Day 69
Here is an excerpted version of my honours thesis proposal. The thesis itself has yet to be written, this is basically a very short essay on what I intend to write for the upcoming, much longer essay. It is interesting, I assure you... the topic is interdisciplinary, and doesn't require much background at all:
Analyzing the Interrelationships between genes and memes
The general area of study under whose umbrella this essay falls is Memetics. Hypothesized originally by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, it is a theory of cultural evolution arguing that units of cultural information – memes – are analogous to genes, such that they can be taken scientifically as things which fall under Darwinistic laws of adaptation. Dawkins argued in favour of a position that the gene ought to be viewed at the unit of evolutionary selection (rather than individual creatures, groups of creatures, or species), and the same is said for the concept of the meme. The strength of the analogy as hotly debated; some arguing that that it is merely that, and as such might be an interesting viewpoint but with no scientific value.
The primary text that I will be responding to is an essay by Dan Sperber titled An Objection to the Memetic Approach to Culture. The this of his objection is simply that memes cannot legitimately be understood as replicators, and this fact seriously undermines the whole memetic project. The argument he makes is as follows:
Most of the time a meme is transmitted, we cannot meaningfully use ‘copying’ to explain precisely what is happening. It is more often the case that the transmission of a meme is in fact a transmission of a particular set of instructions, out of which the meme is, as Sperber has it, “re-created.”
The thought experiment used by Sperber is that in which a drawing of a 5-point star is “replicated” from one participant to another. A draws a star for B to recognize, and B draws the same star (perhaps not identical, but as Dawkins has it these small differences are not genuine ‘mutations,’ because the instructions are self-normalizing.)
Sperber analyzes this process more deeply, arguing that in order for this transmission to be successful, there has to be pre-existing knowledge on B’s part of what the intentions of A are when A is producing the first drawing. The only reason we see some inconsistencies as errors (such as a slightly jagged line in the star) rather than genuine parts of the whole is because of pre-existing knowledge and dispositions for beliefs. So, when the star is taught from A to B, the star as such is not being copied, and there cannot be considered a meme in the strong sense.
My project will analyze what I believe is Sperber’s underlying claim that memes can never have epistemic independence – that is – we cannot develop any kind of adequate picture of culture if we try to consider memes as “things in themselves.”
I intend for my thesis to be twofold. The first part will be a refutation of Sperber’s assertion that memes cannot adequately be understood as replicators. Second, I will argue that any given “kind” of cultural information may be more or less intertwined with genetic or biological evolutionary processes. That is, it can be said that there are degrees to which something (whether is be a religious belief, a tune, or any other bit of cultural information) can be understood as only a meme – “on top of”, as it were, our biological processes – or as something that contains within it aspects that also require some degree of non-memetic explanation.
I intend to introduce examples on what I believe to be on each ‘end’ of this hypothesized spectrum. The first is will be the example of cultural traditions, such as racist propaganda, that psychologists believe are derived from “in-group” and “out-group” behaviour. I argue that this is an example of something more closely linked to genetics and evolutionary psychological explanations.
My example from the other ‘end’ of the cultural spectrum will be that of the evolution of popular chess strategies over time. I’ve chosen this example because (a) there aren’t as of yet any universally “best” strategies, particularly in the opening of the game, for the number of possible move combinations is far beyond the reach of even the most power supercomputers and software, and (b) because, as I will argue, chess strategies are archetypal examples of memes whose transmission cannot be understood in any meaningful way by evolutionary psychological explanations.
Finally, space pending, I’d like to conclude with a brief analysis on what implications a heavily Darwinistic approach to culture might have on the notion of individual autonomy. If, by reducing behaviour to adaptationist explanation, and culture to adaptationist explanation – seemingly divorcing both from human volition – are we reducing the individual to a shell; a mere machine built up as a conveyance for selfish genes, as used as a conveyance for cultural replicators? There certainly (and ironically) may be a very strong distaste for the meme of memes, as it were, if such a conclusion follows in any deep sense.
Analyzing the Interrelationships between genes and memes
The general area of study under whose umbrella this essay falls is Memetics. Hypothesized originally by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, it is a theory of cultural evolution arguing that units of cultural information – memes – are analogous to genes, such that they can be taken scientifically as things which fall under Darwinistic laws of adaptation. Dawkins argued in favour of a position that the gene ought to be viewed at the unit of evolutionary selection (rather than individual creatures, groups of creatures, or species), and the same is said for the concept of the meme. The strength of the analogy as hotly debated; some arguing that that it is merely that, and as such might be an interesting viewpoint but with no scientific value.
The primary text that I will be responding to is an essay by Dan Sperber titled An Objection to the Memetic Approach to Culture. The this of his objection is simply that memes cannot legitimately be understood as replicators, and this fact seriously undermines the whole memetic project. The argument he makes is as follows:
Most of the time a meme is transmitted, we cannot meaningfully use ‘copying’ to explain precisely what is happening. It is more often the case that the transmission of a meme is in fact a transmission of a particular set of instructions, out of which the meme is, as Sperber has it, “re-created.”
The thought experiment used by Sperber is that in which a drawing of a 5-point star is “replicated” from one participant to another. A draws a star for B to recognize, and B draws the same star (perhaps not identical, but as Dawkins has it these small differences are not genuine ‘mutations,’ because the instructions are self-normalizing.)
Sperber analyzes this process more deeply, arguing that in order for this transmission to be successful, there has to be pre-existing knowledge on B’s part of what the intentions of A are when A is producing the first drawing. The only reason we see some inconsistencies as errors (such as a slightly jagged line in the star) rather than genuine parts of the whole is because of pre-existing knowledge and dispositions for beliefs. So, when the star is taught from A to B, the star as such is not being copied, and there cannot be considered a meme in the strong sense.
My project will analyze what I believe is Sperber’s underlying claim that memes can never have epistemic independence – that is – we cannot develop any kind of adequate picture of culture if we try to consider memes as “things in themselves.”
I intend for my thesis to be twofold. The first part will be a refutation of Sperber’s assertion that memes cannot adequately be understood as replicators. Second, I will argue that any given “kind” of cultural information may be more or less intertwined with genetic or biological evolutionary processes. That is, it can be said that there are degrees to which something (whether is be a religious belief, a tune, or any other bit of cultural information) can be understood as only a meme – “on top of”, as it were, our biological processes – or as something that contains within it aspects that also require some degree of non-memetic explanation.
I intend to introduce examples on what I believe to be on each ‘end’ of this hypothesized spectrum. The first is will be the example of cultural traditions, such as racist propaganda, that psychologists believe are derived from “in-group” and “out-group” behaviour. I argue that this is an example of something more closely linked to genetics and evolutionary psychological explanations.
My example from the other ‘end’ of the cultural spectrum will be that of the evolution of popular chess strategies over time. I’ve chosen this example because (a) there aren’t as of yet any universally “best” strategies, particularly in the opening of the game, for the number of possible move combinations is far beyond the reach of even the most power supercomputers and software, and (b) because, as I will argue, chess strategies are archetypal examples of memes whose transmission cannot be understood in any meaningful way by evolutionary psychological explanations.
Finally, space pending, I’d like to conclude with a brief analysis on what implications a heavily Darwinistic approach to culture might have on the notion of individual autonomy. If, by reducing behaviour to adaptationist explanation, and culture to adaptationist explanation – seemingly divorcing both from human volition – are we reducing the individual to a shell; a mere machine built up as a conveyance for selfish genes, as used as a conveyance for cultural replicators? There certainly (and ironically) may be a very strong distaste for the meme of memes, as it were, if such a conclusion follows in any deep sense.
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Dan Sperber