Dennett on Memetics

By Wayne Brown
Richard Dawkins, the originator of the "meme" idea, hardly takes it seriously except as a rhetorical device to attack religion as a viral infection of the brain.

THE MEMETIC PERSPECTIVE

Dennett, on the other hand, takes the idea and runs with it. Here are some key talks on memes by Dennett. I note that Dennett has been promising for the last 4 years that he will soon come out with a book on memes, but we're still waiting. Dennett is a philosopher, not a scientist, so he understandably misunderstands what a "science" of memetics might look like. In fact, the word "memetics" sounds like "genetics", but it's really an extended analogy or a "meme" in its own right. It's a way of talking about culture that philosophers would be more inclined to call "Dennettism".

What Dennett winds up with is a "philosophy" of memetics, which is still interesting. It is certainly a powerful rhetorical device, but its pretensions to scientific validity are exposed by the observation that neither Dawkins or Dennett pose the questions a scientist must always ask: What if I'm wrong?

As is typical with philosophers, it's easy to show that Dennett himself is not a "Dennettist".  By 2013, he had more or less abandoned memes and switched his attack on organized religion to an approach that is grounded on the reasons people actually believe, rather than the "virus" of religion. Along with Dawkins' back-peddling on the meme idea, this abandons memes to the "lunatic fringe" of defenders such as Susan Blackmore, who explains all of human culture in the language of memetics and marries it to other area of expertise: Zen Buddhism.

Even so, along the way, Dennett has mined the meme meme to gain some fascinating insights, such as the observation that reality itself may have an "idea" that is in nobody's head. He uses the example of canoes that are "designed" simply by copying the ones that don't sink.

Dangerous Memes (TED)

Starting with the simple tale of an ant, philosopher Dan Dennett unleashes a devastating salvo of ideas, making a powerful case for the existence of memes — concepts that are literally alive.
Human ideas "in some sense" are subject to the "rules" of evolution.

  • Lancet flukes and ants. His analogy is to suicidal "surrender" in Islam. He keeps coming back to Islam, but also mentions truth, justice, ... "Infectious repetitious".
  • Dennett's own "bumper sticker" is to find something more important than you and dedicate your life to it".
  • Dennett comes back to the "no other species" idea. This is curious.
  • Dennett specifically disavows Dawkins and owns the "meme" idea. Wants the meme idea not to be misused or characterized. "Very easy to misuse".
  • Memes "like" viruses. What's a meme "made of"? It's an information packet with attitude. What's a word made of? Slips in the "information" analogy.
  • Talks about shakers & celebacy. Idea could have lived on in spite of not being passed on bilogically. Shakerism is a "sterilizing parasite".
  • Comparison between genocide and toxic ideas. It's not "our fault". We have immunity but others don't.
  • Telling the "good" memes from the "bad" memes is not the job of memetics. Memetics is morally neutral. Even so, he regards atheism as a public health measure ...

IN DEFENCE OF MEMETICS

Dennett's defense of "memetics"  here but almost all the links have gone bad. At least we can see from this that Dennett's goal is to make memetics "scientific" but the very idea of the "meme" is controversial. In fact, it seems to have been abandoned as a serious theory of culture by about 2010. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, the original defenses live on but it's easy to miss subsequent arguments that demolish the concept.

CULTURAL EVOLUTION, MEMES AND THE TROUBLE WITH DAN DENNETT

William L. Benzon's critical discussion of "memetics" is available here as a PDF. Benzon, like Bennett, is a philosopher, so their debate about whether memes are "scientific" tends to get buried in rhetoric. It seems that Dennett acknowledged the arguments here and actually threw in the towel on memes at this conference.

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