know all too well that our thoughts and customs often lead us to act foolishly, destructively, even suicidally. And the crucial point about this self-destructive tendency - the thing that makes it most distressing - is that in these cases the conflicting motives which lead to the trouble are indeed all our own. They do not arise from possession by some kind of external parasite. They are warring parts of ourselves."

She then concludes with a wonderful defense of literature:

"That is why literature is such an important part of our lives, why the notion that it is less important than science is so mistaken. Shakespeare and Tolstoy help us understand the self-destructive psychology of despotism. Flaubert and Racine illuminate the self-destructive side of love. What we need to grasp in such cases is not the simple fact that people are acting against their interests. We know that; it stands out a mile. We need to understand, beyond this, what kind of gratification they are getting from acting in this way. If, instead of looking for this factor directly and imaginatively by studying their conduct, we were to shift our attention to the alleged interactions between populations of memes, as Dennett advises, we would lose a crucially important source of knowledge in order to pursue a phantom."

I of course recommend reading the whole book, if you're interested in the discussion of memes.

[YesNo]

I see a couple books by Mary Midgley in the library. I think I'll check out The Ethical Primate tomorrow. Her views on memes seem to agree with mine.

I also don't like the "selfish" metaphor used to describe genes or memes. Genes have no basis on which to be "selfish" and with sexual reproduction it looks like "cooperation" is a better metaphor for their behavior. I got that idea from Niles Eldredge.