susan
New Member
Posts: 5
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Memes
Mar 27, 2012 5:52:34 GMT -5
Post by susan on Mar 27, 2012 5:52:34 GMT -5
Why is it that memes are associated with atheism rather than with theism? I am reading a Smithsonian magazine article called Have Meme, Will Travel by James Gleick. The article is just a little bit biased against religion if I read between the lines, but not terribly so. Evidently Richard Dawkins began the meme of the term meme. His smiling pic sort of guards the article. They do use "religious ideology" as an example of an infectious idea. And they do jump from "evolution of genes" to "evolution of ideas."
But the gist of the article as a whole makes me think dualism rather than materialism. "What would it mean for a replicator to exist without chemistry?" the article asks. Memes have "interests" says Gleick. "The meme is not the dancer but the dance" even sounds Aristotlian to me.
I decided that if this had been an idea coined by theists first, it would have fit that better. But atheists grabbed it and ran with it.
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Memes
Mar 28, 2012 20:31:08 GMT -5
Post by Syphax on Mar 28, 2012 20:31:08 GMT -5
Hmm, if I'm understanding your question, I would just answer by saying that, just as I think Aristotle makes the best sense of genes, then he would also make the best sense of memes (if they exist).
This is because if genes are really the "source" of the "information" that makes up our physical bodies, then we are implying final causality. And if memes are entities that provide the impetus or information that leads to us behaving or believing in such-and-such way, then it would also imply a kind of final causality.
I don't think a materialist really realizes the problem with final causality, however, and so they probably wouldn't think along those lines. I think there are bigger problems than that with meme theory anyway, though. I'm not exactly sure where a meme would be located in any real sense. You could, in theory, point to a gene. A meme? Not so much.
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Memes
Apr 3, 2012 19:44:10 GMT -5
Post by bwatson2 on Apr 3, 2012 19:44:10 GMT -5
I think it is history and the fact that Dawkins, when he first began using it, used it equivocally. The adjective 'infectious' show this sort of ambiguity: you could mean it purely descriptively (it moves from one thing to another easily) but you could also say it with sinister undertones. Dawkins originally never bothered to explain why religious memes are virulent, given that they necessarily work just like any other meme, but it started the tradition of treating memes in the religious case as insidious without really bothering to explain why.
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susan
New Member
Posts: 5
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Memes
Apr 4, 2012 16:26:13 GMT -5
Post by susan on Apr 4, 2012 16:26:13 GMT -5
Is it the assignment of final causeness to something merely within the natural chain that Aristotle would object to?
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Memes
Apr 4, 2012 22:42:45 GMT -5
Post by Syphax on Apr 4, 2012 22:42:45 GMT -5
Susan, Aristotle believed that all things had final causality in some way. So I think the thing he would object to most would be that there are any bits of matter in causal chains that DON'T have some kind of purpose, function, or goal as an irreducible feature.
Now this doesn't mean that all things are consciously striving towards some goal, but rather, everything is "directed at" a limited range of outcomes as a goal. An often-used example is that an acorn is "directed at" becoming an oak tree.
The metaphysics that many modern naturalists hold to states that things do not have final causality at all (not even people, minds, or brains). Dennett, for instance, just describes matter as meaningless bits of stuff - sort of like billiard balls that just bump into each other - and that any illusion of "goal-directedness" or even separate objects are really an illusion caused by interactions at the lowest level (electrons, protons, neutrons, photons, etc.).
However, if you look at the idea of genes (or even memes) as being bits of matter that contain "information" that "directs" an organism to develop in a certain way, and that the fitness of an organism to survive in the wild depends on how suited these features are to the environment, you're talking about final (and formal) causality all throughout. If final causality is an illusion, so is fitness, information, or goal-directedness.
I hope that is correct and makes sense.
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