A closer look at demonstration

[gary_s]

Mitch can knock Dawkins and meme theory if he wants. It certainly doesn't mean either are flawed just because he disagrees. Mitch doesn't know everything. It's just his opinion.

[gary_s]

So don't let this reductionist rhetoric pull the wool over your eyes to say that these memes are like some kind of virus taking control of peoples lives away from them which is just as wrong as the idea that the genes are in charge when it comes to biological organisms. Saying that memes are involved really says absolutely NOTHING other than the fact that human communication media gives us the means to pass on information to the next generation in way that is completely different and apart from the biological one that uses DNA.

I don't contend that memes are a "virus" or that they are "taking control of peoples lives". Memes are ideas that find purchase in people's minds. Someone had to be the originator of the idea that a king is chosen by god to rule over his people. It's clear from what we know of history that nothing about monarchies is absolute. Monarchies have been overthrown all through history. But monarchies have also survived vast amounts of time. People don't always rebel against monarchies; they just as often choose to value them and see them as a vital part of their culture, country and even religion. This is a meme. One person who rebels against a king doesn't get very far, but when his ideas of liberty catch hold, people suddenly become discontented with the idea of a monarchy and though it may take decades for this idea to blossom into full rebellion, it does continue to survive in their minds and even evolve. I don't pretend to believe that memes have any volition of their own. But it's preposterous to say that it isn't significant in the minds of those who hold it. Remove this idea and those same people would behave much differently. Black people put up with second class citizenship for decades in America until a movement of ideas began that move more and more people, black and white, to change the real landscape to match the ideas they had in their head. They certainly didn't like the way they lived, but they also didn't believe that they could do much about it when actually they had the power all along, just not the spark to ignite change. That meme that began wherever and became powerful in the 50's was the spark.

And BTW, memes existed long before communication media existed. So long as humans can communicate, memes exist.

[Keep The Reason]

...just like Dawkins (sic) absurd attribution of selfishness to genes and the idea that living things do everything that they do because of what genes "want".

Do you seriously not understand metaphor?

Living things do what they do because of what living organisms want and value...

Bacteria have wants and values? Corn has wants and values?

...NOT because DNA molecules have any wants or values in of themselves. Genes are just PART of a whole living process and that is what this analogy of memes to genes really indicate, which is that when it comes to the human mind, we have a living process going on quite apart from that of the biological one.

I have brown hair and hazel eyes because I want and value those traits, and NOT because of my DNA?

Perhaps you don't understand much about either genetics or memes... just a thought...

Jim

I am astonished that mitch has so severely misinterpreted Dawkins. It's true Dawkins himself regrets the term "selfish" because it led to all sorts of blinkered misunderstandings but it's important to note that those misunderstandings came primarily from people who had a agenda to thwart evolution in favor of creaitonism (and later, ID). That mitch perpetuates this view is a little bit astonishing because he should not be in that category, given other things he's said.

So now, in the scope of a mere 15 or so hours, mitch reveals a surprising bigotry against the South, and a creationist mindset regarding Dawkins.

[OzAnt]

Mitch,

I'm particularly puzzled as to why you're seeing it as:

The problem with it is its bogus indulgence in reductionism

That's a possible way to look at it I guess. But I think the better way to look at it is simply as: it's what humans do. We personify stuff. For instance, if I say my computer misbehaved, I'm not suggesting that my computer failed to follow its programming for a period of time because it got distracted or because it got annoyed with me, etc. I'm simply saying that the nett result of what I just experienced is akin to what I'd equate to having experienced if my computer was human. As I see it, simplistically speaking, all that memes are representing are the personification of ideas. So we breath a bit of life into the concept "ideas", Mitch. Doesn't mean we're actually giving 'em life (according to the definition of life) by any stretch of the imagination. And if doing that might result in us better understanding them, well that's awesome, in my opinion.

Incidentally, if you understand evolution (and I think you do) and you aren't dismissive of it (and I think you aren't), a good case can be made that you've just personified it when you say,

Living things do what they do because of what living organisms want and value

Ant

[gary_s]

I went back and re-read over many posts here. I think this is the real turning point where Mitch began to drag down the conversation. He claims to have made it clear from the start that he had no problem with yuri's claim in a limited sense so long as it was not applied universally. Well, I agree, he did make such a statement early on, but so did I. I never argued Yuri's idea was universal and made it very clear that I was talking about people I knew, so why does Mitch have difficulty translating and reading posts as they are and not attacking others for reasons that don't even exist? It's because he doesn't take the time to clarify and understand. He's very quick to judge and throw out insults and this is a real problem and the point that I've made here numerous times. Mitch is essentially agreeing that Yuri could be correct in a limited sense, but has already invested significant time in attacking me for arguing that Yuri is correct 100% of the time.

THAT was the WHOLE point!!!! I already said that the reason Yuri gives may be true of some theists, just as the reason Rian gives may be true of some atheists. But they are absolutely and demonstrably wrong as universal statements. That is what the term "generalization" refers to.

Then you jumped to the wrong conclusions because I have never claimed it to be universal.

Huh?!? Who the hell has been talking about any claim of YOURS???? We were talking about what Yuri said and what Rian said. Criminy I made it clear in the very first post that what was wrong was that both were talking something that may be true of some people and making universal claims out of them.

I have very little experience with atheists who fit Rian's characterization because I don't know any. If they are out there, I haven't met them. But there are plenty of Christians who fit Yuri's characterization because I do know them.

ditto. AS I have already explained, I don't know any "christians" who fit Yuri's characterization. NONE! As for those who fit Rian's characterization, yes I have met some, but I haven't really been a part of the scene where you would expect to know many.

After this post the discussion descended into insults, straw men and exaggerations by Mitch, all attacking my character.

[mitchellmckain]

Living things do what they do because of what living organisms want and value...

Bacteria have wants and values? Corn has wants and values?

Yes they most certainly do.

I completely reject imagination of men that theirs are the only wants and values. It is a self centeredness that greatly limits human capacity for awareness and understanding of other living things.

...NOT because DNA molecules have any wants or values in of themselves. Genes are just PART of a whole living process and that is what this analogy of memes to genes really indicate, which is that when it comes to the human mind, we have a living process going on quite apart from that of the biological one.

I have brown hair and hazel eyes because I want and value those traits, and NOT because of my DNA?

That is certainly not what I said.

What you are responsible for greatly depends on your outlook in life. What is it that defines YOU? Do your wants and values have any impact on your existence? Do you in fact make any choices for which you are actually responsible? Are you in fact really anything at all or just a delusion arising in the operations of mechanical laws and random events?

Where do you have your identity? Are you a biolgical organism or something else? Now I believe that the biological organism that I call my body is just one layer in an identity that extend outward to the entire earth and perhaps even beyond. I cannot live with out the earth with its gravity, air, water and the sunlight it receives. These are all a part of the system of energy flow which my life is also a part of. Likewise I depend on this collection chemical reactions that is my body and without it I cannot live, but beneath these outer layers of my identity is a self that is neither a planet nor a biological organism but a mind. The mind is a living organism in its own right and the beginning of its choices and awareness is certainly different than either the biology or the planet.

Now if your identity is the biological organism then why limit the choices for which you are responsible to the operation of your mind alone? The biological process is not a mechanical one with a singular outcome any more than the operation of the mind, but rather one that is filled with endless divergences and possibilities. And thus if a biological organism is truly what you are then why should you not be considered responsible for those choices as well? Your DNA is a device for passing information down to the next generation and it is why your life was not one that had to start from scratch figuring out everything for yourself. Eyes and hair are a product of millions of years of an evolutionary learning process, athough air and eye color variations seem to be a product of sexual selection in one small sector of the human population with an unballanced operational sex ratio, probably only in the last 10,000 to 25,000 years.

Perhaps you don't understand much about either genetics or memes... just a thought...

There is much that scientists don't understand about these things, and they know it. So perhaps you just don't understand them any where near as much as you think you do.

Oh.... was that an insult? Or was what you said an insult? Are you going to try to redirect the discussion to such a pointless debate too? If you expect me to overlook your innuendos and be civil, then please overlook anything that you decide must be some kind of innuendo about you and show me in your own behavior what "civility" you expect. Sound reasonable? I would have though this to be obvious but it is apparent that this isn't quite so obvious to some people.

[Keep The Reason]

Living things do what they do because of what living organisms want and value...

Bacteria have wants and values? Corn has wants and values?

Yes they most certainly do.

I completely reject imagination of men that theirs are the only wants and values. It is a self centeredness that greatly limits human capacity for awareness and understanding of other living things.

?????

And you chide Dawkins for using the word "selfish" in "The Selfish Gene"?

I suppose it's not PC to say that someone who states that corn and bacteria has wants and values (without any brains by the way) is delusional but...

Mitch? You're delusional.

[Keep The Reason]

Where do you have your identity? Are you a biolgical organism or something else? Now I believe that the biological organism that I call my body is just one layer in an identity that extend outward to the entire earth and perhaps even beyond. I cannot live with out the earth with its gravity, air, water and the sunlight it receives. These are all a part of the system of energy flow which my life is also a part of. Likewise I depend on this collection chemical reactions that is my body and without it I cannot live, but beneath these outer layers of my identity is a self that is neither a planet nor a biological organism but a mind. The mind is a living organism in its own right and the beginning of its choices and awareness is certainly different than either the biology or the planet.

Nice. The Gospel according to Yoda.

[Moonwood the Hare]

Those who study modern psychology will probably spot my sources here. I'm not sure what Mitch is getting at but if we treat human acts of valuing as rising from a totality of organismic processes, that is to say an organism seeks those things that enhance it then there is a continuity between human acts of valuing and the acts of less complex organisms which do not have a conscious self. The difference then, once you have a conscious self, is that this can acquire wants though a process of introjection from its social world which may be at odds with the wants of the total organism. When we look at living things teleologically we can as Dawkins does look at that from a genetic perspective but we can also with equal validity look at it from an organismic perspective and Dawkins has admitted that both perspectives are equally valid and that science cannot decide between them. For many purposes an organismic perspective is more useful; very few human problems have useful solutions from a genetic perspective.

[mitchellmckain]

Those who study modern psychology will probably spot my sources here. I'm not sure what Mitch is getting at but if we treat human acts of valuing as rising from a totality of organismic processes, that is to say an organism seeks those things that enhance it then there is a continuity between human acts of valuing and the acts of less complex organisms which do not have a conscious self. The difference then, once you have a conscious self, is that this can acquire wants though a process of introjection from its social world which may be at odds with the wants of the total organism. When we look at living things teleologically we can as Dawkins does look at that from a genetic perspective but we can also with equal validity look at it from an organismic perspective and Dawkins has admitted that both perspectives are equally valid and that science cannot decide between them. For many purposes an organismic perspective is more useful; very few human problems have useful solutions from a genetic perspective.

What I am getting at is that inanimate objects (whether DNA molecules or genes) do not have wants and desires -- only living things have these. Even this talk of a "genetic perspective" cannot change this. Genes have no meaning apart from the living process in which they function. They are like words, which in isolation are just a series of sound (vibrations in the air) and they only have meaning in the context of the human community which uses them to communicate things. Thus there is no meaningful "genetic perspective" outside the orgasmic context.

To be sure this does not mean genes are of no importance anymore than the words we use are of no importance. The impact on human civilization by the words we use can be enormous. They affect how we think and thus how we behave. But that doesn't mean that it is all about them because it isn't. We are not the means to their end. They are the means to our end. Consider congenital problems? Do we simply let the genes, "have their way" because it is all about them, OR do we find ways around them because it is what we want that matters?

[Moonwood the Hare]

I was in part thinking of this:

Now they [the genes] swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence.

Now they are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence.

You are saying Dawkins ideas here is nonsense but Noble's makes some sense. I am suggesting that any ascription of purpose is a matter of perspective. A human ego may have purposes at odds with the organism of which it is a part. Genes may have purposes in the sense of what Dawkins would call a utility function. Society make have purposes which differ from any of these.

[mitchellmckain]

I was in part thinking of this:

Now they [the genes] swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence.

Now they are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence.

You are saying Dawkins ideas here is nonsense but Noble's makes some sense. I am suggesting that any ascription of purpose is a matter of perspective. A human ego may have purposes at odds with the organism of which it is a part. Genes may have purposes in the sense of what Dawkins would call a utility function. Society make have purposes which differ from any of these.

Better but the fact is that genes don't communicate with things. They are the means by which living things communicate to future generations. It would be like saying words communicate with other cities using printing presses. It is nonsense.

The meaning doesn't even actually reside in the words themself. The meaning is in we who use them and genes are no different.

[Moonwood the Hare]

Before we take this further I would like to know how the people who objected to your critique of Dawkins are responding. They have said Dawkins was simply using a metaphor when he spoke of the selfish gene. That to me is not the same as saying it can be helpful to look at the world in this way. If there is a metaphor it can be cashed in and explained in other ways and that raises the question of what he really meant. A perspective it seems to me cannot be cashed in because it gives a kind of interpretative framework. So let's see if anyone else responds. Can anyone explain in a non metaphorical way what Dawkins meant when he made the above claim from a genes eye view? And can Noble's metaphor also be cashed in and if so can we see one view or still two contrasting ones?

[Keep The Reason]

Sure:

The Selfish Gene is a book on evolution by Richard Dawkins, published in 1976. It builds upon the principal theory of George C. Williams's first book Adaptation and Natural Selection. Dawkins coined the term "selfish gene" as a way of expressing the gene-centred view of evolution as opposed to the views focused on the organism and the group. From the gene-centred view follows that the more two individuals are genetically related, the more sense (at the level of the genes) it makes for them to behave selflessly with each other. Therefore the concept is especially good at explaining many forms of altruism, regardless of a common misuse of the term along the lines of a selfishness gene.

An organism is expected to evolve to maximize its inclusive fitness—the number of copies of its genes passed on globally (rather than by a particular individual). As a result, populations will tend towards an evolutionarily stable strategy. The book also coins the term meme for a unit of human cultural evolution analogous to the gene, suggesting that such "selfish" replication may also model human culture, in a different sense. Memetics has become the subject of many studies since the publication of the book.

In the foreword to the book's 30th-anniversary edition, Dawkins said he "can readily see that [the book's title] might give an inadequate impression of its contents" and in retrospect thinks he should have taken Tom Maschler's advice and called the book The Immortal Gene.[1]

Also:

In describing genes as being "selfish", the author does not intend (as he states unequivocally in the work) to imply that they are driven by any motives or will—merely that their effects can be accurately described as if they were. The contention is that the genes that get passed on are the ones whose consequences serve their own implicit interests (to continue being replicated), not necessarily those of the organism, much less any larger level.

This view explains altruism at the individual level in nature, especially in kin relationships: when an individual sacrifices its own life to protect the lives of kin, it is acting in the interest of its own genes. Some people find this metaphor entirely clear, while others find it confusing, misleading or simply redundant to ascribe mental attributes to something that is mindless. For example, Andrew Brown has written:

"Selfish", when applied to genes, doesn't mean "selfish" at all. It means, instead, an extremely important quality for which there is no good word in the English language: "the quality of being copied by a Darwinian selection process." This is a complicated mouthful. There ought to be a better, shorter word—but "selfish" isn't it.[2]

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