Daniel Dennett: Memes 101 | How Cultural Evolution Works | Big Think

Memes 101 | How Cultural Evolution Works

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We are what we are because of genes; we are who we are because of memes. Philosopher Daniel Dennett muses on an idea put forward by Richard Dawkins in 1976.Ever wondered where the word ‘meme’ comes from? Philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett explains the term, coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, and its effects on our lives and history. How did we, as a species, become what we are – or more relevantly who we are? Natural selection and genetic evolution have made our physical bodies, but we are so much more than a collection of cells. We are also a conscious community, with language, music, cooking, art, poetry, dance, rituals, and humor. Dennett explains how these behaviors are the product of our cultural evolution. Memes are cultural replicators that spread like viruses, and only the most advantageous – or "the fittest" – of them survive. Daniel Dennett's most recent book is From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds.
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DANIEL DENNETT:

Daniel C. Dennett is the author of Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, Breaking the Spell, Freedom Evolves, and Darwin's Dangerous Idea and is University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He lives with his wife in North Andover, Massachusetts, and has a daughter, a son, and a grandson. He was born in Boston in 1942, the son of a historian by the same name, and received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard in 1963. He then went to Oxford to work with Gilbert Ryle, under whose supervision he completed the D.Phil. in philosophy in 1965. He taught at U.C. Irvine from 1965 to 1971, when he moved to Tufts, where he has taught ever since, aside from periods visiting at Harvard, Pittsburgh, Oxford, and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

His first book, Content and Consciousness, appeared in 1969, followed by Brainstorms (1978), Elbow Room (1984), The Intentional Stance (1987), Consciousness Explained (1991), Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995), Kinds of Minds (1996), and Brainchildren: A Collection of Essays 1984-1996. Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness, was published in 2005. He co-edited The Mind's I with Douglas Hofstadter in 1981 and he is the author of over three hundred scholarly articles on various aspects on the mind, published in journals ranging from Artificial Intelligence and Behavioral and Brain Sciences to Poetics Today and the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.

Dennett gave the John Locke Lectures at Oxford in 1983, the Gavin David Young Lectures at Adelaide, Australia, in 1985, and the Tanner Lecture at Michigan in 1986, among many others. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987.

He was the Co-founder (in 1985) and Co-director of the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts, and has helped to design museum exhibits on computers for the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Computer Museum in Boston.
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TRANSCRIPT:

Daniel Dennett: Richard Dawkins coined the term meme in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. And what he proposed was that human culture was composed, at least in part, of elements, units that were like genes in that they were copied and copied and copied and copied and copied. And it was the differential copying, the differential replication of these items, these memes that accounted for the excellent design of so much in human culture. And this is a very repugnant and offensive idea to many people, especially in the humanities. They wanted to hang onto the idea of the God like genius creator who out of sheer conscious brilliant comprehension makes all these wonderful things, whether they're poems or bridges or whatever. He was saying in effect well yes people do make amazing things, but if you look at the projects in detail you see that they couldn't do that if they hadn't filled their head with all these informational things, which are like genes, which are also information. But they're not fast down through the germ line. They're not passed down through the sperm and the egg. You don't get them with your genes. You get them from the ambient culture, from your parents, from your peers, from the society in which you're raised. It requires perception.

[Punkledunk]

The memes, Jack! Memes are the DNA of the soul!

[davidvino]

A lot of people in the comments don't understand that this video refers to memes as a "cultural gene" that Richard Dawkins talks about in his book, not the internet definition of memes. These two are separate, different things.

[drlisp]

why do people draw such a border between Richard dawkins' definition of memes and Internet memes? Internet memes fit perfectly into his definition.

[InMaTeofDeath]

290 views. 29 likes. 0 dislikes. Shame such beauty can't last forever....

[Brazbrah]

I really liked the editing on "dog"

[reinforcedpenisstem]

The misunderstanding of the term meme by the younger viewers is itself a cultural meme, which they're now propagating.

[CristalMediumBlue]

The instructions to make cars are memes. The cars themselves are the "proteins".
The instruction to make a hydroelectric power plant is a huge meme that is present in almost every civilized society, the hydroelectric plant itself is the "protein". if that is true, we are basically living inside a huge living organism.

[thepremiumpedant]

I would disagree with what he said about the humanities - a far too simplistic understanding of critical theory. The concept of the "death of the author" was already established by the time of Dawkins' book on memes.

[tbristol]

I'm going to have to disagree with Mr.Dennett.

The idea that language can serve as the medium of ideas that transcends generations is, without a doubt, astonishing; However, to say this, is to also neglect the influence of real world circumstances that shape and mold how we percieve the world- which ultimately determine how cultural will be manipulated and passed down from generation to generation.

These "memes" that Mr.Dennett refers to, only share a continuituity throughout society to the extent that the underlying propietor of the meme still exists. An anti-slavery "meme" would render itself useless due to its abolition in the 19th century( except in belgium until the 20th century). Its underlying meme of freedom, liberty, and peace however, still carry on and manifest themselves through everyday experiences.

I may be looking at this the wrong way, but from my understanding, I believe our perception of the real world and culture are much more influential than the themes that lie behind them.

[squidbooty]

MGS2 Sons of Liberty, MGS4 Guns of the Patriots, and Metal Gear Rising FINALLY MAKE SENSE

[alyusufb]

is the "scientific method" a meme? and when it was "invented", was it actually "established" for the first time or was actually "copied into our human culture for the first time" .... the second options obviously suggests that it has always been their. It seems logical to me that the existence of the "analytical power" of our brains which is obviously part of our culture can not be explained by a simple copy of "meme". there has to be a more consistent and "general way" method for growing human cultures. last statement does not seem to be a good conclusion "piece of engineering and nobody invented it" because there has to be a first copy :)
thanks dr. Dennett, very insightful video!

[AdrianBourneArt]

DNA isn’t the just the Ink. DNA is the ink and the letters. There is no other way to get the letters. Saying you can recite the poem as well as writing it down destroys Dennett’s own analogy.

Until Memetics shows some sort of predictive property, it isn’t science.

[jeff-onedayatatime.]

After reading one of Dr. Dennett's books, I now see what he's talking about, and I follow him 100% on this video. And I find he has a way of explaining things that just makes good damn sense. :)

[rhdan]

I think the comments section gave me cancer.

[mikesnelling]

Memes? Does he mean ideas?
(Richard Dawkins merely used the idea of a meme as a thought experiment or analogy to explain replication and has been unwilling to take the idea further)

[NonAbsoluteAbsolutisim]

Meme is a meme and probably has always existed since consciousness.
Just happens to have been recognised and named lately.
Now that it is recognised its evolution shall be interesting.
How many species of memes are there?
We do live in interesting times.

[ShawnRavenfire]

So useless cultural memes are akin to viruses, and internet memes are said to go "viral."  Appropriate.

[AlvaroALorite]

3:50 false. In Chinese, intonation changes meaning. But I think the statement you gave stays true even though you'd have to adjust for this by saying the digitation includes both phonemes and intonation inflections.

[nikitashaitan]

I just read Dokinz’s Egoistical Gene and i have a ton of questions towards memes.

Why are we sure animals don’t teach their youngsters to speak? (Ducks have different noises for different breeds and genders) Why are we sure caddisflies build their homes based on what their genes tell them? Could those actually be memes? Like telepathy. Why are we sure humans don’t replicate knowledge through pregnancy if we do replicate instincts and these are somehow are in genes told by science? What’s the actual difference between subconscious and knowledge that we replicate and so not replicate?
Did the way humans communicate created a verbal form of memes so we don’t replicate this knowledge through genes like we crave nicotine after smoking so the brain stops producing nicotine because humans take nicotine from other sources?

Meme theory storm my brain and i can’t find answers.

(But if the answers are as good as Dokinz’s answers in Egoistical Gene, i’d wait for actual scientific research, nor theories based on your own theories and beliefs like Richard has through the whole book)

[w]

The word “meme” predates the internet by nearly 2 decades. The word “meme” has changed like a mutated gene