Genes and Memes

[Cain]

Most evolutionary psychologists, at least in my limited experience, are sympathetic to both sociobiology (inspired by Wilson) and memetics (inspired by Dawkins). But reading through Steven Pinker (_How the Mind Works_; _The Blank Slate_) and Robert Wright (_The Moral Animal_) the focus is clearly on the gene. I read all these books a little while ago, and hell, I don't think I remember either mentioning memes, so maybe these impressions exist only in my mind.

But I know for certain that Daniel Dennett incorporates both views into his grand theories on consciousness.

One example discussed in the Pinker books focuses on twins, especially twins separated at birth. He trots out the example of the two fire fighters who share all kinds of idiosyncracies down to wearing keychains on your belt and dipping toast in coffee each morning a particular way blah blah blah.

In the introduction to Susan Blackmore's _Meme Machines_, Dawkins recalls a philosophy student who had the habit of staring down for thirty seconds while pondering a thought before clearly expressing her ideas. Dawkins says he told this to collegues who immediately knew which student he was talking about. They went on to note that both of her parents were distinguished philosophers and had the same exact habit -- which THEY got from Wittgenstein!

Two different explanations for odd behaviors.

Memetics, from what I understand, sounds a lot like cultural determinism (which Pinker is at pains to eradicate).

The obvious middle-ground one could take might be, "Oh, well, genes lay the framework or ground rules, and memes operate within those constraints."

I dunno, I'm babbling. Can anyone help explain memes?

Dawkins uses the idea to undercut the power of genes in _The Selfish Gene_. At the same time though, Dawkins speculations on memes seem to undermine his once provocative (now orthodox) ideas on genes.

 

[Peter Soderqvist]

Genes and Determinism: An Interview with Richard Dawkins

Stangroom: But memes are physiological entities that have phenotypic effects?

Dawkins: Yes, I think that’s right. I wasn’t sufficiently clear and explicit about that originally. My colleague Juan Delius, who is a neurophysiologist, in an article in the Tinbergen Legacy memorial volume, was much clearer and actually stuck his neck out and said that a meme is a physiological entity which has phenotypic expression in the form of behaviour. But I think there are others who take an opposite view, who say that a meme is pure code, and it may reside in a printed page, or it may reside in a computer or a tape recorder, or in a brain.

I’m happy to lay out these views as interesting alternatives, but I’m not quite sure which of these two views we should adopt. I suppose, almost thinking aloud now, you could say we should be looking for the memetic equivalent of the following statement about a gene: a gene is primarily thought of as a DNA sequence that resides in a cell and which has readout in the form of phenotype, but if a molecular biologist comes along and decodes the gene, and writes it out as a sequence of ATCG, and prints it in a book, that book can then go on a library shelf and sit there for centuries

Stangroom: But that would not have the same phenotypic consequences...

Dawkins: Well it would if someone came back in a few centuries time and took the book off the shelf and transcribed it back into a living creature. It would have exactly the same phenotypic consequences. So I’ve translated the meme problem back into a gene problem, as is my wont, and you need to ask a biologist: is this stretch of ATCG which occupies three and a half pages in a book, a gene, or is it the instructions for making a gene if you put it back into real physiology.
http://www.philosophers.co.uk/portal_article.php?id=1

 

[Dymanic]

The obvious middle-ground one could take might be, "Oh, well, genes lay the framework or ground rules, and memes operate within those constraints."

Or, you might turn it around and say memes lay the framework or ground rules, and genes operate within those constraints. For example, say (hypothetically) that there is a gene that drives the desire to win approval from the group of which you are a member. Your actual behavior would likely then be very dependent on what types of behavior are considered acceptable by the group.

 

[Cain]

Or, you might turn it around and say memes lay the framework or ground rules, and genes operate within those constraints. For example, say (hypothetically) that there is a gene that drives the desire to win approval from the group of which you are a member. Your actual behavior would likely then be very dependent on what types of behavior are considered acceptable by the group.

I think your example fits into exactly what I said about the genes setting up the general framework. Framework is probably just a very, very poor choice of words on my part.

Recall the story about the King of Persia, who gathered together Greeks and Callatians. First, he asked the Callations what they do with their dead. Upon founding they eat them, the Greeks were horrified. Similarly, the Callatians were horrified to learn the Greeks incinerated their dead. But the underlying values -- a reverence for one's ancestors -- was shared in common, thus demonstrating the wise King's point.

Maybe my initial question is just silly (it's certainly dimly stated), or there's no answer.

Some memes certainly hinder the proliferation of our genes (Celibacy, for example).

I dunno, my understanding on all of this is very primitive.

Thanks for posting the interview with Dawkins, it helped.

 

[Peter Soderqvist]

Dawkins The Selfish Gene Chapter 11 Memes: the new replicators online
As soon as the primeval soup provided conditions in which molecules could make copies of themselves, the replicators themselves took over. For more than three thousand million years, DNA has been the only replicator worth talking about in the world. But it does not necessarily hold these monopoly rights for all time. Whenever conditions arise in which a new kind of replicator can make copies of itself, the new replicators will tend to take over, and start a new kind of evolution of their own.

Once this new evolution begins, it will in no necessary sense be subservient to the old. The old gene-selected evolution, by making brains, provided the `soup' in which the first memes arose. Once self-copying memes had arisen, their own, much faster, kind of evolution took off. We biologists have assimilated the idea of genetic evolution so deeply that we tend to forget that it is only one of many possible kinds of evolution.
http://www.rubinghscience.org/memetics/dawkinsmemes.html

This is a photo of a meme by the neurophysiologist Juan Delius
http://www.intro-online.de/memetik.html