This was the e-mail sent to me:
I really liked your review [of Denis Dutton's "Art Instinct"] and it was so convincing I decided not to buy the book, even as I was poised to do so. However the book's title alone sparked a cascade of useful thoughts.
Since you're familiar with Stephen Pinker and ideas about evolution, I guess you must also be familiar with Richard Dawkins. But maybe you don't know about a wonderful book inspired by Dawkins: "The Meme Machine" by Susan Blackmore, with an introduction by Dawkins. Dr. Blackmore takes Dawkins' meme concept and runs with it. I found it to be a novel and delightfully argued theory of how ideas (including commercial jingles, fashion styles, catch phrases and religions) spread and evolve in a Darwinian manner. There are other books and articles about the meme concept, but hers is the only one I found convincing and revelatory.
Here was my response:
Thanks very much for the very kind words about my review. In honesty, it is an interesting book even though I find its ideas a bit rough. While I don't reccomend its ideas, the book is quite an interesting read.
Yes, I am definitely familiar with Pinker, Dawkins and Blackmore. To be honest, I am not very attracted to the idea of the meme (or the meme of the meme?). The reason is that it doesn't "explain" much of anything. Anything that the invocation of a meme can explain - why songs are catchy, why we can't stop thinking about that movie line, etc - can be juust as easily, and less problematically, explained by invoking the concept of "ideas." Yes, the meme is much more materialistic and therefore scientific seeming, but it doesn't expain much at all.
I am not sure we know nearly enough about neuroscience to explain ideas, their origin, and why sometimes they "pop up" without us wanting them to, but my suspicion is that we will find that the reality is much more pedestrian than the meme: ideas occur because of certain combinations of neurons firing between synapses, and sometimes, these firings occur without conscious will on our part.
My biggest problem with the idea of "memes" is that they do not make sense in several ways. (a) They don't really account for creativity and novelty; (b) they don't make sense given our strong intutions that we control our thoughts (rather than thoughts just "happening" to our passive brains; and (c) for such a physicalistic theory, the meme does not appear to have any physical nature as a thing (like the gene).
I am always amazed that the idea of memes has any credence at all. It seems that the only thing it really has going for it is that it is materialistic in nature (thus appealing to very hardcore materialists), and that it makes sense out of the phenomenon we sometimes have about thoughts "popping into" our heads without us willing them to.
When discussing memes with others, I am always amazed that defenders of memetics naturally assume that I am not a materialist, and must be a mind/body dualist, because of my rejection of memes. It just seeems quite natural to me that while the material brain gives rise to our inner life, it does not need "mind viruses" to infect it from the outside, but creates thoughts solely from the inside.
I guess time will tell if this idea has any staying power. My guess is that it will be gone within a decade as neuroscience gets a bit older.
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI heard a talk in which Dennett offered speculation as to why we don't hear Dawkins talking about memes anymore.
It's not something I've followed, but I assume that Dennett's got some basis for seeing the disuse for which he was offering an explanation.
I am surprised you would be critical of the whole meme idea and not just some particular application. It does seem a little coarse-grained to me, like it's just one aspect of a deeper principle. But the more I deal with people in general, the more convinced I am that beliefs and opinions come first, and evidence and reason get filled in later as an afterthought (even for myself, unfortunately). The meme theory is an account of some criteria other than truth (sometimes) making ideas attractive and popular. I'm not sure how directly neuroscience can weigh in on the idea yet, but I've certainly gotten the impression from books like "The User Illusion" that stability/consistency is something more important than correctness throughout the brain. We're eager to throw out ideas that would rock the boat and make us reevaluate other ideas.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest problem with the idea of "memes" is that they do not make sense in several ways.
(a) They don't really account for creativity and novelty;
I don't think the meme theory totally replaces the standard theory of ideas, and creativity is one aspect of mental life where memes aren't the most natural model to use. There's a similar duality between polar coordinates and rectangular coordinates with some calculations being more natural in one or the other.
(b) they don't make sense given our strong intuitions that we control our thoughts (rather than thoughts just "happening" to our passive brains)
Same as (a), but I think the meme theory is a little less awkward in this case. Even taking a hard line and assuming that our intuitions are dead-on, we still don't have time and energy to weed out all the cruft, just like animals can be alert and in-control but still be covered in parasites.
(c) for such a physicalistic theory, the meme does not appear to have any physical nature as a thing (like the gene).
Do you consider the electrical states for the bits in a computer to have the proper "physical nature", or are you uncomfortable with it being so intangible? It definitely seems like humanity has moved on from biological evolution to intellectual/social evolution, whether or not it has to do with memes, so I'm pretty comfortable making the leap from physical genes to physical (but intangible) brain states.
Dr. Whitson,
ReplyDeleteI would be curious to know Dennett's account of why Dawkins doesn't talk much about memes anymore?
Is it, I wonder, because the idea was practically universally rejected?
">>>But the more I deal with people in general, the more convinced I am that beliefs and opinions come first, and evidence and reason get filled in later as an afterthought (even for myself, unfortunately)."
ReplyDeleteThat is the way much thought happens. As Hume said, reason is the slave of the passions.
>>>I don't think the meme theory totally replaces the standard theory of ideas, and creativity is one aspect of mental life where memes aren't the most natural model to use.
My impression has always been that the meme theory was precisely meant to replace the standard theory of ideas. A meme's definition is "a unit of thought," or "an idea."
Memes are not meant as a metaphor or a partial theory, but, like a gene, someting that has the potential to explain ideas in a naturalistic way.
My impression has always been that the meme theory was precisely meant to replace the standard theory of ideas.
ReplyDeleteWell, I can't speak for how everyone else applies the idea, but I find it's very useful and natural in some contexts and very forced in others. I guess people have gotten carried away with it, and it seems like a lot of them expect to be taken seriously no matter what they say because "it's science". But on the other hand, it's a name for something that desperately needed a name.
As far as being a "complete" theory, I don't think it's wrong to say something like "all ideas are memes", but it doesn't seem to help anything. Of course ideas catch on because they're catchy, but many of them are catchy because they're true. If anyone considers meme theory a threat to the concept of rational thought in general, then yeah, I think that's crap.
David,
ReplyDeleteI am regarding memes as a complete theory based on Richard Dawkins's and Susan Blackmore's books suggesting that they are. I think I have also heard Daniel Dennett suggest that they are intended to be a 'replacement' theory for ideas.
>>>"As far as being a "complete" theory, I don't think it's wrong to say something like "all ideas are memes", but it doesn't seem to help anything."
I think it is wrong if the existence of memes can find some physical proof. The reason for 'memes' rather than ideas is a naturalistic one; memes are said to be naturalistic whereas ideas are said to be not so. But, we have absolutely no basis for saying that thoughts have a physical represenation (apart from a biproduct of synapses shooting electricity between eachother).
Therefore, as you say, the concept of a meme becomes superfluous because there literally is no scientific advantage to postulating them.
(My feelings on the brain/mind question - how does the one make up the other - is that of Colin McGinn: we don't know enough yet to even proffer good guesses, and we may never as we lack a "middle" perspective that could see how neuron firings become thoughts.
So are you arguing against meme theory as it relates to the phenomenon of consciousness? I guess I wouldn't be surprised if Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore used it that way from what I know of them, but for me it seems like there's a pretty big gap between a theory of ideas and a theory of consciousness.
ReplyDeleteLooking through your argument so far, I'm picking up some nuances I didn't get at first. Would it be accurate to rephrase your argument as "consciousness is a two-way street", i.e. some thoughts are the product of consciousness?
Dawkins wrote an article (appearing in his book Devil's Chaplain") where he says very explicitly that the concept of memes is aimed at being what the concept of genes are to heredity. He means it io be a full "naturalistic" entity as a unit of thought (like a gene is a unit of heredity.
ReplyDelete>>>Would it be accurate to rephrase your argument as "consciousness is a two-way street", i.e. some thoughts are the product of consciousness?
I don't really have an "argument" when it comes to consciousness. I really do agree with Colin McGinn though, about the possible impossibilty of getting at the bottom of what makes brain states thoughts.
He writes - in several articles and the book Mysterious Flame - that we can see brain states, we can feel consciousness, and we know the two correlate via th scientific process. But what we lack is any view between those two - that we wouold need in order to show how this particular brain state comes to "feel like" something non-material in us. Concretely, one can see my synapse firings when I look at photos of loved ones, and can see that such brain states have a 1:1 relationship with feelings of tenderness in me. But we cannot, as of yet, see how the physical state leads to a non-material attitude or feeling in me.
And until we have some idea of how a thought (as it feels) is different from a synapse firing, we cannot really refer to thoughts as material (but can only refer to them as having a material correlate).
I don't really have an "argument" when it comes to consciousness.
ReplyDeleteRight, and I've thought for a long time that we're lacking the "middle perspective" to make any solid predictions about consciousness. But I was asking if my statement gets to the heart of what you're saying about meme theory.
If I'm understanding you properly, you're saying that meme theory tries to explain all mental life so that questions of consciousness aren't significant, but that you suspect it would take a broader, possibly non-physical theory of consciousness to explain some thoughts (those "created solely from the inside").
David,
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, it has been a long while since I've done any real reading in neurophilosophy, so I am not very intelligent when talking about it.
What I do think is that consciousness is best seen as a biproduct of the brain, so I don't really think that any physicalist theory will be capable of explaining consciousness fully. It might explain why we have thoughts or what the origin of thoughts are, but not the nonphysical feeling of thoughts or how the physical things that represent thoughts (neural firings or what) can come to have some non-physical aspect.
So, yes, I think I am partly skeptical of memetic theory because it makes wholly physical something that simply seems impervious to a wholly physical explanation (though I don't want to be too dogmatic about what science WILL be able to do).
Also, though, I am skeptical of memetic theory because of its wildly speculatory and very unfounded nature. From what we DO know of the brain, thoughts are not represented by any physical units, but by amalgamations of synapse firings in the brain. We can literally isolate genes; I am not sure that we have any reason to believe that there are any physical units we can isolate that repressnt thoughts.