>>65813183I have reviewed Dawkins for my Supervisor, together with Dennet's critique of it.
I am frankly surprised 80% of the people on 4chan talk about meme but are not redpilled about these theories.
Together with my supervisor, we decided to abandon this research path because it was tangential to our research and, although intriguing, bore little resemblance to evolution, so it didn't fall within our scope.
Basically, that's about it. But this is not to say memetics is pointless.
For some years, even an academic journal of memetics was published, but later suppressed because of lack of funds and interest.
I was sure this thing would sooner or later re-emerge, but let's say that, evolutionarily speaking memetics is a dead theory.
Of course this is not the same as saying that memes are a pointless object of study.
But, frankly speaking, the proponents of the definition of "memes" have failed to make it different from a definition that ALREADY EXISTS in philosophical jargon: i.e. the definition of idea.
Namely, in order to make meme theory work you have to prove that meme is not just another fashionable and in vogue way to label "ideas". You have to show that there is a case for memes and memes are not just another way to talk about "ideas".
All history of philosophy is drenched with theories of ideas, ideology, how ideas spread, how they are hosted by brains, how they are multiplied, how they are implemented through manipulation of environment, how they are communicated, spread, etc.
So, frankly, the reason we abandoned memetics wasn't just because, after careful analysis, it bore little resemblance to evolutionary theory.
We also abandoned it because WTF, it is just another label for "ideas" (or eidolons, or whatever they were called back in the days).
I'm sorry for OP...
>>65811247If you want to introduce a new entity in my scientific ontology, you have to prove "memes" are a new kind of beast, and not a refurbishment of a concept we already possess.
