Freedom Evolves by Daniel C. Dennett

Author:Daniel C. Dennett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2011-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

There are many unanswered questions about memes, and many objections. Can the meme’s—eye perspective be turned into a proper science of memetics, or is it “just” a vivid imagination—stretcher, a philosophical tool or toy, a metaphor that can’t be made literal? It is too soon to tell. Most of the arguments that have been deployed against a science of memetics have been misguided and misinformed, and they betray a distinct whiff of disingenuousness or desperation. This is particularly evident when these arguments get repeated by people who manifestly don’t understand them, since they faithfully and uncomprehendingly replicate minor errors that somehow got into the germ line! My favorite bad objection is the claim that cultural evolution is “Lamarckian,” so it can’t be “Darwinian,” a mantra with several ill—considered variants, none of which hold water.27 But it sounds good, doesn’t it? It sounds like a sophisticated objection that must really hit those pesky ultra-Darwinians right where they live. (Stop that crow!) Pioneering research efforts now under way may mature into a substantial new discipline of memetics and prove these critics wrong. (Eat that crow!) Or they may not. There are still serious obstacles and objections that need to be met. (See the notes on further reading at the end of the chapter.) As I say, it is too soon to tell, but it doesn’t matter for our purposes, because the main contribution from memes that we need on this occasion is, in fact, “just” philosophical or conceptual—and no less valuable for that: The meme’s-eye perspective lets us appreciate a possibility that is otherwise very hard to take seriously As we saw in Chapter 4 on libertarianism, there is a powerful conviction among many thinkers that somehow we have to be liberated from our brute biological heritage, if we are to have free will that matters morally Since we can’t engage in magical moral levitation, and we can’t harness the quanta to carry us above our biology, we will have to look elsewhere for our liberation. Richard Dawkins closes The Selfish Gene with a ringing declaration: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. (Dawkins 1976, p.215)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.