Title: Memetic Theory and Explanations of Cultures Introduction Meme is a neologism introduced by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene

with the aim to provide culture with a neo-Darwinian explanatory framework. The fundamental assumption is that the theory of evolution has a universal validity (Dawkins 191 ), that is, Darwinian selection can reach beyond organic substance, thus the the ory of evolution does not have to apply only to genes they just happen to be one of the replicators that are well suited for natural selection. What this entail , then, is that since the evolutionary process is medium neutral, non-genetic ev olution can occur (Dennett 343). As long as this much granted, it opens the door to the question of whether the progress of cultures is driven by Darwinian mech anism. Since biological evolution is best explained by appealing to the genes per spective, culture may be best understood through the eye of memes: ideas that sp read through human minds. This paper is to explore the theory of memes and evaluate three objections again st it. The first objection, put forth by Kim Sterelny, states that the model of memes as proposed by Dawkins and Dennett fails to satisfy a fundamental conditio n for the evolutionary process: competition. The second problem, made by the ant hropologist Dan Sperber, points out that memes fails yet another requirement, th at is, replication. Since, in order to go undergo Darwinian selection, the unit in question must maintain high copying-fidelity; however, Sperber argues that me mes do not replicate at all but transform substantially during the process of cu ltural transmission. The third problem, also made by Sperber, is related to the last one, which holds that the pattern of cultural transmission is best illustra ted by what he calls attractors, and, according to the attractor model, memes ar e superfluous in terms of explanatory function. I will argue, however, that thes e problems can be diffused, and fruitful investigations of cultures in Darwinian term can be obtained by combining both the memes and attractors framework. Memes Fundamentals A Darwinian View of Culture First of all there is no doubt that cultures evolve, in the non-Darwinian sense that they change and develop over time. For example, musical cultures evolve pop ular music undergoes constant changes, but new music does not come out of nowher e: they are developed by building up on preexisting styles. In this Darwinian-ne utral sense, music evolves. The more interesting question, however, is whether t hese developments are driven by a Darwinian mechanism, and, more importantly, wh ether we can draw parallel from the success of biological evolution to study cul tural evolution. Moreover, the central goal of memetics is not simply to put cul ture on an evolutionary framework, but to explain culture in terms of memes. Sin ce biological evolution is best explained by appealing to fitness of genes, the study of culture may be benefitted from a similar approach, that is, to see whet her we can explain the flourish of a culture by appealing to the fitness of its feature (Sterelny 146). The appeal of the memes eye-point of view is that it can explain various cultural items that do not confer any advantage to human beings. For instance, there is a no need to evoke memes to explain why we have weapons, for they obviously incr ease our chance of succeeding in an environment by allowing people to hunt and d efend themselves. In other words, we can simply appeal to the needs of human bei ngs to explain why weapons exist. However, the same approach cannot address all features of our culture as they do not seem to address any of our survival needs at all. Steven Pinker once writes that Music is an enigmaAs far as biological cau se and effect are concerned, music is useless (Pinker 528). That is, music does n ot seem to solve any of our biological problems it does not help us survive nor to reproduce. In addition, Religion, another classic example, promotes consider various ascetic ideas, such as abstaining from sex or meats, that would make no biological sense from the perspective of the individual. The key question here i s why these practices flourish, yet they seem to greatly diminish our chances to reproduce and survive. On memes eye point of view, however, we can appeal to the

properties and fitness of the cultural themselves for the explanation of their existence. That is, these features of culture prevail, not because they satisfy our need, but they are fit replicators that exploit their environment the human mind to spread. In other words, they are parasitic. This makes a strong prima-facie case for memes, since it draws a nice parallel t o genes, as genes can also be parasitic. A large portion of DNA in organisms is never translated into protein at all, that is, they take no part in the construc tion of the organism. From the perspective of the individual organism, this is p uzzling because these genetic materials do not seem to serve any function to the organism; however, if we appeal to the point of view of the genes, the puzzle c eases to exist because the real function of genes is to survive and propagate, and this purpose can served by exploiting an well-built survival machine without co ntributing the process of its construction (Dawkins 44-45). The Semantic Model: Meme as Ideas As we have seen, a useful strategy for memetics is to draw parallels from geneti cs; however, it raises the question of whether they can be completely analogous. In constructing a Darwinian understanding of cultural evolution, do we have to locate the mechanism that is exactly the same as biological evolution? Is there RNA of culture? As a result, a lot of discussion of memes surrounds the issue of where to draw the line of this parallel. In other words, to find out the limit to which the analogy between memes and genes is fruitful to understand culture. The utmost important issue here how memes should be defined, and this is where D ennett thinks that we should be cautious in drawing the parallel. For genes, he points out that there is only one genetic language which applied roughly to all organisms, thus it is relatively easy to identify the meaning of genes syntactic ally (354). In other words, we can discern the identity of genes by looking at t he sequence of the nucleotide in the DNA. The same approach, however, cannot be applied to memes because its meaning can be expressed by different structure. Co nsider various translations of the story Moby Dick (Dennett 354): on the surface , the Chinese version does not bear any syntactical resemblance at all to the or iginal English version; however, the ideas both version convey are identical. Pr ovided the translation is reasonably well-done, one should be able to easily dis cern that the two different books are of the same story. Even though these books differ in terms of syntactical structure, they are alike semantically they are different vehicles of the same ideas, that is, memes. Furthermore, Dennett points out the adoption syntactical approach would be tanta mount to committing in discovering ways of mind-reading. If memes are ideas in p eoples mind, to find its syntactic structure, we have to assume that neural struc tures have fixed meanings. Dennett asserts such discovery is unlikely, for [it would be extraordinary] were we to discover that the brain-cell complex that stored the original meme for bifocals in Benjamin Franklins brain was the same a s, or very similar to, the brain-cell complex that is called upon today to store the meme for bifocals whenever any child in Asia, Africa, or Europe first learn s about them(Dennett 353) Of course, these questions - whether the memes for bifocals of a child in Asia a nd of Franklin share any neuro-syntactical structure or whether different transl ations of Moby Dick give raise to syntactically different but semantically ident ical ideas in the brain are ultimately empirical. To suggest either way, at our current level of understanding of the brain, is speculative; however, the import ant point here is that we should adopt the semantic model precisely because we d o not have good enough evidence to commit ourselves to reductionism of this sort . On the other hand, the fact that we do not yet have a firm understanding in th e syntactical structure of memes should not deter us from theorizing about the e volution of culture, for our understanding of biological evolution also began wi thout a concrete knowledge of what DNA is: there was almost a hundred years betw een Darwins Origin of Species and the discovery of DNAs structure (Blackmore 56). Nevertheless, genes can still offer much insight on how we can define its cultur al counterpart. One particularly useful tactic that can be borrowed is what sort of ideas should be countenanced as memes. Consider Moby Dick again: it would be absurd to suggest that the whole novel is one meme and is replicated in a perso

ns mind every time it is read, for it is unlikely that every single detail of the book is replicated and retained in the brain. As the purpose of memes is to ide ntify the replicator of culture, Dawkins proposes that we should define meme in the same way we define gene: to treat it as a unit of convenience, that is, any id ea that is memorable enough to preserve copying-fidelity is qualified as a meme (195). Thus, Moby Dick is too long to be a replicator; instead, it is a complex of co-adapted memes the idea of the wandering sailor Ishmael, the white whale Mo by Dick, etc. In the same sense, a whole symphony is too complex and long to be a single meme; however, it consists of various melodic ideas that are memorable enough to ensure high copying fidelity. Take Beethovens 5th, a classic example: f ew besides classical musicians would know what the whole symphony sounds like, b ut indeed most people can recognize the fate motif, the opening 4 note of the symp hony (ta-ta-ta-dum). The 5th symphony, then, is not a single meme, but a meme co mplex consists of many cooperating memes, including the fate motif meme which ha s taken a life of its own and spread far beyond the complex could. Three Problems with Memes With this basic picture of theory of memes in mind, we shall now discuss its thr ee problems. As the prima facie case for memes is made from drawing a parallel f rom biological evolution, some critics point there are instances where this para llel breaks down. The first and second problems belong to this area. The third p roblem challenges memetics biggest appeal - explanatory power - by suggesting an alternative framework in which the memes point of view is superfluous. First Problem: Lack of Competition This argument is found in Kim Sterelnys Memes Revisited, in which he attacks the se mantic model of memes. He raises am important aspect in which memes are not like genes, that is, memes do not compete with each other. Genes, he points out, are in competition: they fight for the existence and replication by affecting the p henotypes of the organism (Sterelny 155). We can easily identify the locus at wh ich alleles compete with each other, and how phenotypic effects contribute to th e genetic competition. However, if memes are ideas, then it seems unclear how th ey enter direct competition as genes do. Surely, we often speak of ideas as bein g in conflicts with each other. For example, it is often said that the idea of f aith and reason are fundamentally incompatible, but they are in conflict only in terms of logic, that their basic assumptions cannot be true at the same time. H owever, the struggle between memes that evolution requires is one of existence, not logic. A person of reason may completely reject faith, but the idea of faith does not cease to exist in her mind. She, in fact, may be as aware of the idea of faith as a believer. In the Darwinian sense, ideas do not seem to compete wit h each other. Thus, the problem that Sterelny brings forth is that memes do not seem to enter the kind of competition in which only the winner gets to survive and replicate. For instance, the propagation of the skateboard ideas does not entail that mount ain bike ideas are being booted out of peoples minds (Sterelny 156). Even when th e sale of skateboards far suppresses the sale of mountain bikes, it would not hu rt affect the spread of mountain bike ideas: I do not need to completely forget about mountain bikes in order to purchase a skateboard. In this case, even thoug h it seems like the mountain bike idea is the loser, it suffers no consequence. If ideas do not compete in this sense, it is unlikely that they evolve under sel ective pressure. Second Problem: Lack of Copying-Fidelity Anthropologist Dan Sperber points out yet another break down between the gene-me me analogy. Genes have rigorous proof-reading process to maintain very high-fide lity copying, while memes seem to be an opposite: ideas are rarely copied at all (Sperber 103). For example, most of us are likely to have heard the story of Li ttle Red Riding Hood for more than once, and the story is likely to be told slig htly differently. Perhaps version 1 has it that the hunter cut the wolf open wit h an axe, while in version 2 the wolf was cut open by a knife. However, in our m ind, we dont have a copy of different versions, instead we have a single version which is constructed by fusing all the versions that we were told. The idea of L ittle Red Riding Hood story, then, is not directly replicated but transformed in

the process of cultural transmission. For another example, consider a persons op inion about President Bill Clinton (Sperber 106). Her idea of who Clinton is may have originated from various sources: friends, the news, blogs, and television shows; however, she does not form her own opinion by simply copying what she has heard or read. Instead, she amalgamates the information she gathered about Bill Clinton based various factors, such as prejudice against politicians, party aff iliation, etc. In other words, the Clinton idea do not spread by jumping to one mi nd to another unchanged, as memeticists hold; instead, they are broken down, put together, and transformed in the process. This poses a serious problem for meme; because, for something to undergo Darwini an selective pressure, it must exhibit high copying-fidelity. If ideas, as this argument suggests, do not replicate at all, then they cannot be the unit of sele ction. It is because Darwinian selection requires variation among replicator, th at is, mutations. The rate of mutation, however, cannot be too high because othe rwise the accumulative of selection cannot occur (Sperber 102-3). In other words , if the entity in question mutates all the time, then it fails to condition of being a replication at the first place and cannot undergo Darwinian selection. M emes, then, are simply too unstable to be the unit of selection. Third Problem: Alternative Model - Attractors Sperber poses yet another serious problem for memetics by challenging its explan atory power. As stated earlier, memes explains the existence and prevalence of c ertain ostensibly maladaptive cultural practices by appealing to the properties of the replicator, instead of the host; however, Sperber argues for the opposite : genuine explanation can only be obtained by appealing to certain properties of the host, such as ecological and psychological factors (Sperber 115). A good fr amework to cultural evolution is not to identify the memes, but the patterns in which cultural items tend to resemble, or what he calls attractors. To see what an attractor is, one must first understand how it builds precisely o n the shortcoming of memes in regard to the lack of copying-fidelity. What Sperb er asserts is that, though ideas of culture are subject to considerable amount o f transformations during transmission, they do exhibit a high degree of resembla nce (106). For instance, though the idea of Bill Clinton does not spread by repl icating itself, as the last problem suggests, one important cultural fact still needs to be explained: people do share extremely similar views of who he is. If you ask several Democrats to tell you about Bill Clinton, you would likely get m any similar responses. What we have here, Sperber points out, is a pattern in wh ich people tend to formulate the idea of Bill Clinton, which he calls an attract or a particular form of Bill Clinton idea that prevails because people find it a ttractive. Attractors do not replicate, that is, peoples ideas are not the exact copies of the attractors, but they share a high degree of resemblance. It is important to note that Sperber is not suggesting that cultural phenomenon can be adequately explained simply by the identification of the attractors. Inst ead, it provides us a framework in which we can clearly see what needs to be exp lained. For example, to understand why certain versions of the Clinton idea are more predominant than others, we need to explain why people find it attractive. Sperber argues that we do so not by appealing the perspective of memes, but to c ertain factors such as how Clintons appearance and mannerism may have certain psy chological appeals, and environmental factors such as political affiliation, rac e, and social class. In this picture, these are the factors that explain the Cli nton ideas place in culture, without any talk of memes. Consider, again, the case of religious ideas such as celibacy or martyrdom. As mentioned, the memetic exp lanation of these ideas is that they spread at the expense of the host. In other words, they are like viruses (Sterelny 159). Nevertheless, this explain nothing unless we have find out why human beings are so receptive to irrational and cos tly beliefs, and to do so we need to appeal to certain human cognitive biases, a nd not the properties of memes. As a result, the same phenomenon is explained wi thout any need to appeal to the memes eye-point of view. Analysis of the Three Problems Making sense of Memes Competition Let us begin the analysis with the first problem, that is, can we make sense out

of meme competition? I think that Sterelny is correct in pointing out that ther e is a substantial different meme and gene competitions, but I want to suggest t hat a way in which we can make still sense out of meme competition. First, we ne ed to make clear of the distinction between memes and its vehicles: just as gene s cannot exist without organisms, the existences of memes also depend on their p hysical vehicles (Dennett 347). In other words their fates are intertwined, but Sterelny makes very good point: the memes-vehicle relationship is different than the one of gene-organism. If all organisms completely vanish without a single p hysical trace, then genes are extinguished along with it. But for memes, it seem s to be different. Take Sterelnys skateboard example, for instance. The skateboar d meme can be carried by various vehicles: actual skateboards, books about skate board, website etc.; however, even if all of these vehicles cease to exist, it i s still conceivable that memes exist people can still have the idea of a skatebo ard in their mind without its physical embodiment. Taking Sterelnys line, the dec line of the sale of skateboard would not have immediate effect on spread of skat eboard ideas: when someone buys a mountain bike, the skateboard idea would not b e automatically booted out of her mind. However, I think there is still way in which we can make sense out of meme compe tition. Let us continue last line of thought from a larger perspective. If skate boards are being sold less, it means that the chance that a skateboard is being displayed publicly would also decline less people will use them in public and co mpanies will stop making them due to poor sales. From a memetic perspective, it means that the skateboard idea is having less chance to be broadcasted and repli cated because fewer people will see the skateboard and fewer people would talk a bout the skateboard. The idea of skateboard, of course, would not be forgotten i mmediately by everyone it may even be a topic of nostalgia from time to time, bu t in the long run they are bounded to lose their place in peoples minds. In this sense, memes do compete with each for their existence in the limited supply of m inds via their phenotypic effects. Therefore, we can still cash in both the idea of meme competition and the meme-vehicle relationship. Defining the Replicator I will now turn to the problem whether memes replicate. Recall Sperber points ou t that everyones version of Little Red Riding Hood is the convergence of differen t versions as an example of how ideas do not replicate. I think Sperber is only partly right: what he really has showed is that many ideas we intuitively unders tand as a single unit do not replicate. In other words, ideas do replicate but t hey do not in accordance to what we intuitively regard as a single unit. What is entail, at most, is that the adoption of memes would require to modification wh at we conceived as a single cultural unit. Again, it must be stressed that a unit of meme is defined simply as any idea tha t is memorable enough to ensure high copy-fidelity, thus a meme does not have to correspond to what we intuitively consider as a cultural unit. So we may intuit ively conceive of that the whole story of Little Red Riding Hood as a single uni t, but on a memetic perspective, we can see it as a complex of co-adapted memes, or a memeplex (Blackmore 19), consisting of the meme of the girl named Little R ed Riding Hood, the meme that the forest is dangerous place, the meme of a devio us wolf, etc, and these interconnected ideas are the ones that are replicated, n ot the whole story. Certainly, some stories are memorable enough to be a meme, b ut that does not mean all stories are. In other words, the definition of meme sp ecifically states that only ideas that maintain high copying-fidelity can be qua lified as memes. For cases like the Little Red Riding Hood, we simply construe t hem as memeplex and analyze them into smaller memes. Attractors, Memes, and the Two Explanations of Culture Now we have come to the analysis of attractors. I think that Sperber is right: p sychological and ecological factors are extremely relevant in our explanatory fr amework of culture, but I do not think that such idea is incompatible with memet ics, nor I think he had successfully made the case that memes take no part in th e framework. In fact, I wish to suggest that attractors and memes can be complem entary in our understanding of culture. The crux of the problem, I think, is that we need to make clear a conceptual pro

blem: what do we mean when we claim that we want to explain culture? In other wo rds, what kind of why question is an explanation of culture supposed to address? T o see what I am getting at, allow me to use a relatively simple illustration. Su ppose I ask you to give me an explanation of cars. You can give me two sorts of answers: You can show me the structural details of how car works, such as the me chanism of engines, transmissions, and so on. However, you may also explain how car come to be historically: how the invention of wheel gave raise to means of t ransportation such the chariots, and then trace its lineages until it eventually came to be modern automobile. The two answers are both important in our underst anding of the phenomenon, both are related to each other, and both explain the s ituation to an extent but only putting both together that our explanation would be elucidating. The allusion I am making is that I think attractors would point us to structural explanations of culture while memes offers us historical explan ations. More importantly, to understand each explanation we need to understand b oth. Consider an explanation of music: Sperber would say to explain music we need to first identify the attractor: the pattern in which music tend to exhibits. We do have good data to answer this question. For example, there is strong evidence t hat human beings are cognitively biased toward certain intervals (Trehub 431): h umans tend to find tones that are related by small-integer ratios more pleasing, such as the octave (2:1), the perfect fifth (3:2) and the perfect fourth (4:3). As a cultural phenomenon, the intervals that human beings cognitive favor are i ndeed more widely spread than others, as they play an important role in music of both western and non-western culture (Trehub 431). The octave, in particular, s erves as the basis of music for almost every culture (Levitin 29). It seems that we have a perfect case of attractors. We have identified the pattern in which m usic is made. The next step, according to Sperber, is to find out the relevant f acts about human being that explain this pattern. Now, the neurological basis fo r interval recognition is yet not fully understood (Levitin 31), but let us supp ose that it is what would that address in terms of explaining the culture of mus ic? Again, it would be a structural explanation, one that highlights the mechani sm of the brain in order to explain certain features of music. Memes, on the other hand, seem to tackles a different but a related problem: the historical question of how certain feature of music comes to be. In other words , memes is meant to elucidate whether the changes of music exhibit any Darwinian pattern over the course of cultural history. As long as the distinction is bein g pointed, we can see how attractors and memes can be complementary in our expla natory framework of culture. Indeed, Sperber is right that we need to consider f actors such psychology and ecology, but they are friends, and not foe, of memes because they allow us to understand how memes succeed by exploiting certain feat ures of the environment. Going back to music, for example: the fact that human b eings are attracted to certain intervals may elucidate why certain musical meme is more fit to others: a meme that includes these cognitive favored intervals ar e more likely to spread and replicate. In other words attractors explain why mem es succeed in very much the same way certain feature of environment explain the success of certain genes: the abundance of the oxygen would explain why the lung -maker gene would succeed. The fact that we understand how lungs work does not m ake the talk of gene superfluous; instead, they offer different explanations of the phenomenon: how lungs work is a structural explanation, while the evolutiona ry lineages of the lung-making gene address a historical one. Conclusion To conclude, then, I have briefly discussed the theory of memes as articulated b y Dawkins and Dennett, and its three problems: (i) the lack of competition, (ii) the lack of copying fidelity, and (iii) attractors as alternative framework. Wh ile I point out various insights these problems offer, they are not detrimental to the memetic framework. The first two problems can be diffused by a more clari fied notion of memes. For the last problem, I suggest that, by distinguishing th e two kinds of explanations of culture, we can combine attractors and memes to g reatly enhance the ways in which we can understand cultural phenomenon.

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