Memes as Metaphor

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that memetics might still prove useful even if memes, strictly speaking, don't exist. Even if the unit of replication that Blackmore posits isn't real, the study of memes might still be tracking some feature of the world that is. Of course, if this turns out to be the case then we might not want to continue calling it memetics - or alternatively, we might want to adapt our definition of a meme.

In The Meme Machine, Blackmore spent a couple of chapters considering the possibility of morality evolving (either genetically or memetically), and it is this broad topic that concerns Richard Joyce in The Evolution of Morality. Given the complex relationship between culture and (genetic) evolution, and the recent popularity of memetic explanations of culture, I was surprised to find only a single, terse reference to memes in Joyce's book: a footnote explaining that his talk of cultural evolution "is not to be confused with 'meme theory'" (2006: 235, note 21).

Despite agreeing with Blackmore that "[t]here is nothing in the theory [of evolution] that says that the traits in question must be genetically encoded" (Joyce 2006: 42), as well as finding explanatory value in the idea that culture might evolve independently of genetics, Joyce keeps his distance from memetic explanations. His use of cultural evolution "leaves open the issue of whether cultural items satisfy the criteria for being considered replicators" (2006: 235). This is a fair point, but not one that should render any contribution from memetics completely worthless. A lot of what he has to say about the cultural evolution of morality meshes well with Blackmore's memetic explanation of altruism, although of course they place their emphasis differently (Joyce on genetic evolution, Blackmore on cultural). Nonetheless, the basic idea that culture might come to "harness" an innate compulsion to feel certain 'moral' emotions (such as guilt or empathy) is shared by both of them.

I think that the Dawkins-inspired 'memetic revolution' has hit upon a very powerful heuristic for investigating cultural evolution, but has also shot itself in the foot somewhat by trying to be too radical. Their emphasis on defining the meme as unit of replication akin to the gene has tended to undercut the seriousness with which some of their ideas might otherwise have been considered. This is unfortunate, as whilst the idea of cultural evolution per se isn't necessarily that radical, it could certainly do with some more focused study. Anthologies such as The Adapted Mind (Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby, 1992) and volume two of The Innate Mind (Carruthers, Laurence, & Stich, 2007) certainly go some way towards doing this, but by and large they are still limited by the artificial dichotomy between (genetic) evolution and culture. Memetics could break this dichotomy, if only it dropped some of its reverence for the slightly implausible comparison between memes and genes. There's certainly room for the meme as a unit of replication, although it will be a much vaguer unit than the gene, one that is necessarily somewhat metaphorical.

• Barkow, J., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. 1992. The Adapted Mind. Oxford: OUP.
• Blackmore, S. 1999. The Meme Machine. Oxford: OUP. 
• Carruthers, P., Laurence, S. & Stich, S. 2007. Innate Mind, Vol. 2: Culture and Cognition. Oxford: OUP
• Joyce, R. 2006. The Evolution of Morality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Free Will: No Means No

(by Joe)

When it comes to free will, no means no. Not no, except for really important decisions. Not no, except for choosing to not do something. Not no, except for the internal attitudes that shape our actions. No free will means no free will.

Yet all too often writers for whom I otherwise have a lot of respect fall into this trap. They present a solid argument against free will, or express a concern about someone else's suspect use of free will, then turn right around and commit one of above fallacies. They are fallacious because they make an exception solely in order to support a particular point. These exceptions are never supported, or even acknowledged - they just sit there, spoiling an otherwise good argument.

Most recently I caught Susan Blackmore doing this, when at the end of The Meme Machine she turns round and advocates a kind of meditative practice in order to cope with the vertiginous feeling that comes when you realise that you probably don't have any free will (1999: 242). In general I've got a lot of sympathy for such practice, and I broadly agree with her analysis of the illusory nature of the self that precedes it (ibid: 219-34). But as an answer, or at least a coping strategy, to the free will problem, it is distinctly inadequate. She can't expect me to choose to pursue such a meditative lifestyle, can she? Of course she might simply be hoping to nudge my psycho-memetic systems into behaving in the way that she advocates, which is all well and good, but the simple point remains that it is entirely inconsistent to on the one hand deny freedom of the will, and on the other tell your reader what they should do about it.

Daniel Dennett seems to me to make the same mistake when, in Freedom Evolves and elsewhere, he argues that whilst 'we' don't have any direct volitional control, we are somehow able to choose not to act on the volitions that emerge from our multiple drafts of consciousness. It's been a while since I read Freedom Evolves, and I haven't got a copy handy (so forgive the lack of references), but I recall that something like this formed the centre of his compatiblist account of determinism and free will. In any case, I certainly didn't find his account convincing, for much the same reason that I have yet to find any (physicalist) account of free will convincing - none of them take determinism seriously enough. There's no such thing as partial determinism, unless you introduce randomness, and anybody who denies free will but then tells you how best to cope with this denial is simply being inconsistent.

In fact, without free will the very concept of any course of action being 'best' begins to lose a lot of its worth. How can I have any obligation to act one way rather than another, either morally or rationally, if I'm not able to meaningfully make that decision? Both conventional, rules-based moral philosophy and alternative approaches that emphasise "moral imagination" (Nussbaum 1985: 516) or "ethical attention" (Bowden 1998) suffer from this contradiction. In the first instance agency is removed when we are told that there is only one right answer to a dilemma - we no longer have any meaningful moral choice to make. On the latter view, to be moral is to live in a certain way, to be the kind of person who makes moral decisions - whatever those decisions may be. Here, again, we seem to lack ethical agency - either I am this kind of person or I am not, and when it comes to moral dilemmas I no longer have any choice, I simply act in the way that I must. Yet when I made this point in an essay, the marker insisted that "imagination is in part agential" - in which case, surely, the alternative approach simply collapses into the conventional, only with the critical choice being made prior to a dilemma, when an agent exercises their imagination. In my opinion he had fallen into a version of the trap that I outlined above, denying that morality was about freely willed decisions, but then simply reintroducing those decisions in another guise.

Of course, it is not anyone's fault when they make these mistakes, for they could not have chosen to do otherwise - could they?

• Blackmore, S. 1999. The Meme Machine. Oxford: OUP.
• Bowden, P. 1998. "Ethical Attention: Accumulating Understandings." European Journal of Philosophy 6/1: 59-77.
• Dennett, D. 2003. Freedom Evolves. Viking Books.
• Nussbaum, M. 1985. "'Finely Aware and Richly Responsible': Moral Attention and the Moral Task of Literature." Journal of Philosopy 82: 516-29.

Memes vs Genes

(by Joe)

The term "meme" was introduced by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976: 191-201), to refer to a proposed unit of cultural information analogous to the standard unit of genetic information: the gene. He suggested that evolutionary analysis of memes could cast light on cultural oddities that evolutionary genetics sometimes struggle to explain, such as religion. His original introduction of memes was a somewhat off-hand way of illustrating that evolution by natural selection need not only apply to DNA and biology, but almost by accident he invented an entirely new field. Memetics now refers to the study of evolutionary models of cultural information transfer, although whether or not this is something worthy of study is somewhat controversial. A Journal of Memetics was published online from 1997 to 2004 (and is still available), but probably the most famous account of memetics is Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine (1999).

Everything looked a bit like this in the 90s.

The basic idea behind memetics is extremely simple. Just as we can understand biological evolution in terms of competition between genes, we can understand cultural evolution as competition between memes. A gene will survive not because it is necessarily useful to its host, but because it is useful to itself, driving the kind of adaptation that allows it to be passed on. So the genes of a (non-fertile) worker ant that sacrifices itself for the hive will be passed on through that ant's close genetic relatives.  A meme will survive not because it is necessarily useful to its host, but because it is useful to itself, perhaps by being memorable or easily passed on. An annoying song that you can't get out of your head might not derive any pleasure for you, the host, but it will survive. Analysing behaviour in terms of the benefit for the cultural meme allows us to provide explanations that might not be available at either the genetic or organism level.

Memetics has been criticised for failing to identify a discrete unit of transmission (a meme might be anything from a few notes to a whole philosophical theory), but as Blackmore points out the same can, in a sense, be said about genetics (1999: 53-6). The study of memes more generally is accused of being too vague, even pseudoscientific, and I agree that there is a genuine risk of failing to make any meaningful claims. However I think what matters is whether memetics is able to provide a useful account of phenomena where other fields have failed - and this will only become clear with time. Daniel Dennett's account of consciousness and the self includes a memetic element (1991: 199-226) and Blackmore hopes that memetics might cast light on everything from altruism (1999: 147-74) to the development of agriculture (ibid: 26-7). Whether or not memes actually exists (whatever "existing" means) is not really important - memetics as a discipline can still be provide a useful heuristic, reminding us that cultural practices might propagate themselves simply because that's what they do, not because they are in any way useful to us.


Blackmore, S. 1999. The Meme Machine. Oxford: OUP.

Dawkins, R. 1976 (2006). The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition. Oxford: OUP

Dennett, D. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Little, Brown and Company.