In this paper I analyse the implications of “flattening” the curve for long-term care residents in the Province of Ontario, Canada during the first wave of the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic. I then question what the role of healthcare systems are in the response to public health emergencies and problematize their status as entities in need of protection. The ethical implications of this are discussed in light of potential challenges raised by climate change.

In this paper, I argue that the adaptive fit between human cultures and their environment is persuasive evidence that some form of evolutionary mechanism has been important in driving human cultural change. I distinguish three mechanisms of cultural evolution: niche construction leading to cultural group selection; the vertical flow of cultural information from parents to their children, and the replication and spread of memes. I further argue that both cultural group selection and the vertical flow of cultural information have been (...) important. More conjecturally, I identify a potential role for meme-based cultural evolution in the explanation of the ‘human revolution’ of the last 100 000 or so years, and defuse an important objection to that explanation. Introduction Cultural groups The cultural invention of adaptive complexes Niche construction models Dual inheritance Memes Memes or minds? Conclusion. (shrink)

Are most people sincere when they share misinformation and conspiracies online? This question, while natural and important, is difficult to answer for obvious reasons. But it also applies poorly to one of the main vehicles for misinformation—memes. And it can be ambiguous; as a result, we should be mindful of two distinctions. First, a distinction between belief and a related propositional attitude, commitment. And second, the distinction between the propositional content of an attitude and what I will call its political (...) meaning. I will suggest that these distinctions not only can help us understand how we communicate online, but they also suggest a lesson about what we should be focusing on when fighting misinformation. (shrink)

In 1976, Richard Dawkins coined the term meme as a way to metaphorically project bio-evolutionary principles upon the processes of cultural and social development. The works of Dawkins and of some other enthusiasts had contributed to a rise in popularity of the concept of memetics (“study of memes”), but the interest to this new field started to decline quite soon. The conceptual apparatus of memetics was based on a number of quasi-biological terms, but the emerging discipline failed to go (...) beyond those initial metaphors. This article is an attempt to rebuild the toolkit of memetics with the help of the more fundamental concepts taken from semiotics and to propose a synthetic conceptual framework connecting genetics and memetics, in which semiotics is used as the transdisciplinary methodology for both disciplines. The concept of sign is used as the meta-lingual equivalent for both the concepts of gene and meme. In the most general understanding, sign is a thing which stands for another thing. In genetics, this translates into gene that is a section of DNA that stands for the algorithm of how a particular biomolecule is built. In memetics, the similar principle works in meme that is a thing that stands for the rules of how a particular cultural practice is performed. (shrink)

In 1976, Richard Dawkins coined the term meme as a way to metaphorically project bio-evolutionary principles upon the processes of cultural and social development. The works of Dawkins and of some other enthusiasts had contributed to a rise in popularity of the concept of memetics (“study of memes”), but the interest to this new field started to decline quite soon. The conceptual apparatus of memetics was based on a number of quasi-biological terms, but the emerging discipline failed to go (...) beyond those initial metaphors. This article is an attempt to rebuild the toolkit of memetics with the help of the more fundamental concepts taken from semiotics and to propose a synthetic conceptual framework connecting genetics and memetics, in which semiotics is used as the transdisciplinary methodology for both disciplines. The concept of sign is used as the meta-lingual equivalent for both the concepts of gene and meme. In the most general understanding, sign is a thing which stands for another thing. In genetics, this translates into gene that is a section of DNA that stands for the algorithm of how a particular biomolecule is built. In memetics, the similar principle works in meme that is a thing that stands for the rules of how a particular cultural practice is performed. (shrink)

Ken Binmore argues that justice consists in a proportional bargaining equilibrium of a ‘game of morals’, which corresponds to a Nash bargaining equilibrium of a ‘game of life’. His argument seems unassailable if rational agents are predominantly self-interested, an assumption that he is apparently willing to make on the grounds that human behaviour is ultimately constrained in accord with the selfish gene paradigm. But there is no compelling scientific evidence for that paradigm. Rather, human nature appears to be highly plastic. (...) If so, rational agents might eventually be moulded by cultural forces into social and moral actors who effectively believe that they are the same person-no different from anyone else−when it comes to certain vital personal interests which ought to be treated as rights. In this context, a utilitarian outcome is an efficient and fair equilibrium of the game of life. Compliance with the rules is enforced by the actor’s own conscience, a powerful internal ‘judicious spectator’ which threatens to inflict harsh punishment in the form of intense feelings of guilt for cheating. (shrink)

In this article I analyse object labelling image macro internet memes as multimodal metaphors, taking the Distracted Boyfriend meme as a case study. Object labelling memes are multimodal texts in which users add labels to a stock photograph to convey messages that are often humorous or satirical in nature. Using the relevance-theoretic account of metaphor, I argue that object labelling memes are multimodal metaphors which are interpreted using the same processes as verbal metaphors. The labelling of the image guides (...) the viewer in the construction of ad hoc concepts, and it is these ad hoc concepts that contribute to the overall meaning that is communicated. The analysis in this article is rooted in the relevance-theoretic claim that pragmatic interpretive processes are triggered by all and any ostensive acts of communication. I also draw heavily on Deirdre Wilson’s work on lexical pragmatics to show how this plays out in the case of a multimodal digital text. Memes, like verbal metaphors, do not require a special theory or framework. They can be understood as ostensive stimuli which trigger the search for an optimally relevant interpretation. (shrink)

Prominent memeticists like Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore have made claims far more radical than those included in Dawkins’ original proposal, which provoked increasingly heated debates and arguments over the theoretical significance as well as limits or flaws of the entire memetic enterprise. In this paper, I examine closely some of the critical points taken by Kate Distin in her penetrating engagement with those radical claims, which include such ideas as the thought that we are meme machines as much (...) as gene machines, the thesis that there is no conscious self inside those machines, and the claim that a complex interplay of replicators and environment is all there is to life (Blackmore 1999: 241). It is hoped that a viable thesis concerning a deep-seated normativity emerges from my discussion. (shrink)

The present study explores the construction of humor in internet memes along two dimensions. The external dimension is concerned with humor in internet memes as opposed to verbal humor on the one hand and as opposed to humor in comics and caricatures on the other. The perceptive differences, stemming from the workings of the human memory, and the medium are posited as the two main differentiating factors. On the internal dimension, we explore manifestations of humor in light of the communicative (...) situation and taxonomic relations at both the intermedial and intramedial levels of internet memes, taking as an example a family of You Wouldn’t Get It image macros. Our analysis employs elements of intertextuality theory and the notion of orders of indexicality. The study aims to contribute to the growing theoretical and methodological framework for multifactorial analyses of internet memes. (shrink)

The dissertation criticizes two analogical applications of Darwinism to the spheres of mind and culture: the Darwinian approach to creativity and memetics. These theories rely on three basic analogies: the ontological analogy states that the basic ontological units of culture are so-called memes, which are replicators like genes; the origination analogy states that novelty in human creativity emerges in a "blind" Darwinian manner; and the explanatory units of selection analogy states that memes are "egoistic" and that they can spread independently (...) of our mind. The detailed philosophical analysis offered in the dissertation shows that these three analogies rely on either wrong or trivial statements: they provide either wrong or no new descriptions or explanations of the phenomena at hand. In Chapter One, I introduce the diverse ways, in which contemporary Darwinism is used today outside of evolutionary biology. Chapter Two explains what it means to claim that something evolves in a Darwinian manner. Chapter Three to Five address each of the three analogies separately. Darwinism applied to culture and mind, at least in the way discussed in this study, is not a dangerous idea. It leads either to wrong claims or to a re-telling in Darwinian terms of what we have already known. (shrink)

Charles Darwin und seine Erben wendeten die Theorie der Evolution biologischer Arten auch auf Kultur an. Kultur evolviere wie die Natur auf Darwinistische Weise. Die sog. Memtheorie, vertreten von verschiedenen Autoren auf der Basis des Darwinistischen Genselektionismus, ist eine Spielart einer solchen analogen Anwendung. Dieser Artikel kritisiert drei zentrale Aussagen der Memtheorie: (i) dass es Einheiten der Kultur – Meme – gibt, die analog zu Genen zu verstehen sind, (ii) dass Meme, in Analogie zu Genen, Replikatoren sind, und (...) (iii) dass Meme als Einheiten der kulturellen Selektion auf die gleiche Art wie Gene 'egoistisch' sein können. Nach einer Einführung in die Memtheorie in Teil 1, werden diese drei Thesen in Teil 2 als entweder falsch oder trivial entlarvt. Dieser kritische Teil soll vor allem zeigen, dass die Memtheorie keine 'gefährliche Idee' ist, die das bisher in den Geistes- Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften tradierte Verständnis von Geist und Kultur herausfordern kann. Im Gegenteil, im besten Fall re-formuliert die Memtheorie lediglich Bekanntes in evolutionärer Sprache und ist in diesem Sinne trivial. In Teil 3 wird die Perspektive gewechselt: Nicht mehr der Gehalt, sondern die Funktion der Memtheorie, v.a. im Kontext interdisziplinärer Verständigung, soll betrachtet werden. Denn trotz der Kritik der drei Kernthesen kann die Memtheorie eine kommunikative und somit produktive Rolle zwischen den 'zwei Kulturen' der Wissenschaften spielen. (shrink)

In this article I analyse object labelling image macro internet memes as multimodal metaphors, taking the Distracted Boyfriend meme as a case study. Object labelling memes are multimodal texts in which users add labels to a stock photograph to convey messages that are often humorous or satirical in nature. Using the relevance-theoretic account of metaphor, I argue that object labelling memes are multimodal metaphors which are interpreted using the same processes as verbal metaphors. The labelling of the image guides (...) the viewer in the construction of ad hoc concepts, and it is these ad hoc concepts that contribute to the overall meaning that is communicated. The analysis in this article is rooted in the relevance-theoretic claim that pragmatic interpretive processes are triggered by all and any ostensive acts of communication. I also draw heavily on Deirdre Wilson’s work on lexical pragmatics to show how this plays out in the case of a multimodal digital text. Memes, like verbal metaphors, do not require a special theory or framework. They can be understood as ostensive stimuli which trigger the search for an optimally relevant interpretation. (shrink)

Dawkins’ concept of the meme pool, essentially equivalent to Popper’s World 3, is considered as an expression in modern terms for what Averroes knew as the ‘active intellect’, an immortal entity feeding into, or even creating, the ‘passive intellect’ of consciousness. A means is thus provided for reconciling a materialist Darwinian view of the universe with a conception of non-personal immortality. The meme pool/active intellect correspondence provides a strong basis for regarding science as a communal enterprise producing enrichment (...) of the meme pool and expansion of consciousness, and emphasizes the virtues of memetic conservation in relation to vanishing cultures. (shrink)

American Political Science Association Meeting, New Orleans, 1985. Belew, R. K. "E,volut,ioi1. Leariiing, and Culture: Computational Metaphors for Adaptive Algorithms? Complex Systems 4 (1990}: 11-49. Banner, J. T. The Evolution of Culture in Animals. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univcrsitv Press. 1980.

Among the many vivid metaphors in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, one stands out. The understanding of how cumulative natural selection gives rise to adaptations is, Dennett says, like a “universal acid”—an idea so powerful and corrosive of conventional wisdom that it dissolves all attempts to contain it within biology. Like most good ideas, this one is very simple: Once replicators (material objects that are faithfully copied) come to exist, some will replicate more rapidly than others, leading to adaptation by natural selection. (...) The great power of the idea is that the resulting adaptations can be understood by asking what leads to efficient, rapid replication. Given that ideas seem to replicate, it is natural that Dawkins (1976, 1982), Dennett (1992), and others have explored the possibility of using this idea to explain cultural evolution. (shrink)

Analisando a comunicação memética a partir dos pontos de vista da semiologia saussuriana e do dispositivo biopolítico tal como pensado por Foucault e Agamben, bem como estabelecendo conexões entre essas teorias e o uso desse tipo de comunicação na política brasileira contemporânea, foi possível perceber neste artigo que os memes, em especial os memes políticos, em vez de operarem por meio da subjetivação, operam como dispositivos dessubjetivantes.

Dennett's Consciousness Explained presents, but does not demonstrate, a fully naturalized account of consciousness that manages to leave out the very consciousness he purports to explain. If he were correct, realism and methodological individualism would collapse, as would the very enterprise of giving reasons. The metaphors he deploys actually testify to the power of metaphoric imagination that can no more be identified with the metaphors it creates than minds can be identified with memes. That latter equation, of minds with (...) class='Hi'>meme?complexes, rests for its meaning on the existence of real minds, which are not to be equated with the thoughts they have. (shrink)

This paper describes a computational model of how ideas, or memes, evolve through the processes of variation, selection, and replication. Every iteration, each neural-network based agent in an artificial society has the opportunity to acquire a new meme, either through 1) INNOVATION, by mutating a previously-learned meme, or 2) IMITATION, by copying a meme performed by a neighbor. Imitation, mental simulation, and using past experience to bias mutation all increase the rate at which fitter memes evolve. Memes (...) at epistatic loci converged more slowly than memes at over- or underdominant loci. The higher the ratio of innovation to imitation, the greater the meme diversity, and the higher the fitness of the fittest meme. Optimization is fastest for the society as a whole with an innovation to imitation ratio of 2:1, but diversity is comprimized. (shrink)

A paradigm of a meme, in its contemporary sense, is an image macro – an image copied by users, who customize it by adding their own text according to implicitly prescribed norms. The native medium of philosophy is language, generally in the form of either discursive text or Socratic discussion. This chapter suggests there are two features of human existence that stand to meme‐making in something of the same relation as spontaneous dance does to choreography. These features are (...) bricolage and ownership. In such memes, figures, despite some superficial appearance of belonging to another mythological type, actually exemplify the trickster. Ownership is a fundamental feature of human life. It extends well beyond material possessions to encompass our words, ideas, and actions. Many meme templates originate in the unrestricted web and are subsequently “normified” as they move to the restricted web where most of us encounter them. (shrink)

Efforts to reorient narratives about today’s socio-economic systems along humanistic or eco-friendly lines are built on core units of culture called memes. This paper explores the memes used by progressive socio-economic initiatives to assess whether they are consistently and powerfully deployed, using the aspirational statements of 126 different initiatives, sorted into nine categories. The memes used by these initiatives demonstrate lack of consistency and lack of potentially resonant memes overall. Aspirational statements from both progressive and conservative think tanks are then (...) compared to see whether their messaging is consistently developed in their aspirational statements. Results indicate that memes associated with the neoliberal narrative are considerably more consistently used by conservative think tanks than is any coherent or consistent messaging by progressive think tanks, a finding that becomes more powerful when two- and three-word meme sets are considered. (shrink)

This article argues for a clearer framework of internet-based “memes”. The science of memes, dubbed ‘memetics’, presumes that memes remain “copying units” following the popularisation of the concept in Richard Dawkins’ celebrated work, The Selfish Gene (1976). Yet Peircean semiotics and biosemiotics can challenge this doctrine of information transmission. While supporting a precise and discursive framework for internet memes, semiotic readings reconfigure contemporary formulations to the – now-established – conception of memes. Internet memes can and should be conceived, then, as (...) habit-inducing sign systems incorporating processes involving asymmetrical variation. So, drawing on biosemiotics, Tartu-Moscow semiotics, and Peircean semiotic principles, and through a close reading of the celebrated 2011 Internet meme Rebecca Black’s Friday, this article proposes a working outline for the definition of internet memes and its applicability for the semiotic analysis of texts in new media communication. (shrink)

Dawkins's concept of the meme pool, essentially equivalent to Popper's World 3, is considered as an expression in modern terms for what Averroës knew as the active intellect, an immortal entity feeding into, or even creating, the passive intellect of consciousness. A means is thus provided for reconciling a materialist Darwinian view of the universe with a conception of nonpersonal immortality. The meme pool/active intellect correspondence provides a strong basis for regarding science as a communal enterprise producing enrichment (...) of the meme pool and expansion of consciousness. It also emphasizes the virtues of memetic conservation in relation to vanishing cultures. (shrink)

It is common in the history of science to try to extend an idea first demonstrated in one domain into others. Sometimes the extension is literal, and sometimes it is frankly metaphorical. Sometimes, however, when an extension is claimed to be literal, it is far from easy to see that it is. If an extension does not make use of entities and mechanisms involved in the original domain, and introduces novel entities and mechanisms, then it is not unreasonable to doubt (...) the claim of its authors that it is a literal extension of a well-established theory. IT is, therefore, not surprising that many who accept that the cultural transmission of information is unique to out species nevertheless balk at Dawkins's and Dennett's contention that there are units of cultural evolution, called 'memes', which can be used to explain the development and diversity of human culture, and whose survival is explicable in terms of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Our aim in this paper is to argue that scepticism about Dawkins's and Dennett's proposal is indeed justified; though it of course does not follow that there is not another way of explaining human culture in evolutionary terms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Minds, Memes, and MultiplesStephen R. L. Clark (bio)AbstractMultiple Personality Disorder is sometimes interpreted as evidence for a radically pluralistic theory of the human mind, judged to be at odds with an older, monistic theory. Older philosophy, on the contrary, suggests that the mind is both plural (in its sub-systems or personalities) and unitary (in that there is only one light over all those lesser parts). Talk of gods and (...) demons has been a way of arranging elements of human mind and motivation. The one light, or center, is something which requires mental discipline to discover rather than being immediately obvious. This indeed is what even Descartes (sometimes blamed for introducing the notion of a simple, transparent self) really intended. Discovering or uncovering the Self is a psychotherapeutic as well as a philosophical imperative.Keywordsconsciousness, gods, Multiple Personality Disorder, passivity, thought alienationMultiple Personality 1The phenomena popularly identified as evidence of “multiple personality disorder” are strangely attractive. The stories suggest that those who provide, who are, the evidence for this disorder are usually in acute distress, but those who wish to believe in it find the idea almost exhilarating. Most of us would rather wish to think that we had undeveloped possibilities, that it would be exciting to be a married academic today, a celibate bus-driver tomorrow and a teenage hooligan on Sundays. The impulse to put aside our duties, or our habits, can be a powerful one, and only the sober thought that we would not, after all, succeed in keeping our lives separate keeps us single. The notion that there are people who take the risk, that our bodies could house a multitude, is one we would wish to believe. At the same time, we wish to remember that such divisions bring their own problems, and as easily suspect that those who apparently succeed in dividing themselves up must have suffered serious trauma in the past, and be plagued by missed appointments and self-hatred in the present. Some of us believe that “multiple personality” reveals a truth about us all, that none of us is actually the simple, heroic self that we pretend: “the self” is only an occasionally concordant swarm of impulses, easily divided. Others of us suspect that it is a wish to avoid responsibility, and guilt, that causes some of us to pretend not to be the selves that actually we are (see Rycroft 1987).On earlier occasions (notably Clark 1991b), I have myself expressed some doubt about reports of Multiple Personality Disorder, and suggested that they should be seen as fictions or dramatic representations (whether by the patient or the reporter) which should not be judged as “true” or “false,” but rather as “interesting” or “pernicious.” Stephen Braude, in a recent excellent book, seems at first to side with the true believers: it is absurd, he suggests, not to believe the many reports of fugue, discordance and fully developed multiples (Braude 1991; see also Wilkes 1984, [End Page 21] Brennan 1990). Maybe a few such reports are over-credulous: it would not be surprising that the occasional clever criminal successfully pretended not to know what an alien other did with his body. But there are, he says, too many independent records to disbelieve, and not only the distant stories of Miss Beauchamp (Prince 1908) or Eve (Thigpen & Cleckley 1954, 1957). Since the 1970s the number of reported cases has been rising again. It may be that some, many, or all the cases are artifacts, in the sense that the doctor’s expectations helped to produce or develop the varied personalities: “when a client walks into the therapist’s office and sits down, the expectation framework of the therapist immediately comes into play” (Crabtree 1985, 211; see also Hawthorn 1983). But the evidence is also compatible with the thought that psychotherapeutic fashion now allows the therapist to notice, rather than invent, the phenomena. Multiples often wish to conceal their condition, it is said, and only observers alerted to the possibility will notice them. Conscious or half-conscious role-playing, which would perhaps be less philosophically interesting, cannot explain more than a few of the cruder cases.In short... (shrink)

The meme is a recently coined name for an old idea: one that explains how culture evolves through a process of inheritance involving bits of information. A meme is thus considered to be analogous to a gene as the unit of cultural, as opposed to genetic, evolution. Some memeticists believe that inheritance is enough to define replication. This article also uses the term ‘imitation’ in the broad sense. However, this is not a definition of imitation which social psychologists (...) would accept. For most psychologists, imitation involves observation of a behavioural model — a figure conspicuously absent when reading a text. This article demonstrates that replication must be something more than just the inheritance of information. The question then is whether cultural reproduction of any type fulfils the criteria for replication. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractAn effort is made to frame memes within a human evolutionary context in which memes are complex emotion-related tools of enhanced learning and spread of language, art, culture and technology. The basic idea is that any information can become a meme if emotions are evoked in a recipient. The evolution of human brain with memetic capabilities thus produced modern humans.

The authors seek to contribute to the existing discussion of the communicative function of political memes by bringing into discussion political memes used by opposition leaders in the 2018 Russian presidential election campaigns as examples of memes being purposefully deployed in targeted political communications. Specifically, they focus on Navalny’s use of the ‘yellow duck’ meme. Drawing on the existing research of memes’ mythological properties, the authors claim that the combination of dialogue and conflict as two main functions entailed in (...) the political meme is a likely key element that increases the popularity of a meme and makes it viral. The discussion of concrete examples is preceded by a discussion that contextualizes the study of a political meme within the field of communication studies as a device that offers clarity in the chaotic flow of information, is constructed by both addresser and the addressee and serves as an effective tool for promoting ideologies. (shrink)

Memes are hypothetical cultural units passed on by imitation; although nonbiological, they undergo Darwinian selection like genes. Cognitive study of multimodular human minds undermines memetics: unlike in 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. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:VIOLENT MEMES AND SUSPICIOUS MINDS: GIRARD'S SCAPEGOAT MECHANISM IN THE LIGHT OF EVOLUTION AND MEMETICS Guömundur Ingi Markússon Reykjavik, Iceland The present article is an attempt to bring mimetic theory into dialogue with certain evolutionary approaches to human culture, i.e., evolutionarypsychology and memetics. That which immediately suggests a consonance between these approaches is a shared concern for the fundamental aspects ofhuman culture, or "fundamental anthropology." My discussion aims at (...) reconsidering Girard's startling insight concerning the significance of scapegoating in the formation of human culture, ritual and myth—or, in short, his concept of the scapegoat mechanism. Two alternative approaches will be explored: (1) On the basis of evolutionary psychology, scapegoating is considered as a cognitive side-effect; (2) with reference to memetics, it is suggested that the scapegoat mechanism is a memetic parasite. The former account is an interpretation ofPascal Boyer's ideas about group mentality and fundamentalist violence in his recent book ReligionExplained(2001). The latter consideration is inspired byTerrence W. Deacon's concept of language evolution and symbolic reference in his book The Symbolic Species (1997). It should be emphasized at the outset that neither Boyer nor Deacon are concerned with scapegoating and, needless to say, the application and interpretation oftheir ideas is entirely my own. 1. The Scapegoat Mechanism as a Cognitive Side Effect The following is an attempt to formulate a cognitive account of scapegoating based on Pascal Boyer's ideas about fundamentalism (2001, 292ff). Guömundur Ingi Markússon89 1.1. The Coalitional Reasoning ofthe Social Mind Boyer's theory of religion is firmly rooted in evolutionary psychology (2001, 118, passim)} A key concept in evolutionary psychology is the environment ofevolutionary adapteäness (EEA) which is centered around the claim that our cognitive apparatus evolved in response to ecological problems faced by our ancestors in the Pleistocene period (which lasted from ca. 2 million-10,000 years ago). In other words, the cognition of modern humans is geared to the ancestral environments of our huntergatherer past. The key issue in evolutionary psychology is to gain insight into the adaptive problems faced by our ancestors, and figure out the necessary cognitive capabilities needed to solve them. The resulting models of how the mind works can then be tested experimentally. Evolutionary psychologists also emphasize the áomain specificity of our psychological mechanisms, i.e., in simple terms, that our mind is a collection of specialized mechanisms wrought by natural selection to deal with specific features of our environment, such as detecting predators, keeping track of social relations, etc. In Boyer's account, the mixed stock of our evolutionary heritage includes a complex array of psychological mechanisms for keeping track ofa wide spectrum ofsocial relations, the social mina (2001, 122). An essential aspect of our social intelligence is "intuitive psychology" or a "theory of mind," i.e., seeing others as intentional agents, realizing what they are up to, what their beliefs and desires are, being able to predict their behavior, etc. According to evolutionary psychologists we are adapted for social exchange. We easily calculate the costs and benefits of our interactions with others. Experiments have shown that logical problems are much more transparent to people when presented as social exchange problems. In such cases, the logical rule in question is restated as a "check for cheaters" rule, i.e., the problem is to figure out whether people respect social conventions or not. Evolutionary psychologists interpretthese results to the effect that our cognition is geared to evaluate social exchange, and we have evolved a disposition to check for cheaters in social exchange situations (2001, 124f; Cosmides 1989; Cosmides & Tooby 1992).2 1 On evolutionary psychology, see Barkow et al. and Laland and Brown (ch. 5). 2 Cosmides, one of the pioneers of evolutionary psychology, characterizes "check for cheaters" thus: "cheating can be defined as the violation of a rule established, explicitly or implicitly, by acceptance ofa social contract. A social contract relatesperceived benefits to 90Violent Mêmes and Suspicious Minds Evaluation oftrust is essential to human interaction: "That humans depend on cooperation creates strategic problems, where the value (the expected benefit) of a particular move depends on whether someone else makes a particular move...." (2001, 125... (shrink)

Among the many vivid metaphors in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, one stands out. The understanding of how cumulative natural selection gives rise to adaptations is, Dennett says, like a “universal acid”—an idea so powerful and corrosive of conventional wisdom that it dissolves all attempts to contain it within biology. Like most good ideas, this one is very simple: Once replicators (material objects that are faithfully copied) come to exist, some will replicate more rapidly than others, leading to adaptation by natural selection. (...) The great power of the idea is that the resulting adaptations can be understood by asking what leads to efficient, rapid replication. Given that ideas seem to replicate, it is natural that Dawkins (1976, 1982), Dennett (1992), and others have explored the possibility of using this idea to explain cultural evolution. (shrink)

Christiansen & Chater's (C&C's) arguments share with memetics the ideas 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.

Cet article a pour objectif de repenser le rapport entre Descartes et Nietzsche au fil conducteur du statut cartésien de l’ ego. L’interprétation heideggérienne du lien entre Descartes et Nietzsche est pour cette raison fondamentale : en effet, en relevant à l’intérieur de ce rapport les signes du déploiement d’un Même qui a marqué l’époque de la métaphysique de la subjectivité, Heidegger définit un espace fondamental commun entre les deux philosophes. Cet espace, qui se développe à partir de l’émergence de (...) l’ ego, semble cependant déborder les limites constitutives de la métaphysique, lorsque Nietzsche retrouve dans le commencement cartésien une ouverture de l’ ego au sein du vivant interprété comme volonté de puissance. Sa démarche, loin de seulement le néantiser, vise à tra-duire l’ ego dans une dimension morphologique : l’ ego serait donc l’effet d’une organisation d’une agrégation de forces, qui prennent forme par le biais d’un centre en devenir. Le chemin de la déconstruction nietzschéenne suit des étapes bien précises : en premier lieu, reconduire le statut de l’ ego à une égologie de la substance ; en deuxième lieu, déplacer la certitude fondamentale du cogito vers un sentiment de l’ ego ( Ichgefühl ) qui se fixe comme semblant-à-être ; en troisième lieu dévoiler l’ipséité en tant qu’abîme, contre toute possibilité d’interpréter le corps comme sujet, ou mieux, comme fondement. C’est en ces termes que la constitution onto-théo-logique de la pensée cartésienne élaborée par Jean-Luc Marion permet de suivre le chemin nietzschéen : rapporter à l’ ego la manière d’être de toutes les substances est le point de départ d’une généalogie qui vise à dépasser l’ ego, tout en montrant sa nécessité à être, qui seule permet au vivant de dire je, c’est-à-dire d’être. (shrink)

Charles Darwin famously argued that that life on earth was not the product of intelligent design, and that it instead had arisen through the entirely natural of process of evolution via natural selection. Darwin’s theory of evolution (together with Mendel’s theory of genetics) now forms the foundation of all the biological sciences. Jurassic Park, however, raises an interesting question: just how does Darwin’s theory apply to lifeforms that are the products of explicit, intelligent design? In this essay, I examine cluster (...) of issues in the philosophy of biology that turn out to be central in figuring out the answer to this question. Among other things, I discuss the difficulties in drawing sharp boundaries biological systems and non-biological systems, and between the products of natural selection and those of artificial selection. I also consider more generally how the process of evolution via natural selection is changed when intelligent agents begin to directly manipulate genetic material. (shrink)

The general issue to be addressed in a Mandel Lecture is how (or whether) art promotes human evolution or development. I shall understand the term "art" in its broadest connotations--perhaps broader than the American Society for Aesthetics would normally recognize: I shall understand art to include all artifice, all human invention. What I shall say will a fortiori include art in the narrower sense, but I don't intend to draw particular attention to the way my thesis applies to it.

Biologist Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” by which he meant a unit of culture. Dan Dennett continued by defining a meme as a bunch of bits of information. This paper explores the “meme” and how it is semiotic, both in its technical sense and in its popular sense and explores how memes signify both in terms of classical semiotics and also in terms of post-structuralist thought.

Memes are an idea whose time has come, again, and again, and again, but which has never really made it beyond metaphor. Anthropologist Robert Aunger’s book 'The Electric Meme' is a new attempt to take it to the next stage, setting up a research program with proper models and theoretical entities. He succeeds partially, with some contributions to the logic of replication, but in the end, his proposal for the substrate of memes is a non-solution to a central problem (...) of memetics. (shrink)