Criticism of Darwinian evolution (Newscientist 1999)

Susan Blackmore argues that the idea of "self" is an illusion, created by genes and "memes"—elements of culture or behaviour that are passed from person to person by imitation ("Meme, Myself, I", 13 March, p 40,) (Review, 20 March, p 43). Genes were made by the self-assembly of atoms and molecules, but Beethoven "himself" created his Fifth Symphony. Who was he imitating when he created it? The breadth of Beethoven's work tells us that it was his "self" that created the memes that Blackmore credits with their own creation.

Blackmore's definition of the self appears to be a self as defined by Hume: "a bundle of sensations tied together by a common history". This scientific self was refuted by Kant, who pointed out that there is a self in the Hume person which filters out unnecessary information from the virtually infinite amount of data that the person receives from the environment, and so avoids the massive number of decisions that a body would be required to make if it had to consider the total data available.

It is not difficult to imagine that this highly evolved ability to select, although originating from information sharing between atoms and molecules and having a physical basis, should find other expression, for example, in the creation of "memes for pleasure" or "memes useful for survival". Or memes with no purpose at all, but which persist because they have a high quality, a quality which can only be decided upon by the self. If memes are a creation of the self, then perhaps in this Kantian argument their purpose is to embody as much useful information in as small and as memorable a data set as possible.

If the whole of survival can be reduced to a memetic short-hand, then maybe it leaves time to play.

From issue 2180 of New Scientist magazine, 03 April 1999, page 54

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Challenge
• Darwinian
• evolution

[heloizyjhenifer]

Your idea of the self is a meme.