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Post by thegreypilgrim on Mar 2, 2009 2:14:35 GMT
I might be showing my ignorance here, but who cares. What is the status of this discipline? As in, how accepted is the meme hypothesis of cultural information transfer in the scientific community? Is it pseudo-science or an established theory? Replies are much appreciated from this admittedly clueless poster.
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Post by humphreyclarke on Mar 2, 2009 11:07:53 GMT
There a range of responses to it. As a metaphor it is redundant and not at all helpful. when I did historiography we would talk about 'ideas', 'ideologies' and 'climates of thought'. The virus metaphor does not all all describe how ideas spread through populations. Minds absorb ideas; and analyse and develop them by rational thought, they do not become infected. Nethertheless some do find it to be a good metaphor and it continues to be popular in discourse.
However, memetics was not intended to be a metaphor, it was supposed to have blossomed into a scientific programme and frankly it has become a laughing stock. Of course if you are committed to a reductionist monist philosophy of mind then its clear that ideas must have a material basis. In this view of the mind people do not have the free will to choose their beliefs so they must instead by infected by both rational and irrational memeplexes which cause the brain chemistry to change. Dennett and Susan Blackmore are the biggest popularisers of this model, although Dawkins appears to have backtracked somewhat. Is this in all way credible. No I don't think so, its incredibly silly pseudo-science?. If it were true it would effectively deny the existence of rational thought. Furthermore it is highly sinister because the implication is that you should be 'cured' of particularly infectious mind viruses; religion for example.
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