Evolution and Memes: The human brain as a selective imitation device (Cybernetics and Systems, 32, 225-255, 2001) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Evolution and Memes: the Human Brain as a Selective Imitation Device
Cybernetics and Systems, 2001
The meme is an evolutionary replicator, defined as information copied from person to person by imitation. I suggest that taking memes into account may provide a better understanding of human evolution in the following way. Memes appeared in human evolution when our ancestors became capable of imitation. From this time on two replicators, memes and genes, coevolved. Successful memes changed the selective environment, favouring genes for the ability to copy them. I have called this process memetic drive. Meme-gene coevolution produced a big brain that is especially good at copying certain kinds of memes. This is an example of the more general process in which a replicator and its replication machinery evolve together. The human brain has been designed not just for the benefit of human genes, but for the replication of memes. It is a selective imitation device. Some problems of definition are discussed and suggestions made for future research. The concept of the meme was first proposed by Dawkins (1976) and since that time has been used in discussions of (among other things) evolutionary theory, human consciousness, religions, myths and mind viruses (e.g. Dennett 1991, 1995, Dawkins 1993, Brodie 1996, Lynch 1996). I believe, however, that the theory of memes has a more fundamental role to play in our understanding of human nature. I suggest that it can give us a new understanding of how and why the human brain evolved, and why humans differ in important ways from all other species. In outline my hypothesis is as follows. Everything changed in human evolution when imitation first appeared because imitation let loose a new replicator, the meme. Since that time, two replicators have been driving human evolution, not one. This is why humans have such big brains, and why they alone produce and understand grammatical language, sing, dance, wear clothes and have complex cumulative cultures. Unlike other brains, human brains had to solve the problem of choosing which memes to imitate. In other words they have been designed for selective imitation. This is a strong claim and the purpose of this paper is first to explain and defend it, second to explore the implications of evolution operating on two replicators, and third to suggest how some of the proposals might be tested. One implication is that we have underestimated the importance of imitation.
Behavior and Philosophy
Memes, defined in terms of ideas, mental representations or information, are used in an attempt to explain the spread of cultural practices. We argue that such reference to hidden replicators, which are said to have causal effects on a person's actions, appears to explain human behavioral patterns, but only results in restating the observed behavior. This approach, based on a memotype-phemotype distinction, falls prey to the unsolvable problems of mind-body dualism.
The trouble with memes: inference versus imitation in cultural creation
2001
Memes are hypothetical cultural units passed on by imitation; although non-biological, they undergo Darwinian selection like genes. Cognitive study of multimodular human minds undermines memetics: unlike genetic replication, high fidelity transmission of cultural information is the exception, not the rule. Constant, rapid "mutation" of information during communication generates endlessly varied creations that nevertheless adhere to modular input conditions. The sort of cultural information most susceptible to modular processing is that most readily acquired by children, most easily transmitted across individuals, most apt to survive within a culture, most likely to recur in different cultures, and most disposed to cultural variation and elaboration.
Evolutionary Design - Ten Years On: Memes and Natural Selection
1. Summary At the first EAD conference, held at Salford in 1995, I presented a paper with the title, Evolutionary Design. This present paper restates the five requirements for a general theory of Darwinian change and the four problems that were discussed in the 1995 paper. This theory is now updated through the addition of memetics. The paper describes the use of Dawkins' 'meme' as a replicator and how a new version of meme theory with different kinds of memes competing in different selection systems can help solve the original four problems, including the novelty problem that is discussed in more detail. The paper concludes with a discussion of complexity and the role of PPR - purposive pattern recognition. 2. Prelude: Evolution is a hopeless word. One noteworthy change over the last ten years is that I now try and avoid using the word 'evolution' because it means so many different things to different people. In his account of evolutionary ideas in economic...
Imitation and the definition of a meme
1998
1 -Introduction 1.1 -Defining Imitation 2 -Contagion 3 -Individual Learning 3.1 -Classical conditioning 3.2 -Operant conditioning 3.3 -Non-memetic learning 4 -Social Learning 4.1 -Stimulus enhancement, local enhancement, and goal emulation 5 -True Imitation 5.1 -Vocal imitation in birds and dolphins 5.2 -Imitation in humans and other animals 5.3 -Only imitation sustains a true evolutionary process.
Meme and Variations: A Computer Model of Cultural Evolution
genetic algorithm is a minimal computer model of natural selection that made it possible to investigate the effect of manipulating specific parameters on the evolutionary process. If culture is, like biology, a form of evolution, it should be possible to similarly abstract the underlying skeleton of the process and develop a minimal model of it. Meme and Variations, or MAV, is a computational model, inspired by the genetic algorithm, of how ideas evolve in a society of interacting individuals (Gabora 1995). The name is a pun on the classical music form 'theme and variations', because it is based on the premise that novel ideas are variations of old ones; they result from tweaking or combining existing ideas in new ways (Holland et al. 1981). MAV explores the impact of several phenomena that are unique to culture. These are introduced briefly here, and the technical details of how they are implemented will be presented shortly.
Genes, Memes, and Cultural Heredity
Biology & Philosophy
Dick Lewontin's 1970 article on the units of selection was an influential and expansive watershed: it got people to look far more broadly for things which could undergo selection, show heredity, and evolve. The generality of his "Darwin's Principles" (section II.B below) and Donald Campbell's convergent (1965) "blind variation and selective retention" paradigm made it natural for people to look for things in psychological, social, and cultural processes which would also meet these conditions. Attempts to find biology in culture seems either to push towards sociobiological conclusions drawing connections between genetic and cultural varieties and practices, or towards a perception of cultural change as somehow analogous to biological evolutionary processes. Dick has resisted the latter with only slightly less energy than the former. And his scepticism has often been well justified. But I don't think it must be a shallow and unproductive metaphor. My views on cultural evolution are positive -with qualifications, but analyzing it is a massive multi-faceted and deep problem, which invites careful thought both about cultural processes, and about why evolution (and our theories of it) work as effectively as they have in biology. Cultural change is an evolutionary process, but one with many deep and important differences in fundamental machinery from that found in biology. We must attend to the rich complexities resulting from these differences so that when we begin simplifying, we know where that puts us within the broader problem space, and are primed to look out for the kinds of problems these simplifications induce.
Memes shape brains shape memes
Christiansen and Chater's arguments share with memetics the idea that language is an evolving organism, and that brain capacities shape language by influencing the fitness of memes, although memetics also claims that memes in turn shape brains. Their rejection of meme theory is based on falsely claiming that memes must be consciously selected by sighted watchmakers. Christiansen and Chater argue that features of the human brain have shaped language and that language itself is akin to an organism. This view is remarkably similar to that which emerges from memetics, and yet they summarily reject the views of meme-theorists. I shall explore the similarities and differences between memetics and their view, and argue that their rejection of memetics is misplaced. In what sense is language an organism? Christiansen and Chater are slightly equivocal in answering this question. Although, in the abstract, they claim to 'view language itself as a complex and interdependent "organism"' the quotation marks are a clue to their ambivalence, for later they claim that 'Following Darwin (1900), we argue that it is useful metaphorically to view languages as "organisms,"' (p 2), and then repeat this metaphorical claim. Darwin (1874) himself does not use the word "metaphor". He discusses parallels, homologies, and analogies, and writes of the struggle for life amongst words and grammatical forms, claiming that "The survival and preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection. (1874 p. 91 italics mine). My reading of Darwin is that he thought languages and organisms were similar because they both evolve by the processes of selection and modification with descent. For memetics, too, the similarity is not metaphorical. The foundation of memetics (Dawkins 1976) is to apply universal Darwinism beyond biology. That is, memetics begins with the idea that information in culture is copied from person to person with variation and selection, and is therefore a replicator, just as genes are replicators. The term meme was coined to make this claim explicit; not primarily as an analogy with 'gene' but as an example of another replicator operating on the same fundamental mechanisms. Language is, on this view, a vast complex of memes, interconnected and co-evolved, and hence like a biological organism. This is not a metaphor; rather, biological organisms and languages are both complexes of replicators that are copied, protected, and work together for the same reason; their constituent replicators thrive better within the complex than they could outside it. In this sense, then, Christiansen and Chater propose a weaker version of the claims made by both Darwin and memetics. Is language a parasite? Christiansen and Chater refer to it as a "beneficial parasite". I have, similarly, called it a parasite turned symbiont. Indeed I have argued the same for all of culture (Blackmore 1999, 2001): once imitation attained high enough fidelity memes were let loose, and then spread and evolved, using human brains as their copying machinery. This happened, as Dennett (1995) emphasises, not for our benefit but for the benefit of the memes themselves. Christiansen and Chater point out that parasites and their hosts often co-adapt, with the parasite becoming less dangerous, but how dangerous was language when it began? I have argued that memes might have killed us off because of the burden they put on brain size, development, and energy use. If so then we were lucky to pull through so that the brain and its parasite could begin to adapt to each other. They are now so
2000
Behaviors and ideas copied from person to person by imitation-memes-may have forced human genes to make us what we are today Human beings are strange animals. Although evolutionary theory has brilliantly accounted for the features we share with other creatures—from the genetic code that directs the construction of our bodies to the details of how our muscles and neurons work—we still stand out in countless ways. Our brains are exceptionally large, we alone have truly grammatical language, and we alone compose symphonies, drive cars, eat spaghetti with a fork and wonder about the origins of the universe. The problem is that these abilities seem surplus to requirements, going well beyond what we need to survive. As Steven Pinker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology points out in How the Mind Works, "As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is useless." We might say the same of art, chess and pure mathematics. Classical (Darwinian) evolutionary theory, which focuses on inheritable traits of organisms, cannot directly justify such riches. Expressed in modern terms, this theory holds that genes control the traits of organisms; over the course of many generations, genes that give their bearers a survival advantage and that favor production of many offspring (who will inherit the genes) tend to proliferate at the expense of others. The genes, then, essentially compete against one another, and those that are most proficient at being passed to the next generation gradually prosper. Few scientists would want to abandon Darwinian theory. But if it does not clarify why we humans have come to apportion so much of our resources to so many abilities that are superfluous to the central biological task of further propagating our genes, where else can we look? The answer, I suggest, lies in memes. Memes are stories, songs, habits, skills, inventions and ways of doing things that we copy from person to person by imitation. Human nature can be explained by evolutionary theory, but only when we consider evolving memes as well as genes. It is tempting to consider memes as simply "ideas," but more properly memes are a form of information. (Genes, too, are information: instructions, written in DNA, for building proteins.) Thus, the meme for, say, the first eight notes of the Twilight Zone theme can be recorded not only in the neurons of a person (who will recognize the notes when she hears them) but also in magnetic patterns on a videocassette or in ink markings on a The notion that memes exist and evolve has been around for almost 25 years, but only recently has it gained attention as a powerful force in human evolution. Richard Dawkins of the University of Oxford coined the word in 1976, in his best-selling book The Selfish Gene. There he described the basic principle of Darwinian evolution in terms of three