[The meme bits of the notes (see below) are on pages 61 and following.]
1. Meme definition
– Susan Blackmore defines a meme as “that which can be imitated”
– One problem with this is the definition’s looseness.
– Dan Dennet defines a meme as “a packet of cultural information”
– In this definition, memes spread like symbionts, invading the cultural host.
– Still doesn’t allow clear meme identification
– Both definitions perhaps capture too much – memes can be 4 note jingles, pop songs or albums.
– NB. Darwin developed theory of evolution without a clear idea of what a gene was.
2. Is Memetics a science?
– For Memetics to be a science it has to be able to generate empirically testable hypotheses
– Blackmore and Dennet’s definitions too broad to be able to do this usefully.
3. Are memes unique to humans?
– Both Dennett and Blackmore want to say yes
– Parrot Problem, i.e. how can a parrot copy what you say if memes are unique to humans?
4. How do memes replicate?
– Needs to be a distinction between the unit of replication (e.g. the song) and the machinery of replication (e.g. the mp3 burner etc)
– This is blurred in both Dennett and Blackmore’s accounts
– Blackmore posits that “memes are (perhaps blindly) responsible for the creation of everything from the
stylus to the scroll to the satellite”.
5. Memetics and the evolution
– Any precision in memetics comes from the evolutionary algorithm
– Memetics, though, hinges on artificial selection
– By doing this it loses much of its explanatory power.
Links:
MIT Notes (PDF): http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/lecture.pdf
Susan Blackmore: http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/