Reconsidering The Meme's Eye Point Of View

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In his recent From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Daniel Dennett presents a comprehensive defense of memes as a tool for explaining the evolution of culture and minds. There he makes the case for memes via showing how words fit the bill for a paradigmatic and pervasive instance. Dennett also addresses each of the major objections to memes, clearing up common confusions about them, and attempts to allay worries about competition with other tools of the social sciences. How successful is Dennett's defense? The proposed symposium brings together four scholars to assess and to consider the prospects for memes going forward. Dan Sperber is a prominent theorist of cultural development and known critic of memes whom Dennett addresses. Cristina Moya specializes in human adaptability to culturally structured environments and will address the way human insight affects how memes can influence culture. Rosa Cao is a philosopher of biology and the brain sciences who will address the question of meme reproduction. Bryce Huebner is a philosopher of mind and the social sciences who will defend the explanatory power of appealing to memes in accounting for the spread of racialized code-words and slurs.

Social Science Symposium

02 Nov 2018 09:00 AM - 11:45 AM(America/Los_Angeles)

Venue : Cirrus (35th Floor Pike Street Tower)

20181102T0900 20181102T1145 America/Los_Angeles Reconsidering the Meme's Eye Point of View In his recent From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Daniel Dennett presents a comprehensive defense of memes as a tool for explaining the evolution of culture and minds. There he makes the case for memes via showing how words fit the bill for a paradigmatic and pervasive instance. Dennett also addresses each of the major objections to memes, clearing up common confusions about them, and attempts to allay worries about competition with other tools of the social sciences. How successful is Dennett's defense? The proposed symposium brings together four scholars to assess and to consider the prospects for memes going forward. Dan Sperber is a prominent theorist of cultural development and known critic of memes whom Dennett addresses. Cristina Moya specializes in human adaptability to culturally structured environments and will address the way human insight affects how memes can influence culture. Rosa Cao is a philosopher of biology and the brain sciences who will address the question of meme reproduction. Bryce Huebner is a philosopher of mind and the social sciences who will defend the explanatory power of appealing to memes in accounting for the spread of racialized code-words and slurs. Cirrus (35th Floor Pike Street Tower) PSA2018: The 26th Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association office@philsci.org

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Presentations

Memetic Reproduction

Philosophy of Science 09:00 AM - 09:30 AM (America/Los_Angeles) 2018/11/02 16:00:00 UTC - 2018/11/02 16:30:00 UTC

Rosa Cao (Stanford University)
As informational entities, memes are not bound to any particular physical expression or specific causal mechanisms of interaction. Nonetheless, in order to participate in evolutionary explanations, they must have the right characteristics to be subject to Darwinian processes. Critics have worried about the problem of memetic reproduction in particular. Cultural inheritance cannot be so permissive that any new occurrence of a meme corresponds to a reproduction event, but it's often not clear how to distinguish reproduction from other forms of re-occurrence. I will discuss some problem cases, and then consider options for constraining the notion of memetic reproduction.

Presenters Co-Authors

Memes or Cultural Attractors?

Philosophy of Science 09:30 AM - 10:00 AM (America/Los_Angeles) 2018/11/02 16:30:00 UTC - 2018/11/02 17:00:00 UTC

Dan Sperber (Central European University), Mathieu Charbonneau (Central European University)
While the word "meme" has become extremely popular, Dawkins' actual idea of a meme has had little scientific success. Dennett stand on his own in relying heavily on the idea of a meme to pursue several important philosophical goals. I will argue that the idea of a "cultural attractor," which is playing a more and more important role in the study of cultural evolution, preserves what is valuable in the idea of a meme, gives a rightful place to psychological and ecological factors or cultural success, and would provide Dennett with better scientific foundations to pursue his philosophical agenda.

Presenters

Co-Authors

When is Comprehension Useful in Cultural Evolution?

Philosophy of Science 10:15 AM - 10:45 AM (America/Los_Angeles) 2018/11/02 17:15:00 UTC - 2018/11/02 17:45:00 UTC

Cristina Moya (University Of California, Davis)
As Dennett asserts, culturally-evolved tools were necessary for understanding the reasons for designs. However, there are many reasons to be skeptical of a monotonic increase in comprehension over time. Humans often faithfully imitate (without comprehension) more than chimpanzees do. Technological and institutional complexity, and specialization have generally increased over time, making accurate causal understandings more difficult for individuals. Furthermore, inaccurate causal models (e.g. nationalism, supernatural beliefs) may serve certain functions just as well as, or better than, accurate ones. A functionalist research program on the benefits of comprehending, design production awaits a fuller integration of human motivations into memetics.

Presenters

The Political Significance of Memetic Mutations

Philosophy of Science 10:45 AM - 11:15 AM (America/Los_Angeles) 2018/11/02 17:45:00 UTC - 2018/11/02 18:15:00 UTC

Bryce Huebner (Georgetown University)
In this talk, I will argue that a memetic perspective offers interesting insights about the forms of moral licensing that commonly emerge in political systems. I will focus on the way that racialized codewords, slurs, and other nearby phenomena can rapidly propagate through a community under the right political conditions. I will also argue that few such patterns stabilize or persist; and I will show how a memetic perspective can explain the role of the cultural factors that enhance and suppress patterns initial of variation, in ways that can yield stable population-level phenomena.

Presenters

The Utility of the Meme Perspective

Philosophy of Science 11:15 AM - 11:45 AM (America/Los_Angeles) 2018/11/02 18:15:00 UTC - 2018/11/02 18:45:00 UTC

Daniel Dennett (Tufts University)
At least to some degree the evolution of culture is governed by a Darwinian process of natural selection; the replicating entities are memes. Many features of culture are excellently designed to serve various purposes, but are not the result of human intelligent design. Memes should be seen to have their own fitness, only indirectly related to the fitness of their hosts, just like viruses and other symbionts. Human culture could not have arisen suddenly, a hopeful monster created with foresight, but must have evolved through a gradual process of refinement of largely unwitting early steps.

Presenters

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