Post by Smithee on Aug 21, 2012 9:59:26 GMT 10
Reified Memetics as pseudoscience
Example see memetics.chielens.net/index.html
In raising memetic cultural alternatives when arguing against the pseudoscience of uppercase E and P Evolutionary Psychology, one encounters other pseudoscientists who have gone too far in the other direction and have tried to reify memetics. The following qualifications apply.
A meme is an idea: No more and no less.
Memes have no literal life of their own: We communicate them.
Memes do not independently evolve: We creatively modify, develop and combine them.
Memes do not physically infect us: We learn them.
Memes do not actually compete: We are free to choose or refuse.
As with logic, memetics may be used to counter pseudoscientic arguments but as a system of ideas, memetics falls in the philosophical domain of epistemology rather than in that of empirical science where some obsessive pedants seem to be trying to present it as a truly objective and substantive equivalent to genetics.
Real science has boundaries: Learn to live with it!
Example see memetics.chielens.net/index.html
In raising memetic cultural alternatives when arguing against the pseudoscience of uppercase E and P Evolutionary Psychology, one encounters other pseudoscientists who have gone too far in the other direction and have tried to reify memetics. The following qualifications apply.
A meme is an idea: No more and no less.
Memes have no literal life of their own: We communicate them.
Memes do not independently evolve: We creatively modify, develop and combine them.
Memes do not physically infect us: We learn them.
Memes do not actually compete: We are free to choose or refuse.
As with logic, memetics may be used to counter pseudoscientic arguments but as a system of ideas, memetics falls in the philosophical domain of epistemology rather than in that of empirical science where some obsessive pedants seem to be trying to present it as a truly objective and substantive equivalent to genetics.
Real science has boundaries: Learn to live with it!
