> Researchers have observed what they term a "compelling" change in whale
> songs and often times we can see more clearly in other species our own
> cognition traits which have been covered over in complexity. Is a whale
> song to be considered a meme?
I rather think that depends upon what you define a meme to be, as the term
seems to me to possess a somewhat diffuse disposition. I often hear the term
used to refer to any number of concepts. In 'The Selfish Gene' defines a
meme as follows: " a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.
. . . . Examples of memes are tunes." In response to this Daniel Dennett in
'Memes and the Exploitation of Imagination' also acknowledges that music
capable of replicating itself can be categorised as memetic. For me, it is
important to note that Dennett sees memetics as intrinsic to the evolution
of ideas ' A scholar is just a library's way of making another library,' and
sees memetics as a more rigorous mechanism to understand that. With these
definitions, memetics would be wholly applicable to the context you have
identified.However, in Dawkin's essay 'Viruses of the Mind' Dawkins goes
much further to note two characteristics of the viral dissemination of
memetic units:
"1. The patient typically finds himself impelled by some deep, inner
conviction that something is true, or right, or virtuous: a conviction that
doesn't seem to owe anything to evidence or reason, but which, nevertheless,
he feels as totally compelling and convincing. We doctors refer to such a
belief as ``faith.''
2. Patients typically make a positive virtue of faith's being strong and
unshakable, in spite of not being based upon evidence. Indeed, they may fell
that the less evidence there is, the more virtuous the belief."
In this sense, the song would perhaps only qualify as a 'weak' meme. Where
Dennett appears to propose no exemptions from memetic evolution, Dawkins
suggests that memetics has special relevance to the propagation of ideas
that are without rational foundation 'behavior that owes more to
epidemiology than to rational choice.' By contrast, I think I would argeu
that a rational meme could be propagated in the same manner as an irrational
meme, although the means of transmission would have little to do with
rationality. The following quote from Dennett does much to clarify the
divergence of viewpoint here:
" Dawkins ends The Selfish Gene with a passage that many of his critics must
not have read:
We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary,
the selfish memes of our indoctrination. . . . We are built as gene machines
and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our
creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish
replicators. (p.215.)
In distancing himself thus forcefully from the oversimplifications of pop
sociobiology, he somewhat overstates his case. This "we" that transcends not
only its genetic creators but also its memetic creators is, I have just
claimed, a myth. Dawkins himself seems to acknowledge this in his later
work. In The Extended Phenotype, Dawkins argues for the biological
perspective that recognizes the beaver's dam, the spider's web, the bird's
nest as not merely products of the phenotype--the individual organism
considered as a functional whole--but parts of the phenotype, on a par with
the beaver's teeth, the spider's legs, the bird's wing."
To my mind, this is where memetics has considerable difficulty - becoming a
victim of CP Snow's two cultures. It is an interesting perspective on the
evolution of ideas (as Dennett notes) and on certain sociological mechanisms
(for example, in the same way that many sociologists see gossip as an
important element in social interaction, and where in modern more
inidividualistic societies this need is fulfilled by the soap opera,
memetics is a useful way to note how communication may take place in
differing environments*) but perhaps can also be used as a way to denigrate
popular culture (and indeed, culture in general).
*with obvious relevance to the whales, to return to the original point.
> Still, in no way should patterns of value be looked at as merely an
illusion either.
> Reality is composed of patterns of values, and that's all there is,
> except for undefined Dynamic Quality.
I agree wholeheartedly.
> I still sense discordance between the MOQ and memetic theory in general
> and welcome any comments anyone might have.
I think I would argue that the discordance lies in the dichotomy between
reason and 'un-reason' that appears to have infected memetics.
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