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"James H.G. Redekop" wrote:
> The Skeptic Society is at http://www.skeptic.com/
>
> The most recent issue online is from the beginning of 1997 -- the
> work on the page has been very slow. If you see the mag in stores,
> the cover story is "Why Professors Believe Weird Things".
Got it. There's an article in SKEPTIC (Vol 6, No 3, 1998) it by Aaron
Lynch,
someone who I've met personally and know that he is striving to put
memetics on
a more scientific footing, and James Polichak, who is "critiquing"
memetics. I
will respond to Polichak's article, Memes-What Are They Good For?
My impression of his critique is that he is responding to the myriad
jumble of
theories currently circulating on memetics. In some parts of his article,
It
seems that he is using specious arguments based on an ill-formed notion
of what
memetics is all about.
He spends a good portion of time slamming memetics based on the
inadequacies of
the metaphor of memetics with genetics. As we know with metaphors, they
are only
good (usually) until you try to push them too far, at which point they
start to
fall apart. While the ideas of memetics began as a metaphor, memetics has
since
been refined beyond its initial dependence on the gene metaphor. In
Lynch's
paper, Units, Events and Dynamics in Memetic Evolution, Aaron decouples
memetics
from its metaphorical beginnings and places it on its own footing. Yet I
see no
references to this definitive paper in Polichak's article, so I can only
surmise
that he has not read it.
In the next portion of Polichak's paper, he makes the claim that because
memetics does not puts an emphasis on what the host does with the
information
that it has learned, this "dooms memetics to failure". He then goes on an
intones examples of why this is supposedly so by citing studies that show
that
memories need context to be meaningful. This is specious for the following
reason: memetics is more concerned with how ideas are propagated through
an
entire population, whereas the examples that Polichak brings to bear
focuses on
what goes on at the individual level. In effect, comparing apples to
oranges.
Another way it is specious is that he cites a study involving false
memories and
how in experiments with word lists the subject introjects words that were
never
there. For example, "bed", "rest", "awake", and other sleep-related words
(without mentioning the word "sleep") might be told to a subject, who is
then
later asked to recall those words, where "sleep" is mistakenly recalled.
Firstly, this does not invalidate memetics, but could be construed as an
example
of how variation occurs in the mnemon (see below). Secondly, the words
presented
are all memes very closely related to the sleep mnemon. In fact, I would
consider them all aspects of the sleep mnemon, and is therefore natural
that
"sleep" would be introjected. This also circles around some ideas I have
about
what I call thought icons, where a single meme or mnemon can represent a
whole
cluster of ideas (or memes). All the words in the english language, for
instance, are examples of thought icons. In that model, "bed", "rest",
"awake"
are all part of that cluster of ideas or memes to which "sleep" is the
thought
icon for. So it is natural to suppose that if you chose elements that
helps to
define the idea cluster, you also invoke the thought icon that represents
that
idea cluster.
Another problem with his article is that it itself does not settle on
some solid
definition of the meme, but keeps it just as nebulous as the sources that
he
criticizes for being nebulous. Let us gain go back to Aaron Lynch's paper
and
pull out his definitions:
Most people use abstract representations of memory content on a daily
basis to discuss ideas. When we say that two people have "the same"
idea, we do not use "sameness" to mean equality in every concrete
detail, or else we could never correctly say that two people have
"the
same" idea. As Dawkins [3] put it, "If this were not so, then almost
any statement about two people agreeing with each other would be
meaningless". What we mean by saying that two people have "the same"
idea is that one person's idea has at very least one quality in
common
with the other's idea. Perceiving two people to have "the same" idea
involves abstracting out a set of common qualities. So saying that
two
people's ideas are "the same" only means that they are in some way
"of
the same kind".
And
4 Other Propagating Items
Many psychological phenomena other than ideas can be observed to
self-
replicate. These include certain habits, attitudes, class identities,
cognitive associations, education, emotional dispositions,
addictions,
and even neurotic and psychotic symptoms.
All these traits may be broadly classified as human memory content.
This category is more general than the word "idea" or even "memory"
usually connote. It includes everything in the fairly broad meaning
of
"memory", as defined in Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th
edition: "the store of things learned and retained from an organism's
activity or experience as evidenced by modification of structure or
behavior or by recall and recognition". Thus, the principle
abstractions manipulated with memetics theory are memory
abstractions,
or mnemons3. Mnemons do not include inanimate propagating items such
as chain letters, Bibles, etc. Nor do they include traits considered
genetically instinctual.
Using mnemons helps to standardize the measurement of propagation in
terms of a host count. Thus, a chain letter or the copying machine
duplicating it do not count as hosts, but the person photocopying the
letter does. The relationship of artifacts to mnemons is discussed
later.
If a mnemon resides very redundantly in someone's brain, that person
still counts as only one host and one mnemon instantiation. The
number
of duplicates of a memory item in one brain is not currently
measurable, so it escapes further treatment in this article.
So here, Aaron introduces the mnemon, a memory abstraction. It does not
become a
meme until it is transmitted from one host to another. Polichak mentions
none of
this. It is in my opinion that he has based much of his paper on dated
material,
not on what's current.
I am still in the process of reading Polichak's article. When I am done,
I'll
post my conclusion. In the meantime, you might find it instructive to read
Aaron's paper.
FYI: This discussion will be continued in the New Skeptics Mailing List.
-- ====================================================================== Fred Mitchell http://www.mitchellware.com http://www.syc.org ======================================================================
************************************** Wade T. Smith morbius@channel1.com wade_smith@harvard.edu **************************************