The Almighty Meme
You can think of a "meme" as an shared "big idea". The main thing about a meme is that it is shared between minds (2) - the more minds the better. The idea is that memes compete with each other and survive at the expense of their "hosts", who are "infected" with memes, such as (Dawkins' favorite example), religion. Late in life, Dawkins still pushes this idea and it still gains some traction. There is an attractive analogy between genes and memes, spelled out explicitly when Dawkins introduced the idea [1] and swallowed up by "Surfaces and Essences" as just another example of analogy making -- perhaps one that doesn't get to the "essence" of the phenomenon of "ideas".
In this blog, I will use the word "meme" sparingly to refer to basic powerful ideas such as the "Self", "Reality" and "God". It turns out that we don't get very far by thinking of these ideas as "viruses" as Dawkins still does. In every case, it is more productive to "drill down" to the analogies and categories, surfaces and essences, that underlie these ideas. In each case, we fund that a "meme" can and should be "unpacked" to examine how the associated words are used in real conversation and how these words are based on analogies.
Surfaces and Essences
It turns out that Dawkins' idea of the "meme" is not particularly useful, especially when compared to the concepts introduced by Hofstadter and Salter in "Surfaces and Essences". "Surfaces" presents a far more fundamental and insightful analysis of how ideas arise and what ideas are. After reading "Surfaces" (which doesn't mention Dawkins or memes), I decided to use the word "meme" much more sparingly. In particular, Dawkins' fundamental concept -- that memes fight for survival in the way genes do -- seems to be somewhat superficial if not totally wrong. Attempts to build on the original "meme" idea have not shed more light on how we think or believe.
Notes:
(1) The "Meme" was introduced by Richard Dawkins in 1989 in his book "The Selfish Gene". His original idea was that "Memes", are like "Genes", fighting for their own survival irrespective of the welfare of the "host" believer. The idea struggled to catch on partly due to the vagueness of the idea and the fuzziness of the comparison between "real" genes and "ideas". Since then, the idea of "genes" themselves has been made a lot more complex.
(2) The main task of this blog is to explore what we mean by "mind" -- in effect to construct a meme I call "M". "M" is itself a meme but only if it can be shared. "Surfaces" has required a sweeping revision of what I envision to be "M", since "Surfaces" provides a working definition of what an "idea" is (along with thousands of examples), whereas "meme" theory leaves this fundamental question untouched.
(3) A very important meme introduced and discussed in this blog is the "R" meme - the idea that there is a "real world" that exists independent of "mind". This meme is so common and so widely shared that our task would seem trivial except that R depends on what we mean by M - in fact, some "things" belong to M and others to R. This blog will hopefully get us thinking of this distinction.
(4) An important meme introduced here (hopefully one that can be shared) is that of T, the collection of memes that are definitely not "out there" in R but nonetheless are easily shared between human minds. The whole of pure mathematics belongs in T.
In this blog, I will use the word "meme" sparingly to refer to basic powerful ideas such as the "Self", "Reality" and "God". It turns out that we don't get very far by thinking of these ideas as "viruses" as Dawkins still does. In every case, it is more productive to "drill down" to the analogies and categories, surfaces and essences, that underlie these ideas. In each case, we fund that a "meme" can and should be "unpacked" to examine how the associated words are used in real conversation and how these words are based on analogies.
Surfaces and Essences
It turns out that Dawkins' idea of the "meme" is not particularly useful, especially when compared to the concepts introduced by Hofstadter and Salter in "Surfaces and Essences". "Surfaces" presents a far more fundamental and insightful analysis of how ideas arise and what ideas are. After reading "Surfaces" (which doesn't mention Dawkins or memes), I decided to use the word "meme" much more sparingly. In particular, Dawkins' fundamental concept -- that memes fight for survival in the way genes do -- seems to be somewhat superficial if not totally wrong. Attempts to build on the original "meme" idea have not shed more light on how we think or believe.
Notes:
(1) The "Meme" was introduced by Richard Dawkins in 1989 in his book "The Selfish Gene". His original idea was that "Memes", are like "Genes", fighting for their own survival irrespective of the welfare of the "host" believer. The idea struggled to catch on partly due to the vagueness of the idea and the fuzziness of the comparison between "real" genes and "ideas". Since then, the idea of "genes" themselves has been made a lot more complex.
(2) The main task of this blog is to explore what we mean by "mind" -- in effect to construct a meme I call "M". "M" is itself a meme but only if it can be shared. "Surfaces" has required a sweeping revision of what I envision to be "M", since "Surfaces" provides a working definition of what an "idea" is (along with thousands of examples), whereas "meme" theory leaves this fundamental question untouched.
(3) A very important meme introduced and discussed in this blog is the "R" meme - the idea that there is a "real world" that exists independent of "mind". This meme is so common and so widely shared that our task would seem trivial except that R depends on what we mean by M - in fact, some "things" belong to M and others to R. This blog will hopefully get us thinking of this distinction.
(4) An important meme introduced here (hopefully one that can be shared) is that of T, the collection of memes that are definitely not "out there" in R but nonetheless are easily shared between human minds. The whole of pure mathematics belongs in T.
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