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Dear JohnB, Hans and Doug,
Firstly, JohnB great question, something I've been thinking about recently. Secondly, as Doug pointed out, virtually all analogies (are by definition!) incomplete and unreliable. They provide a partial mapping between any two ideas / domains / memes (:P).
What Hans writes below resonates with my interpretation of memes, and in terms of characterizing what a meme is (to respond to JohnB's original question), I would suggest that they are a subtype of theory (along the lines of microtheory in Cyc), though this not directly capture behavioural memes. As various dictionaries suggest something similar to the following definition:
- An element of a culture or behavior that may be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, esp. imitation.
- An image, video, etc. that is passed electronically from one Internet user to another.
We might be tempted to suggest that there are at least the (1) conceptual meme (e.g. "human rights") and (2) behaviour meme (e.g. "chimpanzee using stick to fish for ants"). We can arguably still capture the behaviour memes by invoking a theory of action, though in the latter case, we might be assigning belief states to agents which may not explicitly utilize such theories. Though it seems that imitation of behaviour is not necessarily present in all animals, and those with "higher cognitive function" seem to possess this ability, perhaps lending weight to simply capturing a meme as a subtype of (micro)theory.
Moreover, I don't think that it is useful to reduce a meme or to a word or even a single concept. It's an (unstated) assumption, but memes and the concepts they refer to only gain currency and meaning as part of some broader theory. For the chimp that copies its mother in using a stick to fish for ants, the meme of "use stick to fish for ants" relies on a broader (previously accepted) theory of "eating". It is nonsensical on its own.
To be clear, I'm using theory in this sense to refer to some system_of_meaning, possibly a part of some ontology, but at least, as a set of beliefs / assumptions / claims about some things in the world. Whether said beliefs can be stated explicitly by the agent who holds the belief is not necessary(?), as we can substitute whether said agent would behave in the same way (given a tolerance) when presented with a particular situation. Such an assumption is often the basis for much work in animal (and pre-linguistic human) cognitive science work. For example, the chimp fishing for ants implies that the chimp believes that the insertion of the stick will yield ants on the stick, or similarly an infant attending to some scene implies that they believe it is of interest [1].
To further expand on this point, Hans' paragraphs below discuss some ways in which memes propagate, namely by "mental seduction or 'resonance' with native brain patterns", whilst offering some examples of pernicious memes (the "link" between autism and vaccines, astrology etc.). The mechanism by which a meme can propagate from one individual (or an information resource such as book or website) to another, requires that the recipient of the meme M, have the adequate "background" B (to use Searle's shorthand) for the meme to be situated in.
In this characterization, B is intended to denote some (sub)set of beliefs in an agent A that is capable of interpreting the content of the meme M. In this respect, for M to successfully be accepted by A (and hence added to B), it must in some way cohere, or at least be self-rationalizable by A onto B. Note that this is a weaker condition than B_new = B union M, since in many cases, M may contradict elements of B and I would hope that it is well established for this community that people can hold multiple inconsistent beliefs [2][3].
If we wish to model this more generally, let B_all be the union of all belief sets {B1, ... , Bn} held by some agent (where agent A attends to or accesses some Bi according to some function of their environment / situational awareness / mood, etc.) Given this, we can probably characterize how M relates to some Bi held by said agent and classify a variety of responses in terms of:
- whether A accepts/rejects M,
- and what modifications (if any) A makes to B_all.
To some extent, we could reuse work on belief revision from AGM [4] to characterize some subset of the possible reactions and modifications.
In cases of cognitive dissonance or other mental somersaults that a human agent may undertake to reconcile M and Bi, we'd need to extend AGM to account for the various psychological responses, cognitive biases and so on that the human may choose to respond with. While it'd be a lot of work, it's certainly doable to catalog at least many of these states and biases, and use these to create an account of meme propagation.
If we wish to go further, the susceptibility of person A (as opposed to a more general agent) to accept/reject some meme, is as Hans point out, subject to the work done by propagandists, marketers, sophists and other students of persuasion. You'd have to consider the source of the meme, the person's attitude/trust to said source, whether the meme is prevalent (accepted/rejected) for which social circles for said person, and appealing again to AGM, whether the acceptance of the meme would require the revision of "core" beliefs in said person.
But I suppose most of the above is mainly about how a meme can be propagated / transmitted in a culture amongst agents by other agents or information resources.
To the extent that characterizing a meme as a subtype of (micro)theory, as being sparse, we might want to articulate additional properties by which we would distinguish a meme from other micro-theories, but this seems a rather subjective endeavour. It seems that a meme reduces to a type of theory, but perhaps have other distinguishing characteristics as to what makes "global warming is a conspiracy by thousands of scientists" into a meme as opposed to just some theory.
[1] Meltzoff, A. N., & Brooks, R. (2007). Eyes wide shut: The importance of eyes in infant gaze following and understanding other minds. In R. Flom, K. Lee, & D. Muir (Eds.), Gaze following: Its development and significance (pp. 217-241).
[2] Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. [3] Festinger, L. (1959). Some attitudinal consequences of forced decisions. Acta Psychologica, 15, 389-390.
[4] Carlos E. Alchourrón, Peter Gärdenfors & David Makinson (1985). On the Logic of Theory Change: Partial Meet Contraction and Revision Functions. Journal of Symbolic Logic 50 (2):510-530.
On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 7:33 PM, Hans Polzer <hpolzer@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Good observation, Rich. And along those same lines, the notion of meme has a connotation of seductiveness and associated self-perpetuation even if it has no obvious material benefit to the those adopting the meme (and sometimes even negative benefit, i.e., real harm). That’s why the Wikipedia description makes references to “earworms” and compares memes to viruses. A meme is also often a concept that takes a long time and lots of resources before it can fulfill its promise or be proven wrong. If the timeframe required for the concept to be accepted (through mental seduction or “resonance” with native brain patterns) is shorter than this results timeframe (or the results are difficult to discern), a meme can propagate through a population and survive despite negative benefits to the adopters. Ponzi scheme, anyone? Astrology? Vaccines cause autism?
“Too good to be true” and “BS filters” and “reputation management” are weapons in the human mental and social arsenal that work against harmful memes, even if not always successfully. Arguably, this forum, in part, serves a similar purpose in a constrained domain. Interestingly, so-called “brain-teasers” often rely on appealing to resonance with pre-existing mental patterns that lead one to look at the problem the wrong way; i.e., purposeful misdirection. Kind of a negative or “anti-meme” that pre-disposes you to be puzzled by the brain-teaser.
This is also the domain of propaganda – deliberately creating memes that will gain traction with the target audience to help achieve the objectives of the meme creator. This is not necessarily bad (or good), even though propaganda is usually thought of in negative terms (i.e., lying). Good messages don’t automatically propagate by themselves, so society often engages in active propaganda to help attain what many consider a desirable goal (think, say, obesity, or cigarette smoking). The notion of memes provides some structure for studying, analyzing, and creating such messaging campaigns in a hopefully more effective way with more predictable outcomes, as well as countering memes that may well be deemed as harmful. Of course, nothing could counter the “Curse of the Bambino” meme besides an actual Red Sox World Series win! J
Hans
Speaking of words, memes and things (entities), George Carlin has a great video on Youtube about how words are used to disguise uncomfortable facts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54SQtcvKtsc&feature=em-subs_digest
Among the bon mots,
“Rape victims are unwilling sperm recipients”;
“If fire fighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight?”
-The point is that the intent of the speaker is every bit as important in selecting the words or memes to transmit as the logical and lexical definitions. Language is about many other things than just logic and lexics.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper EnglishLogicKernel.com Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
> You can call all "words" as "things".
DF: Needless to say, the word, "thing", has scores of definitions. The
normal formal ontology use of the term is the one that informs the words
"anything", "something", "everything", and "nothing". If one says that
"nothing" has a certain property P, but you define words as not being
"things", then a word having the property P would not falsify the claim
that nothing has property P.
In formal ontologies, the concept "thing" (e.g., Cyc's #$Thing) is the
universal set -- anything that the ontology can refer to (including #$Thing)
is an instance of it.
PK : What are you saying about nothing? If word is a thing, a string, and nothing is an empty string?? That statement is still true
> And all things as words at your discretion.
DF : Not at all. Flower petals, animal species, and thing itself are not words,
although they may have various words or strings of words to denote them.
PK: See this again mixes the levels of abstraction. If you look at language as a first level of abstraction, the “flower” is a word used to represent the object – flower.
Why can not we keep it simple and use the exiting concepts, and layers of abstraction the way they are?
On Wed, April 10, 2013 14:07, Pavithra wrote:
> Dr. Hayes
> Based on wikipedia definition of meme,
Wikipedia should never be considered as a reference. Use the document
that is the source of whatever Wikipedia claims. For definitions, go to a
good dictionary.
> it can be modeled as a concept. It is a social concept.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
Wikipedia references the Meriam Webster Dictionary's definition, "an idea,
behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meme
Of course, the idea is far more than that. Dawkins proposed a theory
of how they operate and others have modified and expanded the
theory (creating the field of memetics). A cultural ontology could have
the basic concept at a broad level and have multiple theories of how
the property of memes in theory knowledge bases (or ontologies).
> You can call all "words" as "things".
Needless to say, the word, "thing", has scores of definitions. The
normal formal ontology use of the term is the one that informs the words
"anything", "something", "everything", and "nothing". If one says that
"nothing" has a certain property P, but you define words as not being
"things", then a word having the property P would not falsify the claim
that nothing has property P.
In formal ontologies, the concept "thing" (e.g., Cyc's #$Thing) is the
universal set -- anything that the ontology can refer to (including #$Thing)
is an instance of it.
> And all things as words at your discretion.
Not at all. Flower petals, animal species, and thing itself are not words,
although they may have various words or strings of words to denote them.
> But defies the English language, & meaning of the
> word "thing" and how it is described in wikipedia.
Wikipedia's disambiguation page gives the first meaning of the word
"thing" as "Object (philosophy)", which page states that "Charles S. Peirce
defines the broad notion of an object as anything that we can think or talk
about.
We can think or talk about words, so they would be PhilosopicalObjects.
So would memes (or anything else you mention!).
> Wikipedia has documented meaning of the word "word" and
> "thing" as follows.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThingÂ
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word
> Using definitions of those two words, I can not derive that all words are
> things in a logical manner.
?? Huh? Are there words that one can not talk about?
>However I can say that nouns are things.
The referents of verbs, adverbs, and adjectives are also things, in that
they can be talked about. One can also talk about prepositions, but
if they don't have referents, then their referents are not things.
> But am not the authority on wikepedia or English language. So it is at
> your discretion, ( In other words, you are the adviser).
I advise that word is a type of thing, which means that any instance of
word is an instance of thing. Wikipedia is also a thing.
> However, In traditional modeling, for example relational and Object
> Oriented world such assumptions leads to many to many relationships and
> causes infinite loops in programming.
Programming languages allow for infinite loops. Just because the concept
of thing is an instance of thing, your reasoning engine does not have to
follow the turtles all the way down. One should program to avoid infinite
loops.
> Who is "us" ?? Us is Ontolog group and OWL, UML modelers..
Many in the Ontolog group find OWL very restrictive.
> About Darwinism, As you said, DNA and genetic engineering did not exist
I presume you mean human knowledge of DNA.
> at the time of definition. Felidae
> & Canidae or Cats and Dogs can not breed an offspring and it is
> fatal if they do so, since they belong to different species
I assume that the word "fatal" referred to being fatal to a continued
line of descent. There are many cases in which animals of different
species of the same genus can breed to produce sterile offspring.
> Who knows what happens in the future or happened millions of
> years ago. I speculate about such things. I have no proof one way or
> the other at hand.
As species are diverging, members of different subspecies are less
likely to produce fertile (or any) offspring. It is certainly possible
to have 3 subspecies (S1, S2, and S3) diverging from a parent species
S, such that a member of S1 may sometimes produce a fertile offspring
with a member of S2, and a member of S2 may sometimes produce a
fertile offspring with a member of S3, but no member of S1 may produce
a fertile offspring with a member of S3.
Sure, no one has proof. But we have good scientific theories that we
can state and model.
> (A Korsak looks like cross breed between a cat & a
> dog, I may call it a cat ).
The English term is corsac fox (or corsac); its scientific name is
Vulpes corsac. It is a kind of fox (Vulpes), which is a canine. You
may call it what you want, but it is not a feline.
> I will read or re-read the books that you suggested.
>
> Pavithra
> ________________________________
> From: Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx>
> To: Pavithra <pavithra_kenjige@xxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: [ontolog-forum] <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2013 11:35 AM
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Dennett on the Darwinism of Memes
>
>
> On Apr 10, 2013, at 8:15 AM, Pavithra wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> John Bottoms:
>> From a modeling perspective:
>>Â
>> ·    Languages are first level abstraction of real world
>> ·    Languages are _expression_ of the world, allows us to
>> express and communicate past, present, future, real and imaginary,
>> proven and unproven aspects of the world.
>
> But they are also in the actual world, and can be studied empirically like
> any other phenomenon.
>
>> * Words are parts of a language.
>> * Nouns are used to express "things" in English
As are verbs and adjectives.
>> language. Things - as in entities. ( Not all words are things. For
>> example, verbs are words, but not things)
> All words are things. Not all words *describe* things, maybe.
OK. Words such as prepositions don't describe things.
>> * Nouns are a subset of words.
>> * Memes are ideas / concepts, real or imaginary, proven or
>> unproven.
>> Question is : do we need to model meme??
> Who is "we" and what is being "modeled"?
>> My opinion : Concepts can be named with a name and modeled.
OWL users have taken the English word "concept" and made it a jargon
word. I find such use confusing and suggest avoiding such computer
language-specific use when not referring to OWL. The Compact Oxford
Dictionary's first definition of 'concept' is "an abstract idea" -- which
seems a good definition to me. The word comes from Latin 'conceptum' --
"something conceived".
>> At present we do not use the verbiage "meme" for it. Probably we
>> can use the name meme in the future.
The word 'meme' is part of a theory that many do not accept.
There is no need to commit to that theory. I suggest using the
word only when referring to the theory to which it is attached.
> My advice would be to only use the term if you have a pretty exact idea of
> what it is you are talking about, and document that understanding as
> carefully as you possibly can.
>> About Darwinism, Americans use the word Darwinism from a scientific
>> evolution point of view vs theological, god made us, changed us (
>> mutation) etc.
>
> American scientists use the term the same way other scientists do.
>
>>
>> Maxwell, & Dr. Steven.
>> Thanks for summarizing my gibberish writing. ( It was not scientific
>> feed back, it was more of a general discussion)
>> There is natural evolution due to mutation and then there is human
>> intervention for change.
>
> Until recently, the only intervention available was artificial
> *selection*, which follows the natural process but amplifies the effects.
>
>> Grafting & genetic engineering are human intervention. My point was
>> Darwinism did not include human intervention, or cross breeding among
>> subspecies.Â
>
> Darwin certainly considered cross-breeding and also human intervention in
> breeding (eg of dogs and farm animals, which he studied at great length: I
> recommend reading his "Origin of Species", it is a very readable work.) He
> did not, of course, consider genetic engineering, as genetics had not even
> been formulated when he was writing. I suspect he would have been
> delighted and fascinated to have known about genetics and DNA, but he did
> not have this pleasure.
>
>> You mentioned that his theory includes cross breeding among
>> subspecies??Â
>
> If animals can breed and produce fertile offspring, they are (by
> definition) the same species.
>
>>
>> However the following is not totally proven in all cases and is open for
>> speculation and there are ethical issues about genetic engineering. ( I
>> don;t want to go there)
>>    • crossing between different species is genetically fatal ..
>> Thanks,
>> Pavithra
>>
>>
>> From: John Bottoms <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2013 6:20 AM
>> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Dennett on the Darwinism of Memes
>>
>> Pavithra,
>>
>> I may not have remembered his wording correctly in the use of "word".
>> Also, it is a difficulty of linguistics that "thing" often gets used
>> when a better selection would be "entity". However, the audience
>> understood the intent of the question. Words come and go and likewise
>> memes come and go. They share some characteristics and there is a
>> shoot-from-the-hip impulse to put them in a lexicon or dictionary.
>>
>> Another view might be that memes are types of propositions that need to
>> be evaluated. They could be classified into "indeterminate" until they
>> are evaluated. Dennett does recognize that memes are "good" or "bad",
>> and I suppose we should accept that they can be resurrected. One theory
>> I have is that the term "meme" applies to atomic entities that have
>> particular attributes or properties that can be generalized or
>> rationalized. If that is true then we should be able to build
>> classifiers for memes. A question for exploration is whether that
>> property can be understood in a way that makes sense or is useful.
>>
>> Your view of giraffe evolution is referred to as Lamarckian inheritance
>> and it survives today only as a weakened theory.
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism)
>>
>> -John Bottoms
>>Â Concord, MA USA
>> On 4/9/2013 8:39 PM, Pavithra wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> Words are not things. "Words" representation things if they are
>>> nouns. memes are ideas that spreads from person to person??
>>>
>>> Darwinism and theory of evolution explains how living organisms evolve
>>> over few generations according to the needs/usage etc. According to
>>> him Giraffe has long neck, because they keep stretching their neck to
>>> eat branches and eventually it caused a genetic mutation to aid
>>> survival -- a process known as "natural selection." These beneficial
>>> mutations are passed on to the next generation.
>>>
>>>Â Darwin does not take cross pollination ( for lack of better word)Â
>>> of plants and animals and between different species that happens in one
>>> generation and produce offspring of blended types into
>>> consideration. A Lion and Tiger may have a Liger for a child. You
>>> can actually cut a branch of one fruit tree and put it another fruit
>>> tree branch stub and tie it up and it may bear the fruit of the first
>>> tree kind.. There is all sorts of intervention that happens to change
>>> the way species of plants and animal world to evolve into something
>>> new and different not only by genetic mutation due to thousands of years
>>> of usage or need for survival but due to cross pollination. I know
>>> this is a thesis for genetic decoding not fiction.Â
>>>
>>> I still have to read the book listed below..
>>>
>>> Pavithra Â
>>>Â
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> From: John Bottoms <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>> To: [ontolog-forum] <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>> Sent: Tuesday, April 9, 2013 5:28 PM
>>> Subject: [ontolog-forum] Dennett on the Darwinism of Memes
>>>
>>> Daniel Dennett's next book will be out in a few weeks and I had the
>>> opportunity to hear him talk about how memes obey the tenets of
>>> Darwinism.
>>>
>>> The title of his book is, "Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for
>>> Thinking".
>>> (not available yet,
>>> http://www.amazon.com/Intuition-Pumps-Other-Tools-Thinking/dp/0393082067)
>>>
>>> His argument starts by asking if words are things. Then he argues that
>>> if words are things then we should consider memes as things also. He
>>> goes on to illustrate that memes follow the basic three principles of
>>> Darwinism.
>>>
>>> His arguments are compelling and I wonder where they belong in the
>>> grand
>>> ontologies of entities. Are memes a new construct, or do memes simply
>>> replicate a known construct?
>>>
>>> -John Bottoms
>>>Â FirstStar Systems
>>>Â Concord, MA USA
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