(1 of 3) Richard Dawkins' Theory of Memes, Innate Knowledge and Abstract Entities.

A brief exposition and criticism of Richard Dawkins' theory of memes. Dawkins wants a materialist account of culture and its transmission. I argue that the theory of memes breaks down when applied to abstract entities like theories, problems, arguments. However, these abstract entities are essential for understanding and understanding is crucial for cultural transmission. If meme theory were true, then culture would consist of atomic units that get copied from person to person. But people have their own network of assumptions and are logical. Therefore, they don't just copy what they receive from others. They work out new ideas as logical consequences of the memes atoms they encounter plus their own assumptions. The result in terms of what they go on to say and write is often quite different from the memes fed to them. Dawkins has suggested that all he needs in terms of innate systems is a generalized disposition to copy. However, some of the assumptions people have are innate and so a mere disposition to copy memes cannot do all the work in explaining culture. To understand culture, one needs:
1. Innate cognitive structures, which includes
a. Assumptions about the world
b. An ability and disposition to reason logically
2. Allow abstract entities to do some work.

My criticism draws on my forthcoming book The Myth of the Closed Mind and my article:
"Dawkins and Mind Viruses: Memes, Rationality and Evolution." Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems. (1994) Vol. 17. No. 3. pp. 243 286.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Richard Dawkins
• Theory of Memes
• cultural transmission
• heritage
• memes
• innate knowledge

[Susanne023]

The Iliad and the Odyssey are perfect examples of how entire books can be pasted down orally for hundreds of years.

[NaiveRealist]

@Susanne023

@Susanne023

Thanks Susanne023,

I'll use those examples in class. The Sumerian epic poem Gilgamesh also comes to mind. But we know about this from cuneiform texts. But before it was committed to text, it was transmitted by oral tradition. Given that oral transmission introduces more mutations than textual transmission, one wonders how many versions grew and spread before the textual version became dominant because (as Dawkins would say) the textual meme has greater longevity.

[Skoda130]

The theory of memes is nice, but not scientific. What is a "meme"?

[Happyascanbe1]

I am not sure if this was a false analogy or attacking a straw man. Probably both. Anyways, you have given a single random idea and it's no surprise at all that it's signal perished shortly after. That's nothing like mme theory. In order to model the meme theory you must repeat this game with hundreds of competing ideas and you'll discover eventually that many would in fact catch on in a rather HiFi fashion.

[Thimbledunk]

@somethinguseful100 Actually, Dawkins calls memes a unit of cultural transmission. That first statement on the meaning of memes contains all the flaws which then became the critical failure of meme theory - i.e. it's a fudge, made by someone with poor understanding of social science. He wants memes to be both units and the means of their own transmission, much as genes might be. Can you think of any ways in which that might not be possible in culture? That is, before you call Dawkins brilliant.

[somethinguseful100]

Memes are mentioned together with culture in "the selfish gene" but just to try to give a description on how culture might be working. Memes by themselves have nothing to do with culture. Maxwell coined the "bit" and a meme is an undetermined number of bits that give a more detailed description of "a" information in a coded system.

Dawkins brilliantly describes the problem of identifying what do we inherit with the genes and what from the memes. The two go together.