>And even in 'brain' form, certainly operable as an evolutionary agent
>within the brain, in the sense that where it is is what it does, and the
>process of evolution makes new space for it.
Let me be more clear about the nature of my misgivings about a hunt for
memes in the brain in this post-modern age of ours. We'll use this media
we're communicating in, e-mail, as an example:
Now, I think most of us will agree that jokes are pretty good examples of
memes, regardless of the details of how we each choose to define "meme".
How many jokes do each of you get via e-mail each week? If you're like me,
quite a few. And many of them get forwarded on to other friends. These and
other such memes (jokes, urban legends, virus warnings) spread widely
through e-mail. You yourself, Wade, have commented several times about
seeing the same urban legends cross your path over and over again from
several different sources. So there is little doubt that these memes are
propagating with ease, but does that mean they hosted as easily?
For the most part, I can only recall three or four of the 50-100 jokes that
crossed through my mailer last month. And I probably forwarded 1/3 to 1/2 of
those jokes to others. Now, let's assume for the sake of argument that you
had some alien technology which allowed you to pinpoint a single thought in
the brain and look at it. Would you find all those jokes I forwarded
somewhere in my brain?
Doubtful.
More likely, you would find a simple little sub-routine that said, "If it's
funny forward it to x, y, and z." Possibly followed by another sub-routine
that read, "If funniness level is greater than X, commit to memory for
future verbal use."
You see, there is no reason for there to even exist in the brain individual
instances of each self-replicating meme. Oh, to be sure, in an oral
tradition there would have had to have be, but no longer. In fact, if the
aliens had visited 35,000 years ago they may have been able to detect the
entire panoply of human memes inside one brain or another. But today,
several steps in our history beyond to commitment of memes to paper, many
instances of memes exist only as extrocranial information. We have moved up
an order of magnitude from the days of oral traditions. Our brains, rather
than just storing information like a book does, now just as often also are
filled with stored /methods of processing/ externally available information.
[1]
Which leaves us in a sticky wicket. There simply may not be a one-to-one
relationship between memes in the world and memes in the brain. In fact, for
all we know, we may only find one or two "meme replicating engines" in the
brain at all. These engines doing all the work of replication for most of
the memes. The memes simply needing to have a quality (funny joke) which
triggers this engine to do the behavior which in turn will replicate the
meme (click on "Forward"; list friends under "To:"; hit "Send"; end
program).
The quest for memes in the brain may turn up these replication engines[2], a
valuable thing to be sure, and I hope it does. But it is doubtful that the
memes themselves will show up as behavioral artifacts within the brain. That
is why I favor defining them as information, instances of which my exist in
many forms (spoken words, books, e-mail, etc.), rather than as simply
internal brain processes.
To my mind, the process is important, but it should not be confused with the
product. And it is the product, in this case, which is the "meme", not the
process; the replication engine.
-Prof. Tim
[1] This is the nature of post-modernism, after all. Structures built by
applying processes to pre-existing structures and processes to the processes
themselves. Simply look at post-modern music, hip-hop, techno, jazz and acid
jazz, or electronica. The song structure is constructed by applying
processes (DJ scratching, sampling, digital processing, phase shifting,
etc.) to existing structures, information patterns stored on vinyl or tape
or disc. The compositions are more often textural, layered, the final
product existing as a meta-level above the original text and speaking as
much to the process of their construction as anything else.
[2] Now a very interesting sub-class of memes is the set of memes which
alter the values of the replication engine itself. Memes which change, for
instance, the boundaries of what is defines as "funny" enough to forward. Or
memes which change the protocol for replication, such as <skepticism> or
<moral code>. These are a fascinating sub-class of memes. (But by no means
the only ones worth studying.)