October 06, 2007
A Weakness in the New Atheism
John D. Mullen's review of Hitchens' God is Not Great captures some of my frustrations with the new spirited and much needed defense of atheism. In Metapsychology Online Reviews:
There is a weak point that infects both Harris and Hitchens' claims that religion is an important cause of human violence (indeed Harris claims that the survival of the human species requires the extinction of religion -- or at least of Islam). The flaw is their failure to disentangle the religious from other potential social factors, e.g., nationalist, economic, cultural, educatioinal. Harris at least asks the question: Could the (terrorist) tactics of Palestinians warriors be a result of economic or political oppression rather than religious conviction? This is an extremely complex question of social/causal analysis. Harris' answer is shockingly cavalier: No, you don't see Christian Palestinians becoming suicide bombers. Does anyone believe there are no differences between Christian and Muslim Palestinians other than a (rather minor) disagreement on the status of a certain Nazarene? No economic, educational differences? No differences of group identification or empathy, no disparities of tribalist propensities?
This lack of a social-causal analysis comes up many times in Hitchens. For example he attributes a religious cause to female genital mutilation (223). This is almost certainly wrong. FGM occurs in tribal societies, where the worst evil to befall a male is for an offspring of another male to be unwittingly attributed to him. The difficulty of preventing this is heightened by polygyny, where there are more women to worry about and watch over. Thus women must be guaranteed virginal (and so unpregnant) at marriage and secluded afterwards (purdah). FGM is best understood as an element of this complex. It is required by no religion, has been practiced within or along side all three of the Abrahamic traditions and is more prevalent by far in the polygynous Muslim variations, particularly among less educated populations. (See Gary S. Becker A Treatise on the Family 2005)
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Comments
What the atheists miss is that religion is so much more than superstition and credulousness. It is more akin to language, or, better yet, to human nature itself. When one looks at all the horrible things people have done over the ages using language and emotion it is easy to condemn to whole human race; but that overlooks all the good things that have likewise been done using language and emotion. Religion, at its best, is poetry in action.
Posted by: Luke Lea | Oct 7, 2007 12:30:25 AM
Get me make another stab at that. A great religious tradition (and text) is a poetic interpretation of reality in its historical dimension. It makes since of the past, and gives guidance to the future. The trick is to make it consistent with the practical realities of what is possible and impossible. Thus we condemn past texts like the Bible because they are no longer consistent with new, emergent scientific theories and ideas. That's a big deal now, but it didn't mean beans in the past, when we didn't no beans about the theory of evolution or Copernican ideas of the solar system. The valuable part is what is left untouched by these modern extensions of our practical knowledge, and that includes a great deal of emotional, moral, and historical truth.
Posted by: Luke Lea | Oct 7, 2007 12:49:16 AM
You got it, Luke.
The trick is now to separate obsolete rituals and also re-valuate religious symbols.
No easy trick, to be sure, but one that must happen if religion is to evolve.
If not, it will become increasingly discordant with the world, and probably more violent.
Posted by: beajerry | Oct 7, 2007 2:14:19 AM
"There is a weak point that infects both Harris and Hitchens' claims that religion is an important cause of human violence."
It seems to me that the weak point is the de facto assumption that if fascism or communism caused millions of death then we can mostly attribute that to the ideologies in question, but if a religion does then we suddenly becomes more important to look for economic and social factors. And Harris does have a point - particularly given that suicide bombers in recent years have often been Western converts or have orginated from a large swathe of economic and societal backgrounds.
Posted by: Richard | Oct 7, 2007 5:04:09 AM
could it be that ideologies are a result of human behavior, not cause? Could it be that this entire debate is pointless?
Posted by: eric | Oct 7, 2007 11:07:46 AM
Let me repeat a position I posted on another thread. I am an avowed atheist. Yet the following counterfactual still moves me: a world without Christianity is a world without Bach's B Minor Mass. Perhaps the best argument for religion I've heard, not mind you for the existence of God but for religion.
Posted by: Jonathan | Oct 7, 2007 11:37:45 AM
Religion is (or should be) less about belief and more about possibility. Atheists are hung up on belief (in the scientific sense: that for which we have sufficient evidence) while the religious impulse, or instinct, or whatever it is, goes after the fairest and most beautiful possibilities imaginable, given everything we know. God, or gods, are personifications, one among the many poetic devices and figures of speech, by which such visions are communicated.
Now, granted, some religions are not so beautiful by my lights -- Islam comes to mind -- but a basic human impulse like this needs to be judged by its best examples, not its worst. We don't judge English literature by the latest hip-hop lyric, or Madison Avenue jingle, but by Shakespeare (and the King James Bible, for that matter).
A particular religious tradition (or interpretation of an already existing tradition) gains traction and significance when the most influential elites in society embrace it. That is the challenge for the future (if it has one) of our Judeo-Christian tradition.
Atheists should keep in mind that our liberal traditions and ideals have no other basis than in their religious roots. Human equality, for example.
Substitute an atheistic (or rather, non-Biblical) world view and it is no long before we have a Neiztchean, aristocratic mindset that uses the egotistical desires of the smartest and strongest as the measure of all things.
We are so historically ignorant as a society, it makes me weep.
Posted by: Luke Lea | Oct 7, 2007 12:43:32 PM
Luke,
Those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. It is quite historically ignorant to claim that "our liberal traditions and ideals have no other basis than in their religious roots." That is just flat out wrong. Take a look at Locke, Jefferson, and Paine, not to mention Voltaire and Diderot. Writers of the secular enlightenment all of them: deists, skeptics, and even atheists. While it certainly correct to say that liberal traditions have *some* roots in religion. It is flat out historically wrong to say that they have "no other" basis. It also bears some notice that if the Christian religion has some claim for ideas of human equality (as in the sermon on the mount), it also has some claim for millennia of social stratification.
Posted by: Jonathan | Oct 7, 2007 12:56:17 PM
a world without Christianity is a world without Bach's B Minor Mass
Is that true? Would an atheist Bach have had no talent or no desire to create?
Posted by: Sagredo | Oct 7, 2007 10:22:33 PM
Sagredo, that is an interesting question, and I think much depends on whether inspiration and "desire to create" are roughly the same thing. I don't think they are, since one can have a strong desire to create while utterly lacking for inspiration. How a genius, or even just a talented person growing up in the final years of the 17th century, would have seen himself in the world and understood his own giftedness would depend on dense acculturation that we just can't deconstruct.
We don't know if Bach ever had reason to reflect how inspired it was that he took the same amount of time to compose that a copyist needed merely to copy out a given score. What he did must have felt perfectly natural to him, which is not to say he didn't feel it owed its existence to something outside himself -- like, God. Anyone who has ever done something prodigious has probably felt an impulse to offer thanks for the sheer inspiration involved. You have been visited by a Muse, you were not the same while that happened, you don't know how you did what you did. You would give much if it would happen again, and soon -- so you may just have an atavistic urge: propitiate it! thank it! This sure doesn't mean you're not a proper atheist, but it does show that you're a human being rallying to ancestral voices. And it is hard, so hard at such a time, to get all shook up at the thought of one's unaided excellence -- is it not?
If there is no God, then Bach could and did compose the B-minor Mass in the absence of God. But he was not aware of that. Throughout everything he wrote there is the palpable sense that the music is /for something/, and you listen not just to be dazzled but to be transported to what the music is for -- some truth beyond art. Composers today, in the main, don't have these aims; if they did, it would be campy. Or satanic -- like Christian rock. So, much of the best of what we hear today is written by spectacularly talented people who, unlike Bach, are not concerned with God's presence in their music. As Stravinsky said, when asked what his music expressed, "It expresses nothing. It expresses itself."
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Oct 8, 2007 2:03:42 AM
So a world without Pattie Boyd would be a world without "Layla"?
;)
Posted by: beajerry | Oct 8, 2007 11:12:06 AM
beajerry -- that's EXACTLY what I was leading up to!!!
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Oct 8, 2007 12:11:21 PM
interestingly enough, musicians, especially of that caliber, tend to think of themselves as gods.
or able to speak with the language of the gods.
i'm sure as with surgeons, they can aquire a great deal of inspiration and motivation, simply from the adoring public.
Posted by: Symphony X | Oct 8, 2007 5:43:42 PM
One of the main arguments against religion is that it is sheep-like, herding weak-minded people together, giving them consolation. Atheism should therefore avoid such groupings.
Atheism is a nonsensical term---
One does not chose to believe in a invisible space daddy upon waking in the morning.
That is a cultural acquired trait, the religious person being the host for the parasitic replicator (meme).
Atheist are strictly people not hosting that replicator (but many others, as a brain only has so much meme space)
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Oct 8, 2007 8:32:01 PM
Elatia, I enjoyed your insights here.
Dave - Get your nose out of "The Collected Works of Friedrich Nietzsche' and get a clue. People who aren't able to find or build strong community support networks are weaker and more fragile in every way - physically, psychologically, and economically.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Oct 8, 2007 11:03:09 PM
Vic--
Agreed, we are social animals, with need for community---
Mine just doesn't happen to involve Talking Snakes or Psychopathic Father Figures, who are invisible.
Call me a realist, or some other Satanic Term, but I thrive on the complexity and wonder of the world we inhabit.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Oct 9, 2007 1:39:28 AM
Elatia, I'll accept that one cannot easily posit an atheist Bach without constructing a whole alternative worldview for him. And also that his music is "for something".
Is there a something for atheists, though? Perhaps for Dawkins it's "Science", but is that the same?
Posted by: Sagredo | Oct 9, 2007 3:59:44 AM
Dave, I know I quoted you on your "replicating memes" the other day, but this really is a very shaky model. As Dawkins, who proposed it, knows full well, ideas and fashions can, unlike genes, be altered at will by the people holding them, so the "memes" behave in a Lamarckian fashion rather than a selective Darwinian one. Above all, the "replicating memes" model is used by some New Atheists (NA) to describe ideas and beliefs that they don't like, so as to make them sound like nasty viruses, parasites or sci-fi horror body-snatchers.
Whereas a host is not conscious or active with respect to invasion by parasites or viruses, cultural information is absorbed with some degree of participation by a person.E.g. a child is receptive to the language of its parents, family and friends In this way, a child will usually (but not always) accept beliefs and values from elders and others on the basis of trust, love and physical or economic dependence. However, a child often modifies this language to give special meanings or pronunciations to words. So cultural information, unlike genes, can be readily modified at will by the "host". Whereas the "replicating memes" model tends to portray humans as will-less automatons helplessly manipulated by self motivated thought viruses, humans basically feel (in spite of reductionists) that they have a significant degree of free will and action.
So where does this lead the endless debate on the value of religion? It offers a highly rational reason why ideas and beliefs which NA scoff at by labeling them as "sky daddies , flying horses and talking snakes" have persisted: because they provide valuable tools and concepts for understanding and manipulating society and the world.
"Sky Daddy" – a powerful male (or female) authority that reflects the hierarchical structure of primate and early human/ traditional rural societies This structure used to control the flow of food, resources, money, cultural and practical knowledge, authority, decision making and reproductive rights. The tradition of rebelling against this authority is as ancient as the tradition of lauding and praising an all powerful God. Dawkins calls the Hebrew God as "pathological" because of the cruel element in passages like the 'Sacrifice of Isaac' but this fearsomeness reflects Man's dilemma: the Universe is full of wonderful and terrible things, yet we have no choice but to come to terms with it
Now modern society has virtually dismantled that hierarchical distribution structure in society, by providing abundant food, goods, transport and spare cash, an internet connection in every child's room and 3-G cell phone and parents that are invariably less knowledgeable and less cool than their offspring. Traditional social structures, including Islam, find this type of anti-hierarchical society a threat. Yet even modern society, derisive of its politicians and leaders, searches for wise men, gurus and the like.
Now Global Warming is threatening to put an end to the endless resources party-going. Basic freedoms, like driving/flying wherever you want and eating barbeque steaks off disposable picnic plates, are frowned upon. Some are mumbling about the need to be more in tune with Gaia, the Earth Mother.
"Flying Horse" – ridden by Perseus and Mohamed, this creature represents the desire for control and mastery of our environment with the aid of new concepts and tools. This is a definite advance on sticking feathers to your arms and flapping them – let the horse do the work! Ever tried opening an airline meal package with a pair of wings? So the flying horse became the airplane. Other animals fly, only humans can RIDE into the sky. Thus a strongly believed myth about something that didn’t exist helped to create a new reality.
Talking Snake – (I gather you mean the one in Genesis). This is a potent symbol of observation of the world around us and how one can learn from it. By creeping up silently on its prey and striking without warning, the snake is 'breaking the rules' being 'dishonest', showing us that there is always another, craftier way of dealing with enemies and problems. The snake in Genesis didn't have to actually vocalize this 'insidious' message to show Eve how to break the rules.
And, best of all, that snake offers a unique example of Evolution in action: The Lord says: "thou shalt crawl upon thy belly" and the snake loses its legs, just like the lizard ancestors of real snakes lost their legs, leaving vestigial limbs that are still visible in the skeleton! So the much maligned Book of Genesis contains a fairly accurate description of the mutability of species! Some Medieval paintings depict the Serpent with its legs still in place.
NA can say that I'm talking about metaphors here, not real beliefs. They have a point. A rock-solid belief in metaphysical beings has certain consequences. It can make people more implacable and determined or otherwise highly motivated. It can make them a real pain in the butt. But it doesn’t mean that they are stupid. It could be said that societies need some people like that, in amongst the well-meaning, relativistic wishy-washy rationalist liberals
Posted by: aguy109 | Oct 9, 2007 7:55:12 AM
Dave, if you're not an aspiring uebermensch as I assumed - why ridicule the religious as herd-minded for seeking to meet deep human needs in the only way that is readily available for many? The fact is, it's very difficult to maintain social networks in a highly mobile society. When I think of all the activities available at the local mega church - music, coffee house, climbing wall, youth group, opportunities to talk to other parents, etc and then consider the expense I go to to provide similar activities for my daughter, I feel like lying down for a week. Too bad I already screwed up and let her think for her herself - I now have a self-proclaimed atheist on my hands.
(that was a joke btw - the one time we visited the church in question it repulsed me as much as her. But it wasn't the hymns or Bible-reading as much as the whole aesthetic.)
I just think we need to think about new ways to build community rather than accusing people of being herd-like and insisting on the necessity of "avoiding such groupings."
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Oct 9, 2007 11:09:21 AM
Dave,
How many memes would a memplex c'llect if a memeplex could c'llect memes?
I note that your reasons for deriding talking snakes and flying horses chiefly involve the lack of evidence for them, But has anyone ever located a meme, or described it in any fashion more precise than synomymizing it with "idea"? In short, what is the difference between a meme and a unicorn?
I won't recapitulate what aguy said on this matter. But your willingness to adopt some figments of the imagination as real, while ridiculing others as barbaric indicates not a scientific mind so much as a tribal one.
Posted by: C. Schoen | Oct 9, 2007 11:55:55 AM
Main Entry: meme
Pronunciation: 'mEm
Function: noun
Etymology: alteration of mimeme, from mim- (as in mimesis) + -eme
: an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture
I thought Susan Blackmore's "The Meme Machine" was okay. Basically, the degree to which memetic theory is valid is the degree to which we get our ideas by copying others. (I think this is still an open question.)
Posted by: anon | Oct 9, 2007 10:46:20 PM
"..the degree to which memetic theory is valid is the degree to which we get our ideas by copying others.."
In the '80s, Michael Jackson appeared in a music video wearing a black fingerless glove on one hand. This rather ugly fashion item was widely copied and worn by millions. Now, anon, if the meme theory were correct and ideas behaved like viral genes, then we would predict that if Margeret Thatcher had been the first to wear that thing, it would still have spread like wildfire. But Thatcher, though famous and influentual and known for her icky taste in clothes and hairstyle, was not viewed as a fashion trend setter, so it would probably not have spread amongst young people. Also, Michael Jackson's popularity has vastly declined since then, and its doubtful that he could set trends today like he used to. I think this shows that people's acceptance of ideas is selective, diferential and at least partly voluntary. The meme model, though attractive for arguments (particularly when one wants to portray people who adopt certain ideas as 'mindless'), is rather flimsy when you examine it.
Posted by: aguy109 | Oct 10, 2007 4:42:58 AM
"I think this shows that people's acceptance of ideas is selective, diferential and at least partly voluntary." (!)
This is exactly the point: differential survival. It wouldn't be much of a theory if there wasn't any sense of "fitness".
Memes have to get along with us to survive, where "us" includes not just our physiology, but also other memes or ideas inhabiting our minds. We are their environment. We select (sometimes consciously, sometimes not) which ideas get copied. Memes that lie in people who are considered leaders or role models typically have a better chance of being imitated by others. This does of course depend on context though, as you say, and as we should expect if the theory is to be meaningful.
The reason why Dawkins and others call religion a virus is that they don't think this memeplex adds any value to its host. I disagree, although I don't think that religion adds that much. It does combine a lot of different ideas into a "worldview" (if you will), ideas that otherwise exist independently. But it adds a lot of nonsense things too, so there's a zombie Jebus gluing together the Golden Rule and "Thou shall not kill". This becomes especially frustrating when you try to argue with someone, because although they might find your arguments that the earth is not 10,000 years old compelling, "the Bible is where we get our morality," so the debate comes to a close. The memes reinforce each other.
Anyway, I think there's substance here, although it's still probably in the stage of a proto-science. We simply don't know enough about the brain.
Posted by: anon | Oct 10, 2007 9:18:17 AM
Seems like memetics is a concept better adapted to pop science and the blogosphere than the much harsher world of peer-reviewed academic research.
Scott Atran outlines some of the problems with memetics that will prevent it ever developing into a full-fledged science in
"The trouble with memes: Inference versus imitation in cultural creation."
http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/satran/files/human_nature_01.pdf1.) they don't do a good job of explaining the evolution of the human brain and of human language
2.) there's no definition of what constitutes a meme - ie the theory provides no unit that "cuts up culture at its natural joints" (Atran)
3. high fidelity transmission of ideas is the exception rather than the rule, which makes it impossible to to trace species of memes with any degree of accuracy
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Oct 10, 2007 11:55:34 AM
Vicki -- Great link! And very good to see you back here.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Oct 10, 2007 1:37:22 PM
Thanks for the link, Vicki.
Anon,
If memes are to be anything other than a loose metaphor, they have be definable, observant of laws governing their behavior, and offer predictive value for cultural events. I'm not aware of any of these conditions being satisfied convincingly by any meme.
What the establishment of memes does accomplish is the encroachment into cultural studies of the atomistic fetishism that has essentially run its course in the "hard" sciences. Looking for the smallest possible unit of any given thing is not always a fruitful enterprise. Even if it were, can we really call memes indivisible? What is the essential it-ness of Michael Jackson's black fingerless glove? (btw, aguy, I remember it as sparkly silver, but a quick check on the internet reminds me it was white, sequined, and not fingerless.)
Does the brand of the glove matter? The precise color, texture, weave? When the sequined, single-handed white glove begun to be manufactured in mass quantities, were the companies producing them responding to MJ's meme, or creating one of their own? Isn't "Michael Jackson wears a white glove" a different meme than "Michael Jackson's fans wear white gloves?" If I wear a halloween costume lampooning the white glove, is that contributing to the survival or extinction of the white glove meme?
Most importantly, if our brains are all just passive environments for memes, then where do memes come from? There must be some occult, supernatural source. (Not being physical entities, there is no "stuff" to mutute.) In short, who put that white glove in Michael Jackson's brain? And if it were a meme for jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge instead, would he have acted on it? And would his fans have followed behind him?
Organisms don't get to choose their genes, but they do, within bounds, choose their behaviors. This is evident in the mere fact that we struggle in trying to resolve conflicting desires. If there were an algorithm that calculated the hierarchy of our needs for us, there would be no struggle. no conflict. We would follow immutable natural laws as placidly as a river following the shortest possible route to the sea. What Dennett and Blackmore call the selective value of memes is a mask for the important aspect of choice. Culture flows in two directions; we shape it, and are shaped by it. This is in stark contrast to the current genetic model, where organisms can exert no influence on their own genome.
Posted by: C. Schoen | Oct 10, 2007 2:13:42 PM
Chris asks, "then where do memes come from? "
I think it was William S. Burroughs who first theorized that language is a virus, but he thought it came from outer space. So there's one possible explanation.
Before there were memes, there were motifs.
In literature and folklore studies, motifs are little bits of narrative that get re-cycled and recombined in various kinds of texts. You can look them up in your Stith Thompson Index. Of course the way the motifs get stitched together can entirely change the meaning. Babylonian and ancient Hebrew mythology both used the motifs or memes of a woman and a man in a garden with a snake, but the meaning attached to those motifs was entirely different.
Of course the idea that our brains and our cultures evolved to make the replication of these motifs possible seems as ridiculous as the idea that language evolved to make possible the spread of phonemes.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Oct 10, 2007 2:47:32 PM
Vicki,
I'm not a staunch defender of memetics--I did only rate Blackmore's book "okay". I think she probably overstates it in many places. In response to Atran's points:
(1) I agree, for the most part. (But this is sort of like asking genetics to explain what happened before genes.)
(2) We need to know more about the brain to answer this: how memory is stored and retrieved, what thoughts are made of and how they evolve and interact with each other, consciousness, and so on. (This is sort of like asking what was the unit of genetic evolution before we knew about DNA.)
(3) This is more or less saying that "it's too complicated". Genetics is extremely complex, and I agree that memetics is even more so. But this doesn't imply that we can't say anything meaningful.
Chris,
I gave the definition of meme above--was there a problem with it? You know, genes aren't that well defined either. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene#The_gene_concept_is_still_changing
and a few other sections there.
You say: "Most importantly, if our brains are all just passive environments for memes, then where do memes come from? There must be some occult, supernatural source."
I say: Think before you post, please.
As for "Organisms don't get to choose their genes," we are getting pretty close to that point with genetic engineering, aren't we? And even if we could, in some Lamarckian sense, this wouldn't throw out evolution or natural selection (although it would make it quite different). Still though, there are different levels of explanation, and I think one way to look at ourselves is as the memes' environment. When you compare to genetics, it's clear that their environment is "choosing" the genes that survive, although there's no conscious process involved.
One example of a "prediction" of this theory, would be along the lines of Marshall McLuhan's "the medium is the message". I was introduced to this in Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death", but that was written twenty years ago. We could certainly hypothesize about how the internet and cell phones, for example, have changed and will change the way ideas are exchanged--and also the types of ideas that thrive in these new environments. We could predict how this will affect presidential campaigns and elections, for example.
Posted by: anon | Oct 11, 2007 3:04:54 PM
It is actually time for those wading in the shallow end of the pool to do a little research----
I would start with Dennett, and go on from there---
Really people, a little education and research over narrative would be refreshing---
But I'm willing to be as obnoxious as the next person, if we want to continue to splash in the wading pool.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Oct 11, 2007 4:14:49 PM
Anon,
Do you even read my comments before replying to them?
Your dictionary definition essentially defines "meme" as a synonym for "idea," which is what I presented earlier as the standard to excel.
Ideas--obviously!--spread from person to person within a culture. This is something the disciplines of linguistics, anthropology, primate ethology, psychology, and literacry criticism have been describing for generations.
Mimetics postulates something more specific: self-replicating cultural atoms acting in accordance with as-yet undiscovered laws of replication and transmission. Despite the promotion of this theory by such heavy-hitters as Dennett, Blackmore and Wilson, we have to date no coherent scientific defintion of what constitutes a meme (and what doesn't), and by what mechanism it replicates itself. It is a deus ex machina, or in Dennettian language, a skyhook.
Since no one can say where these memes come from, I suggested with tongue in cheek that perhaps a genie or other spirit was responsible for generating them. Behind the joke is a valid question: where do memes come from? If they come from minds, it makes it difficult to paint these same minds as mere passive media molded by memes, which is what mimetic theory requires to be sensible.
If "meme" is just a fancy new word for ideas, well, great. But then the study of mimetics is a waste of time. I could have told you that cell phones would have an impact on the way we communicate with or without a "mimetic" explanation.
Finally it's amusing to watch you go through all the squirmy handwringing religious defenders usually resort to when assaulted by the New Atheists. Sure, analyzing culture from the point of view of a given idea is interesting, and comparing ideas to genes is a handy metaphor. But to say that metaphor is literally true, well, that's going a bit far, isn't it?
Posted by: C. Schoen | Oct 11, 2007 4:54:29 PM
Probably. I think you probably mean Relativist & Empiricist though. Wishy-washy is right out, however. Nobody is more adamant or dogmatic than a liberal. And it's hard to apply well-meaning to a sect that advocates the destruction of the unborn, though I understand they get huffy when you point that out to them. Sacred Cows and all that.
Posted by: Carlos | Oct 11, 2007 5:00:47 PM
anon - you write: "This is sort of like asking what was the unit of genetic evolution before we knew about DNA."
Wait, dude... what?
Before scientists had DNA figured out, they had postulated genes and chromosomes and used them to ask and answer all kinds of questions and figure out patterns and make predictions and do all that stuff that scientists do. Memetics has the first part down - postulate the existence of a mechanism for cultural replication - but the second part - use it to guide a full-fledged research program - has yet to materialize.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Oct 11, 2007 7:26:09 PM
Hey I know it's not a real reference but for entertainment purposes only here's a link to the history of genetics on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_genetics
Notice the part about "Classical Genetics" before "The DNA era"
To respond to your other responses to Atran's points which I memetically replicated in my comment -
1) Lack of explanatory framework for evolution of the human brain and cognition - in Blackmore's grandiose theory of memetics, the human brain evolved to host memes. So failure to provide any useful insights into the evolution of human cognition goes into the "con" side of the list.
2.)See above. The fact that no one has actually "sequenced" a meme doesn't mean that if it is to be a useful theory, we have to be able to make predictions and observe patterns caused by memes. Isn't that how science discovers unknown stuff, usually? By observing something happen, postulating what could be causing it, and then figuring out what the causal mechanism is? Just because you haven't detected the distant planet or the microscopic organism or subatomic particle on your science-o-scope, it doesn't mean you can't use it to make predictions and ask useful questions.
3. You discount the objection that memetics offers no useful way to trace species or lineages of memes as another way of saying "it's too complicated". Well, that's exactly the point, as Chris also explains in his comment. If memetics can't offer anything more precise than "influences", "borrowings" or "motifs" than its not an advance over other theories of cultural transmission.
Dave Ranning - "It is actually time for those wading in the shallow end of the pool to do a little research----" You are too funny! Lolz! Wait don't take off those water wings... arggh too late.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Oct 11, 2007 7:57:26 PM
Chris,
"Your dictionary definition essentially defines "meme" as a synonym for "idea," which is what I presented earlier as the standard to excel."
No, because you missed the important part: an idea "that spreads from person to person". It is the emphasis on replication that contrasts it with other theories. Some ideas don't get replicated, just like some molecules don't get replicated. (I shouldn't use the genetic analogy too much, because they are only loosely the same, but there are major points where they agree.)
"This is something the disciplines of linguistics, anthropology, primate ethology, psychology, and literacry criticism have been describing for generations."
But I think memetics takes a slightly different approach, that ideas are replicators. This provides a driving force for the change that the disciplines document.
I thought that I should point out that there's a difference between a meme and its physical correlate (presumably, particular patterns in the brain). Wikipedia explains this in the genetic setting: "The difference is: the molecular gene transcribes as a unit, and the evolutionary gene inherits as a unit." I don't know, has this caused confusion?
To answer some of your questions:
(1) "what constitutes a meme (and what doesn't)": See the definition again. (Hint: If an idea isn't replicated, then it's not a meme.)
(2) "by what mechanism it replicates itself": Human brains and their products (culture), mostly.
(3) "where do memes come from": I don't know what you're asking, but I'm guessing it'd be the same answer as the one to "where do ideas come from?" (which makes it very strange that you ask this question, since you think that memes and ideas are synonymous).
(4) "Most importantly, if our brains are all just passive environments for memes": They're certainly not passive, and our brains are certainly not "just" that.
"Finally it's amusing to watch you go through all the squirmy handwringing religious defenders usually resort to when assaulted by the New Atheists."
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Vicki,
"but the second part - use it to guide a full-fledged research program - has yet to materialize."
I agree. Proto-science.
One other comment: things are even more complicated, because both types of evolution--genetic and memetic--are occuring at the same time, working off each other. I don't think memetics is the sole (or necessarily an) explanation of the origins of language or our big brains, but I don't think any one thing is. There are plenty of advantages of these two inventions, and I'm sure several of them were actual drivers of their evolution. So I agree with your reply to (1)--which was me agreeing with Atran.
Posted by: anon | Oct 11, 2007 11:14:20 PM
anon, no, not "proto-science," merely "interesting idea, let's move on."
The points I lifted from Atran are an argument why memes will probably never do real scientific work. From the article:
"Although the relation of memes to genes is one of analogy, the relation is no more intended as a metaphor than was the Rutherford-Bohr analogy of the atom to the solar system at
the beginning of the last century. The meme-gene analogy itself is meant to function as a research program that will hopefully lead to a science of “memetics,” much as the atom-solar system analogy was briefly viewed by some scientists as a research program to help unify physical processes at the microscopic (e.g., electromagnetism) and macroscopic (e.g., gravity)
levels. The initial stage of memetics, then, is to specify whether and how the analogy between meme and gene holds up under testable scrutiny. If the analogy can be informatively sustained, then it must be able to reliably predict significant and surprising scientific discoveries about specific causal structures. If the analogy cannot be informatively sustained, as with the atom-
solar system analogy, then it must be eventually discarded as a scientific endeavor. In this latter eventuality, the analogy might still be maintained as a pedagogic device, which could introduce novices into a field that has developed, in part, by failed efforts to make the analogy informative. I lean to the latter eventuality. Nevertheless, I recognize the likelihood that such an original and enticing idea as the “meme” will endure with significantly altered content, or as an expedient trope that orients attention, like the etiological notion of “germ.” In any event, if the meme-concept were eventually to do scientific work, I think that it could not be as a replicator that copies information to the mind. It might work as an elicitor that draws out inferences and
information from the mind. "
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Oct 12, 2007 4:42:13 AM
I read all of Atran's article, and thought it had a lot of nice points. But I still think that memetic theory holds promise.
Posted by: anon | Oct 12, 2007 9:33:58 AM
anon - well without a real working definition for meme more precise than "idea" I don't see how that's possible. Sorry but the one you propose "ideas that spread from mind to mind" describes the domain -- culture -- rather than a way to organize what we already know about human culture and make predictions. The insights you describe memetics as offering - that certain ideas are better to think under certain existential conditions, that some individuals and methods for idea-spreading are more effective than others, are not new insights.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Oct 12, 2007 12:21:15 PM
What Vicki said.
"Spread" and "replicate" are not the same. The Mirriam-Webster dictionary says nothing of replication, let alone self-replication. So when you answer my question "What is (and is not) a meme," you'll have to do more than point to the dictionary. I already know what ideas are. No one in human history would find the concept of ideas "spreading" a novel, or even interesting, one.
What you have offered here so far is a completely speculative fairy story which isn't even dressed up as a scientific hypothesis. What are the boundaries and characteristics of a meme? By what mechanism do they replicate? By what instrumentality do they arise in the first place? No one has answered these questions meaningfully--not Dennett, Blackmore, Wilson, or Dawkins, or our own resident memetic scholar, Mr. Ranning.
A protoscience is a historical, pre-scientific discipline which required the emergence of the scientific method to develop into a modern science (e.g. Alchemy). There is no excuse for an intuitive speculation to remain as a protoscience for thirty years before anyone even attempts to put it into scientific language. As Vicki said, if you can't articulate what a meme might be scientifically, then move on.
You might remember the flak I took here for suggesting that morphic resonance was interesting. Not true, not scientific, just interesting. And yet Sheldrake's argument for morphic fields was exceedingly more rigorous and articulate than anything Blackmore or Dennett has put forward on the subject of memes, as your inability to say anyting concrete about them demonstrates.
So, again, it's amusing, the kinds of things rational, skeptical people will believe in, provided you use the right type of scientific-sounding language. Compare culture to particles of matter, and suddenly it's a topic of great excitement to people who believe the only "real" things can be described atomistically.
Posted by: C. Schoen | Oct 12, 2007 1:02:03 PM
Vicki,
"The insights you describe memetics as offering - that certain ideas are better to think under certain existential conditions, that some individuals and methods for idea-spreading are more effective than others, are not new insights."
Right. But I think it's a shift in emphasis, that the replication of ideas is a driving force. I think we probably have to agree to disagree here.
Chris,
""Spread" and "replicate" are not the same."
How are they different? An idea spreads from person A to person B, so the idea has replicated itself: it was first only in person A, now it is also in person B. It was first in one head, now it's in two heads. If you are uncomfortable with this way of talking, then you also have a problem with genes, because it's the same type of language.
"No one in human history would find the concept of ideas "spreading" a novel, or even interesting, one."
But this is the idea behind memetics. Sorry if you find it uninteresting. It's just like evolution, a real simple idea: organisms that don't produce offspring, don't produce offspring. But so much follows from that simple observation.
To answer more questions:
(5) "What are the boundaries and characteristics of a meme?" We could view it one was as some patterns in the brain (we don't know enough about memory, etc. to say for sure), but we could also view it as the idea itself, in whatever language we want to describe it.
(6) "By what mechanism do they replicate?" Through brains: the meme produces or influences its host's behavior, who then talks or writes books or cooks a meal, which another person witnesses or imitates, so that the meme then gets written into some patterns in that person's brain.
(7) "By what instrumentality do they arise in the first place?" Are you asking the origins of a single meme, or the whole collection of them? In the latter case, they probably came about via evolution, once our brains got big enough and connected enough to form and store general ideas--ideas which can be transmitted to others.
(8) "your inability to say anyting concrete about them." I'm no expert, so I can't describe all that's known, but there should be enough in (5-7) (if not my previous posts) to qualify as me saying something concrete.
"Sheldrake's argument for morphic fields was exceedingly more rigorous and articulate"
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"people who believe the only "real" things can be described atomistically."
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Posted by: anon | Oct 12, 2007 1:55:20 PM
Anon,
You've got a funny idea of the word "concrete."
About genes we can say where they are, what they are made of, what they do, and how they do it. I agree that there are different operational definitions of genes, and that a geneticist would have a different definition than an evolutionary biologist. But all these definitions strive to speak concretely about physical causative agents; e.g., a gene is a series of nucleotide base pairs on the chromosome, in the nucleus of each cell, which chemically interact with other molecules in the cell to create specific strands of protein.
Contrast this with your best attempt to say with specificity what a meme is:
An idea, or a pattern in the brain. This is like defining that a gene as "a pattern in the cell." It's not enough. To say that something is a "pattern," as opposed to a random or meaningless distribution, requires some explanation of what this pattern means to an organism. Back to genes: specific patterns mean specific proteins which (allegedly) aggregate into specific traits.
We're all aware that cognition involves neural activity. Nobody disputes this. Not even fundamentalist Christians, new-age bliss junkies, not even Mormons would argue that there is no correlation between neural activity and the subjective experience of cognition.
But this notion is perfectly consonant with both mimetic theory and criticism of that theory. Whether ideas make brains, as Dennett and Blackmore suggest, or brains make ideas, which is the conventional wisdom they are trying to overthrow, ideas still correlate to neural activities in brains.
The difference between spreading and replicating is that the former can be transitive or intransitive. Spreading--butter, grass seed or ideas--can be done by an agent. Replication, or more accurately self-replication, involves no such agent. It comes down to whether you believe we each have a "self" or not. You're welcome to believe we don't. But then I would argue you have just added to the number of empirically unconfirmed propositions you are purveying.
Posted by: C. Schoen | Oct 12, 2007 3:39:46 PM
Chris,
"An idea, or a pattern in the brain. This is like defining that a gene as "a pattern in the cell." It's not enough."
I agree, but this involves more knowledge of how the brain works--knowledge we don't yet have. It is analogous to Darwin describing evolution with no knowledge of the actual mechanism (genes) that stores the information. I think it's safe to bet that there is something there, some identifiable spatio-temporal pattern in the brain that corresponds to any given idea. But we don't know yet.
"Replication, or more accurately self-replication, involves no such agent."
A lot of your criticism seems to apply equally well to genetic theory (as spoken by an evolutionary biologist), so it's a bit unfair to only criticize memetics. For example,
"Most importantly, if our brains are all just passive environments for memes, then where do memes come from? ... If they come from minds, it makes it difficult to paint these same minds as mere passive media molded by memes, which is what m[e]metic theory requires to be sensible."
sounds to my ears like
"Most importantly, if our bodies are all just passive environments for genes, then where do genes come from? ... If they come from organisms, it makes it difficult to paint these same organisms as mere passive media molded by genes, which is what genetic theory requires to be sensible."
Genes don't have conscious desires, but we use this shorthand to make our explanations concise. Do you have a problem with the phrase "selfish gene"?
"It comes down to whether you believe we each have a "self" or not. You're welcome to believe we don't."
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Posted by: anon | Oct 12, 2007 4:40:17 PM
Actually I do, but that's a separate conversation.
Suffice it to say, though that a critical difference between genes and memes is that there is no subjective awareness (at least not that has been reported to us humans) of genes shaping phenotypes. Whereas we are patently aware of our ideas.
Dennett calls such awareness an illusion, but you do realize he considers us all to be specialized computers. To see the untenability of this, ask yourself how many computers you've respected, how many you have pitied, and how many you have wanted to take home to Mama.
Posted by: C. Schoen | Oct 12, 2007 4:54:00 PM
Memes aren't aware either, so I think you're confused. "We" are not our memes, in the same way that "we" are not our genes.
(Oh, are you talking about the "I" meme, Blackmore's "selfplex"? That's the only way that your comment makes any sense.)
Posted by: anon | Oct 12, 2007 6:12:23 PM
I continue to be impressed by your canny ability to grasp the trival from the jaws of the profound. If only these powers could be harnessed for the forces of goodness.
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Oct 12, 2007 9:14:11 PM
Okay, I've reread what you wrote and I think I might understand.
With memes, we can view them as (M1) the physical patterns in the brain (which we don't have details about now), or as (M2) what we refer to commonly as "ideas". The first is analogous to genes (G1), whereas the second is to their phenotypes (G2).
Many animals are conscious of (G2), just like we are of (M2). However, they are not aware of (G1) "shaping" (G2) (this is what I think your comment was saying), but neither are we of (M1) "shaping" (M2). Right?
Or are you saying something else? Help me out here, I'm only human.
And in any event: so what?
Posted by: anon | Oct 12, 2007 10:27:40 PM
I was saying something a little different. The analogy of memes to genes suffers from the fact that there is a conscious intermediary between one and not the other.
It may be a helpful metaphor to view ideas from the ideas' POV sometimes, but we don't want to take it too literally, lest we end up with the absurd notion of consciousness as merely passive witness to a cinematic unfolding of ideas infecting brains.
Ultimately we have to return to our own POV, consisting of interests, needs, passions, and preferences with which the ideas around us must interact.
Anything can be given a point of view. I ran across a Jaron Lanier quote yesterday to the effect of "Saying that we are genes' way of making more genes is no more or less valid than saying that we are shit's way of making more shit." What matters in life is making meaningful choices about what points of view to adopt and investigate. Why we would choose to view ourselves as the instruments of something (ideas) that we were responsible for creating is a bafflement to me.
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Oct 13, 2007 11:44:08 AM
I continue to be impressed by your canny ability to grasp the trival from the jaws of the profound.
In these busy times of sound bites, pre-digested information, ADD in the media and draconian speech (thought) codes, isn't that a good quality?
Let me say at the risk of sounding trivial in the face of the profound, why do we need "memes" when we have fear of death, alienation and solitude?
As for informed choice based on passion, interest, need and commitment (and goodwill?) I would love to believe that our lives are indeed driven by those values. Then I read something like this.
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | Oct 13, 2007 12:53:09 PM
The reason we look at it from this perspective is that things make a lot more sense, it adds a lot of explanatory power.
As for "laws" governing memes' behavior, I finally got around to reading an article posted here a few days ago:
"For the more mathematically inclined, this can be expressed as: 'The half-life of irregular verbs is proportional to the square root of their frequency.'"
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/071010/full/news.2007.152.html
Posted by: anon | Oct 13, 2007 1:40:00 PM
What a great link, Ruchira!
And, what are our choices really driven by? Long ago, I learned when in doubt to run my choices past the following seven motivators: fear; greed; vanity; pride; lust; envy; and, laziness. It would be an astonishing passion, a morally thrilling choice, that partook of none of the above.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Oct 13, 2007 2:04:35 PM
Elatia---
"fear; greed; vanity; pride; lust; envy; and, laziness"---
That is almost buddhist like--
along with the numbering system--
Even extended genotypes are expressed- a beaver can make a dam without ever being in the presence of another beaver to learn from. Birds make nests, having never been taught form their species.
A bit of history, for you scholars of religions thought.
Oct 13th, 1988 -- Shroud of Turin, alleged burial cloth of Jesus Christ, declared a fake. "Not a ghost of a chance," claim the experts.
Anastasio Cardinal Ballestrero, archbishop of Turin, announces the Shroud, revered by many as the cloth covering the body of Jesus after the crucifixion, dates only from the 13th century. It had first come to the attention of the Roman Catholic Church in the mid-14th century. Determination was made by radiocarbon dating. Ballestrero said the church never claimed the shroud was a holy relic, but because of the image on the cloth, it would continue to be regarded with veneration...Those Who Want to Believe are not considered crazy.
Yep, not crazy, just delusional--
A position of pride among religious people.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Oct 13, 2007 2:23:03 PM
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