Posted by:
Henry Bemis
(
)
Date: October 04, 2021 03:57PM
Sorry about the snark. For some reason RfM brings out the 'snarkiness' in me. Here are some additional comments:
First, Richard Dawkins first raised the "meme" theory as part of his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. Essentially, it was an attempt to introduce evolutionary theory into psychology, and particularly social psychology. For a time, "memetics" became somewhat popular, helped by Susan Blackmore's 1999 book, "The Meme Machine" with forward by . . . who else, Richard Dawkins. In his books, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and Consciousness Explained, Daniel Dennett ran with the meme program, and attempted to connect it with consciousness and neuroscience (the brain). Since then, this trio--Dawkins, Dennett, and Blackmore, have been essentially the sole champions of memetics. Notwithstanding, by now all three have backed off their original enthusiasm expounding the relationship between memes and genes.
The idea was that just as genes were "replicators" and thus units of natural selection in biology, "memes" were replicators, and units of selection in culture. The theory took off for a while, but eventually pretty much everyone realized that "memes" were too poorly defined to be identified as a replicator (among other problems); and thus the evolutionary program broke down completely. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, you could still find references to "memes" in the literature of social psychology, but they are all but gone now. Perhaps the most famous book on Evolutionary Psychology is the 1992 book by Barkow, Cosmides and Tooby, The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. "Memes" are not even mentioned at all, and this was in 1992!
What about memes with respect to religion? Well, Pascal Boyer in his 2001 book, Religion Explained, used the meme approach. And, of course, Dawkins' 2006 book The God Delusion, and Dennett's 2006, Breaking the Spell, both use watered-down versions of memetics. None of these books have the slightest merit as an explanation or understanding of religion (IMHO). And the use of bogus memetics makes them worse, not better.
Sometimes, it seems that memes are now disassociated with evolution and merely reference "ideas" or complex ideas that are passed on in culture, without direct evolutionary significance. But in my opinion, even this use is very misleading. Although it is true that religious ideas spread and thrive by their repetition, including indoctrination, this is a trivial point because all ideas spread in culture in that way. As such, if you want to criticize religious ideas (or any other ideas), fine, but labeling them "parasitic memes" is nothing more than a transparent and rhetorical value judgment, without philosophical or scientific significance. It has nothing to do with evolution of ideas, or the workings of the brain that is distinguishable from ideas generally. In short, it may be unfortunate that fundamentalist religion thrives, but it has nothing to do with biological evolution or evolutionary psychology. The same is true for the recent more expanded adoption of atheism. All such social dynamics are the result of complex social factors impinging on individual worldviews in complex ways.
Finally, here is a rather long quote that explains the problem with memes by philosopher of science, William C. Whimsatt:
"In biology, the genetics is straightforwardly combinatorial and relatively accessible, has a stable architecture through successive generations, and is traditionally (though increasingly problematically) treated as inherited through a single channel--the germ line. . . ."
"But for culture, the glass is reversed: (1) despite the common talk of "memes" there is no intra- or inter-organizational Mendelism for ideas, practices, norms, or any other of our artifacts, and (2) there is no "memome" : (a) no bolus of significant ideas transmitted at the start of life, and (b) no standard size and (c) no form for the cultural "memotype," and (d) no standard "memetic" units. (3) The means of transmission for memes are varied and baroque, involving multiple complementary and conflicting channels, which (4) are acquired and act sequentially throughout the development and life span of the individual. Moreover, unlike the biological case, (5) the transmission channels used for a given idea can change from on generation to the next. Worse still, (6) acquisition of specific ideas or practices modulate later receptivity to others, so (7) heredity and selection are interwoven throughout the periods of development and learning -- that is for humans, throughout virtually all of the life cycle."
In other words, the concept of "memes" has no value in any explanation of culture, including religious culture. I would quickly add that attempts to tie memes to neuroscience is of no help whatsoever because of the obvious disconnect between some particular neurological event in some random person, and the conscious idea, belief, or practice, that might arise or be affected by such an event. Moreover, even assuming a neurological event can be seen to correspond to some, say, religious belief, there is no objectivity that the same event--whatever that might mean--corresponds to a similar belief in someone else. Beliefs, religious or otherwise, simply cannot be objectively grounded in either 'memes' or neurological events. As such, beliefs across culture--including religious beliefs--cannot be so explained.