Deconstructing Dawkins
In looking at the work and influence of Richard Dawkins, I'm going to advance a number of hypotheses
regarding his work and the value of his contributions to a number of areas. These areas are interrelated in a certain way.
The interrelations and the underlying assumptions that govern the similarities and differences between
the different endeavors are necessary to those endeavors, and are expressed within Dawkins' work from
the beginning. Dawkins evangelism to the public of the work of evolutionary biology can really be
split into two sets of analogous, but different ideas. The first idea is expressed through the metaphor of
the “gene”, the second through the metaphor of the “meme”. While both metaphors have some validity
in explaining the results of different spheres of research, one does not imply the other, as Dawkins
appears to believe. The inference that the “gene” metaphor implies the “meme” metaphor is a result of an unquestioning assumption of two metaphysical ideas that underlie biology itself, the first being
“nature” as an entity and its extension to “human nature”, the second being the definition of human as
the “rational animal”. Dawkins' claim that his work is scientific is misleading, it is fundamentally metaphysical, as it deals with interpretation of natural science, rather than being natural science itself. Dawkins' concomitant claim that reductionist methodologies are appropriate to his work is misguided at best, and intentionally misleading at worst.
To look at the tenets expressed in the first metaphor, one has to immediately look at what is meant by
metaphor in this sense. A common mistake in reading Dawkins' work is that a gene is simply a literal,
physical phenomenon. Williams, by contrast, defines the gene as “any portion of chromosomal
material which potentially lasts for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection.”. This
would imply, in the simple reductionist account, that the human being exists in some fashion, in its full
completion, in the genetic material passed from parents to child. Dawkins is, of course, perfectly
within reason to rebuff critics who follow this reasoning, as exemplified in this quote that Dawkins
uses in his rebuttal to the authors of the book “Not in Our Genes”.:
"Sociobiology is a reductionist, biological determinist explanation
of human existence. Its adherents claim, first, that the details of
present and past social arrangements are the inevitable
manifestations of the specific action of genes."
Dawkins is within reason to compare this criticism with the following.
“I believe that Bach was a musical man. Therefore of course, being a good
reductionist, I must obviously believe that Bach’s brain was made of musical
atoms!”
It is, of course, ludicrous to think that someone who has had the influence of Dawkins is that naïve,
whatever one's views on materialist reduction, or one's interpretation of Sociobiology and Dawkins
work as deterministic, and in what sense it might imply determinism.
Unfortunately, in Dawkins' rebuttal of the book, he falls victim to propaganda techniques in order to make points that could have been made in other ways, and in doing so betrays his lack of understanding of his own project. Within the rebuttal Dawkins quotes one half of a sentence, which happens to contain two esoteric phrases that, while commonplace in philosophy, would not be familiar to the lay reader. He then triumphantly declares that it doesn't make sense. Firstly, how half a sentence is expected to make sense is unknown. Secondly, while the authors of the book do fall prey to using philosophical terminology when criticizing someone obviously ignorant of the meanings of the esoteric terms used, the full sentence is actually very meaningful and probably the most cogent criticism of Dawkins in the entire book.
“
" . . . First (interactionism) supposes the alienation of organism and the environment.... second, it accepts the ontological priority of the individual over the collectivity and therefore of the epistemological sufficiency of..." (emphasis mine).
There is no need to go on. This sort of writing appears to be intended to communicate nothing.” - Richard Dawkins, in "Sociobiology: the debate continues", New Scientist 24 January 1985.
While I am not going to defend the book “Not in Our Genes”, from the simple observation that ideology cannot be countered by a competing ideology, the meaning of the full sentence partly quoted by Dawkins in order to convince his readership that any dispute to his worldview is meaningless can be paraphrased as follows:
“Alienation” as a term here is a pointed criticism of Dawkins' notions of interactionism from the perspective of Biology itself, whereas Dawkins seems to read it as a purely ideological criticism. Biology can show no absolute differentiation between organisms and environment as they are far too intertwined. While “ontological priority” is an esoteric phrase, it is widely used in systems theory as well as philosophy, intending the notion that when a more comprehensive system arises out of a simpler system, the originating system loses its priority of viewpoint and becomes part of the more comprehensive system, a notion without which mathematics itself could not develop from its axiomatic foundations. It is inappropriately reductive, and dangerously ideological, to view a human being as a result of the genome, rather than viewing the genome as part of the completed human being, notwithstanding that the genome is part of the causal structure of human being. In like terms, as a social animal it can be demonstrated quite adequately that there is no such thing as an isolated human being with no societal involvement, as a genetically human animal, isolated from society, would not own the existential features that are associated with humanity. Society, then, as the more comprehensive system, does take priority in understanding over the individual. Finally, “epistemological sufficiency”, while esoteric in the context of a discussion with a layman or someone whose only background is in the natural sciences, can be explicated reasonably easily by noting that epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with methodology, and the addition of sufficiency simply indicates that the authors find the methodology of the natural sciences utilized by Dawkins to be insufficient on their own for a proper approach to his subject matter. It saddens me that someone who is so concerned with the misuse of scientific terminology by the proponents of such pseudorational endeavours as “Intelligent Design” would involve himself in such a cheap and easily seen through piece of sophistry to discredit a work which could easily be discredited in more appropriate ways. Despite recognizing the book's almost intolerably unquestioning ideological basis, Dawkins fails to address the single cogent criticism that the book offers, which is that viewing genes and memes as instances of replicators, and the organisms and societies in which they replicate as mere vehicles, attests meaning and purpose at the molecular level while removing it from the human and societal level, despite Dawkins' protests against attesting teleology and intentionality to the 'selfish gene'.
Dawkins' explication of the developments in evolutionary biology use the word gene in a
metaphorical rather than a material sense. Both in order to be concise, and to explain the results of biological theory to a wider public, the word gene is a short form for the concept of a transmittable, meaningful unit of information from parent to child in a given species. Meaningful, in the sense I have just used it, should not imply teleology or intentionality. It indicates that the unit of information in question is self-contained and robust enough to remain intact through sufficient generations as to influence selection processes. That this information could, and in some cases is, transmittable without being contained in the genome is part of its metaphorical nature. Dawkins is evidently of the opinion that explaining information transmittal between parent and child within a species in another manner is both difficult and confusing to a public not well versed in biology. While this is debatable, it doesn't necessarily call into question the usefulness of the metaphor. Most people without a background in biology assume that a gene is a specific molecule or molecules in some kind of unique arrangement. While the reality of genetic material is not that simple, the model suffices to predict most of the effects of what we term “genetic influence”, and as a result is an acceptable reductive model, in the same way that simplified models of the atom suffice to confer the implications of the full concept without complications more suitable for the advanced student.
That the completed human animal is at least partly the result of the information contained in the genetic material, and that this genetic material evolved through the development of the different types of life throughout the history of the planet, is not in question in this paper. Evolutionary biology utilizes many examples of justified reduction in the development of theories as to the mechanisms involved in the fact of evolution. What this implies for the founding of new endeavors such as Sociobiology, Evolutionary Psychology, and Neuropsychology is not immediately clear, however. Dawkins is not so simplistic as to make a direct leap from genetic material to functioning mind, with some sort of rigid set of brain structures in the middle to allow the physical brain to directly produce all the possible psychological effects experienced by actual human beings, but numerous 'researchers' in the fields that have sprung up in the wake of genetic biology do make such naïve and unsubstantiated claims on a fairly regular basis, as the following Neuropsychological account of the origin of religion and spirituality would have it:
“... it is likely that such experiences become possible with the development of various structures in the brain of early primates and eventually homo sapiens. The concatenation of religiogenic brain mechanisms in homo sapiens appears to have been accompanied historically by an explosion of religious traditions that have continued to permeate human societies since prehistoric times.”
– Handbook of the Psychology of Spirituality and Religion, edited by Raymond F. Paloutzian and Crystal L. Park.
Any reasonable critic, of which I'm sure Dawkins would “stand up and be counted”, of this type of
misappropriation of the ideas of evolutionary biology would have to include the following notes. The first statement begins with “... it is likely”, and the second includes the phrase “appears to have been”. This kind of unprovable speculation has no justification in current knowledge of the structures and functionality of the brain. Later in the text the author proposes that “the causal operator is likely of critical concern in the development of religious and spiritual concepts and experiences.”, the causal operator itself “accounts for the causal sequencing of elements of reality as abstracted from sense perceptions”. That nobody has so far actually discovered a “causal operator” is apparently of no consequence to the author in question, nor to the editors of the journal in which the paper was published. In the first two sentences quoted above, likewise, the author has no justification other than pure speculation that these “various structures” either exist in the human brain, or that they developed in early primates. The phrase “concatenation of religiogenic brain mechanisms” is more meaningless and self important than the quotes Dawkins criticizes in his rebuttal to “Not in Our Genes” (what does concatenation, a mathematical and linguistic term, have to do with brain mechanisms?). The inferred implications for societal development cross over into the space of Sociology rather than Neuropsychology, describe an unprovable continuity of religious ideas since “prehistoric times”, and expound a purely ideological stance that religion is somehow an error in evolution, rather than a societal development of human beings. The term “religiogenic” is reminiscent of the term “schizogenic mother” that was prevalent in the period where women were falsely blamed for the development of schizophrenia in their children, and has an analogous ideological basis. The most ardent of dialectical materialists would not be caught dead sputtering this kind of nonsense, never mind claiming a scientific basis for it. Calling religion “the opiate of the masses” is at least a defensible statement given our understanding of history. Postulating a brain structure responsible for religious ideas and experiences that has no corresponding observational backing, is pseudoscience at its most ideological. The paper in sum gives nothing to understand other than the authors evident ideological intent to discredit religion using an apparently scientific methodology, but the methodology used and its conclusions fall apart with the slightest amount of critical thinking.
In order to see the manner in which Dawkins himself links the metaphor of the gene, and the reality of genetic material, into the realms of psychology and sociology, one has to bring in the second metaphor,
that of the meme. Memes are not transmitted through genetic material. A meme is defined as “an
entity capable of being transmitted from one brain to another.”. Dawkins' own explication of memetic
replication includes phrases like “memes leaping from brain to brain, or from brains to computers and
back again.”. This is a description that is both belittling to the intelligent reader and appears to attempt to hide the proximally social means by which memes are transmitted. Neither memes nor anything else
“leap” from brain to brain, or from brain to computer. A more considered explication of the metaphor
can be found in the paper “Replication”, published by Stanford and authored by the evolutionary
anthropologist David Hull.
“Their content is transmitted in a variety of ways, including books, audiotapes, conversations and the like. As much as the physical basis changes, the message remains sufficiently unchanged. All instances of this message are equally memes, not just the ones residing in human brains and computers.”
One of the issues that crops up in equating genes and memes as “replicators” involves the tendency to
equate specific mechanisms of genetic replication with the more generic view.
“for at least half of life on earth, replication and selection took place in the absence of chromosomes, meiosis and the like. If gene-based biological evolution took place for so long in the absence of the Mendelian apparatus and still does so in many extant organisms, then just possibly we should not demand that memetic evolution proceed by this very special and possibly aberrant sort of inheritance.”
Another issue mentioned in the literature is the (apparently) unknown mechanism of memetic replication itself.
“Memeticists have offered several accounts of memetic replication. Some consider that there is no replication in cultural evolution, but that memes are “attractor points” in culture (Atran 1998) or that cultural transmission is imitation rather than replication (Gatherer 1998). Others consider that the interactor is the meme itself (Blackmore 1999) or that the meme is the selected cultural hereditable information just as Williams' “evolutionary gene” is the selected genetic hereditable information, and the memetic interactor is the repertoire of behaviors it elicits (Wilkins 1998). One view that has been offered several times is that memes are active neural structures (Delius 1991; Aunger 1998; Aunger 2002). ”
A third problem is the difference in attributes between the gene and the meme.
“Dawkins (1976) admits that he is on shaky ground when it comes to the high copying fidelity required of replicators. Memes seem to get changed much more frequently than genes.”
The development of the immune system, though, is a case in point that the standard models of slow
mutation and selection are not always appropriate to a specific case of evolutionary behaviour. While it
functions via genes, the genetic mechanisms are very different from the Mendelian model of
reproductive mutation.
“the genes that function in the reaction of the immune system to antigens have
two peculiarities. First, they incorporate mechanisms designed to produce very
high frequencies of mutation, and second, none of the genes involved in the
functioning of the immune system are germ-line.”
The negative use of the term germ-line in this context indicates that the genes involved do not mutate in
reproduction, but instead mutate in real time within the living organism. Further :
“The genes that give rise to B-cells for instance are designed to mutate
extensively until one of these cells identifies an invader as foreign. It then
proliferates extensively as it attacks the invader. As an organism matures, it
accumulates more and more of the B-cells that have been successful in its past.”
“Within the confines of a single organism, the reaction of the immune system to
antigens has all the characteristics of selection processes, but when the organism
dies all of these adaptations are lost. In some species, females pass on not only
the genes for the basic structure of their immune systems but also some of the
machinery that past invasions of antigens have produced in her. However, these
cells are rapidly removed from the offspring as it develops its own immune
system. The reaction of the immune system to antigens departs from gene-based
selection in biological evolution in two ways. First, from the organismal
perspective, the genes that function in protecting an organism from invaders are
not germ-line. They are somatic. Second, the relevant mutation rates are much,
much higher in the immune system than in ordinary gene-based selection. “
These features of the immune system do not, of course, imply the validity of applying of evolutionary theory to social-cultural- conceptual evolution. But they do demonstrate that some of the apparent issues with memetic evolution are not inherent in evolutionary theory, but specific to a unique and possibly aberrant mechanism that happened to be the earliest discovered.
The main issues with the idea of memetic evolution are that it is both an incomplete account, and that it implies nothing that has not already been recognized by cultural, literary, and philosophical criticism. Studies such as those of the literary methods of James Joyce, where Joyce recognized that very different literary and mythological works embodied the same fundamental structures, such as The Odyssey, Hamlet, and the Count of Monte Cristo; the cultural continuities and discontinuities describing the sense of self in different societies; and the idea of the 'One” in Plato through its development in Christianity and metaphysics are only a few obvious examples.
That the “mechanism” of memetic transmittal is “unknown” is patently ridiculous, as are the so-called theories on the subject by the self-described 'memeticists' quoted above. Why a specific neural storage mechanism for a meme would somehow be necessary, when word of mouth, paper, and data storage provide all the needed functionality is beyond comprehension, other than a prior desire on the part of these memeticists to invalidate not only the priority of social and human interactions, but to eliminate them altogether.
The incompleteness of the explanatory abilities of memetic evolution arise from natural science's unthinking acceptance of the definition of human as homo sapiens, usually misconstrued as the metaphysical 'rational animal', diverting attention from the phenomenological difference between the physical brain system and the mental system that it gives rise to, as well as the difference between the individual mind and the society in which it exists. As elements of SCC evolution, memes evolve not through random mutation, but through the thinking efforts of human beings to solve current individual and societal problems. Rather than eschewing the idea of adaptationary development, this extends the notion of adaptation to the realm of psychology and intentional behaviour. By applying methodologies historically thought to be more appropriate to SCC evolution, such as the deconstructive method of hermeneutics and the synthetic method of dialectics, the gap that is still remaining can perhaps be bridged. Deconstruction is not “destructive criticism” as many allege, but is the removal of “constructions” that have been added over the evolution of any meme by people utilizing the meme to solve a particular problem. Likewise, dialectical thinking in this sense is not a game of subsuming opposites as critics of Hegel and Marx believe, but a recognition of the effects of combining subsets of two or more groups of memes, which together comprise tradition, along with recognition of the phenomenon of memes splitting at particular sites (e.g. the splitting of the Christian meme at the site of Martin Luther). Looking at SCC evolution with a vision not subsumed in the natural scientific reduction, but rather one that uses that reduction as one source of observations to be compared, contrasted, and possibly corroborated by other types of observations and the organization of those observations with the appropriate methodologies, such as those of the historical, psychological and anthropological sciences. In this paper I will endeavour to focus on the hermeneutic methodologies, and leave the explication of dialectical thought to those who are further practiced in this area. In terms of the constructions that have accrued to memes over the course of their development and mutations, the following excerpts may shed some light on the usefulness of hermeneutic methods:
“We might expect some constructions to advance a political ideology, or to be biased by the sexist or racist psychology of the translator or applicator, as some of Derrida's followers would have it. However, these kinds of constructions can be subsumed under two additional constructions suggested by the evolutionary methodology: synthesis and biomotivation.
Synthetic construction consists of one or more of:
- the development of a new element that synthesizes traditions
- the synthesis of texts or parts of texts into new texts
- new texts which incorporate such syntheses
Biomotivated constructions derive primarily from biological considerations: epigenetic motivations as studied by behavioral ecology or environmental contingencies of the period, such as plague, drought, etc. These may be harder to discover, given the controversies over the nature/nurture problem: for example, a construction to a text dealing with homosexuality may involved the epigenetic sexual orientation of the constructor, in interplay with one or more of the cultural modes of construction.
“the "hermeneutical circle" of part and whole can be formalized along the following lines -- the more bits of pattern, the more information we have; but it is infeasible to learn from the whole. So we need algorithms that scan larger parts for the easy regularities, and smaller parts for the difficult regularities, then we need to compare, abstract and synthesize what we have learned about the parts, and so on. This is a whole field full of algorithms to discover, algorithms that approximate in polynomial time the uncomputable solution to the problem of learning from the whole. Put most generally, the problem of learning the whole is formalized as a matter of finding all regularities in the whole, which is equivalent to universal compression, which is equivalent to finding the Kolmogorov complexity of the whole. This formal method of analyzing messages, is, not surprisingly, derived from the general mathematics of messages.
This formal model will apply most directly where the situation is formalizable; for example to
induction from messages from the environment, scientific data. Formal models from AIT such as distance, logical depth, etc. can also be usefully applied informally. Indeed, "distance" has long been a used in hermeneutics, again showing the strong similarities between these disciplines heretofore seen as about as distant as one could imagine -- AIT at the forefront of modern computer science, and hermeneutics a seeming throwback to Reformation theology.
Selection then operates on constructions when differential propagation occurs -- more books of one sort than another are published and read, more scientific papers cite this paper than that one, and so on. In other words, we get unsophisticated mutations, such as distortion during translation, or sophisticated Lamarckian constructions, for the purposes of solving a novel problem not directly address by the tradition, or for the purpose of synthesizing co-believed traditions, and/or due to biomotivations, followed by differential propagation. During these stages of traditional development, we predict that traditions will be selected to behave, i.e. motivate further propagations and constructions, as if designed to propagate themselves at the expense of other traditions that perform similar applications or satisfy similar human psychological needs. However, the constructions of translation, and biomotivation, and
the particularly sophisticated constructions produced by application, will also often play a large role in determining the function of a tradition. “
- Hermeneutics: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Tradition, Nick Szabo
There are difficulties involved as well in the propositions quoted above. While I am in agreement that the mathematical tools at our disposal are inadequate as a means of analyzing the “whole”, in fact we do, as a matter of course, take into account the whole in our daily interactions with the world. In utilizing any tool or instrument, including the tools of mathematics itself, we are oriented to the whole such that we have no need, as a general rule, to analyze the utility or not of a given tool in order to accomplish the job at hand. The “natural” scientific view is not in actuality our usual or natural way of going about our business. It involves a step back and a reduction that removes the web of interrelations between things that themselves make up the 'whole”, in this reduction things, which have associated meanings in the lifeworld, are reduced to simple objects in space, and as a result the real subject matter of the inquiry is lost prior to analysis even beginning. As an example, take the use of the methods of the natural sciences in analyzing a statue of the buddha found in Thailand. Of course the natural sciences can tell us many interesting things about the object such as its material composition, its approximate age, the probable origin of the stone used in its production, etc. All of these results of inquiry are of invaluable use to the art historian or the cultural anthropologist. However the societal meaning of the object as not simply any object found lying around, but a statue, as well as the socio-religious meaning of the object as not any statue in general, but a statue of a particular buddha from a particular buddhist society, has disappeared from view in the reduction. Attempting to reconstruct these meanings in terms of a biologically based memetic theory is doomed to failure, as the reasons for memetic continuity and change are in most cases indeterminable without the reintroduction of already discovered facts and ideas within the human sciences themselves. A recent defense of Sociobiology used the phrase “necessary speculative form” in terms of the ideas proffered by current thinking in this area. Science cannot be based on speculation. The desire to reduce all inquiry into the quantitatively measurable results in a 'religion of science' no less ideological, and no more justifiable on critical examination, than the superstitions in various religions that popularizers of science such as Dawkins are at such pains to discredit.
As well, utilizing the methods of hermeneutics to the human centric sciences does not preclude their applicability in terms of the more standard natural sciences.
“These conclusions have important consequences for understanding measurement, since they illuminate the binary valence of empirical 'facts,' something not given by the usual empiricist accounts. The process of measurement in science fulfills two different but coordinated functions. It presents the object-as-measurable, this is the praxis-laden cultural function. And it takes the data from the presented object, this is the theory-laden data-taking function. These are the binary valences of scientific data. The data-taking is usually called 'observation'; but there is no observation without the prior preparation and presentation of the object-as-measurable. A well-defined measuring process does both jobs, presenting the object and recording the data. These involve two different epistemological perspectives, a praxis-laden cultural one (which belongs to the strategy of experimental culture in laboratory environments) and a theory-laden (or explanatory) one. These two perspectives can and should be logically, semantically, and pragmatically distinguished. Let us consider what these two perspectives reveal about the measuring process, scientific entities, and data.
Consider the theory-laden perspective. Since it is the function of theory to oversee the experimental design: what will do the job of presenting the object-as-measurable? The ontic referent of theory as such is the measuring process viewed from the construction or engineering or technical point of view. Within the life of science, theory refers directly to the internal structure of the (particularly measurement-presenting) processes by means of which 'theoretical entities' enter the public cultural domain of science where they then provide data to observers. This leads to a first conclusion: what is formally theory-laden is experimental design.
In the praxis-laden cultural perspective, the presentation of the object-as-measurable is a public cultural event praxis-laden in the scientific culture of the laboratory, deriving meaning not from the observation event itself but from a research program. The object-as-measurable is recognizable as such because it comes 'dressed' in sensible 'clothes' provided by the experimental strategies used. Whether such 'clothes' render the scientific entities perceptible will be discussed below. This leads to a second conclusion: observation events should not be called semantically 'theory-laden'-- this appellation should be reserved for experimental design-- but rather semantically praxis-laden like all dedicated or designated cultural objects of the lifeworld presented as fulfilling experience.
The meaning of data is also bivalent and, like the meaning of a hammer, subject to ambiguity. Data belong hypothetically to the theoretical perspective of measurement but affirmatively to the cultural perspective of the lifeworld forum of scientific research strategy; the research 'narratives' that Rouse speaks about would belong here. This is the special environment of the expert researcher and, though public, is usually closed to the understanding and experience of the ordinary citizen. So-called 'theoretical entities,' such as, for example, electrons and electron-data, are theory-laden but, for the reasons given above, they cannot be said to exist as such unless locatable in a public forum, the primary public forum being that of an experimental scientific research program where as public cultural entities they are explicitly praxis-laden with respect to some standard configuration(s) of laboratory equipment. Though the theory of electrons may change, it is never the case that what we call 'an electron' fails to have an in principle relationship to contingent local practical cultural milieus.
n addition to the public forum of scientific research, there are other public fora within which individual 'theoretical entities' and the data about them can become cultural entities. These are, for example, public fora featuring technology, finance, political power, religion, art, media, and so on. All of these-- like the scientific research forum itself-- are local fora in which a scientific entity, usually in some technological context, can play the role of a dedicated cultural resource (for the life of finance, politics, religion, art, media, etc) and by this means become part of the local furniture of the lworld. For example, choosing television as one such local technological forum, then, electrons-- or, at least, electron-beams-- can be designated even to children and others unlettered in physics as cultural entities in that forum because of their role in 'painting' the TV picture. In all such local fora, the scientific entity and its data are meaningfully bivalent and emulate the relationship between theory and praxis. Removed from all such local fora the putative 'data' are not data at all since they do not make manifest the presence of anything but 'themselves'-- but of 'themselves,' having no determinate meaning, they are just noise.”
- After Post-Modernism: The Scope of Hermeneutics in Natural Science, Patrick A. Heelan
The above paragraphs indicate that while the problems that become most evident in the application of a naïve version of the methodologies of natural science to human centric subjects, they are by no means restricted to those subjects, and indeed reflexively expose the weaknesses of those methodologies within the pure natural sciences themselves. Designs for experiments are theory-laden, as most scientists will readily admit, but those experiments produce observational data that far from being culturally independent facts, are in fact cultural entities, and outside the cultures of the research community or the wider public are not facts at all, “just noise”. The way in which these “facts” betray their own lack of objectivity has to do with the sense of meaning itself.
“Human understanding functions by interpretation and its product is meaning. Meaning is nothing physical; it is not a text, a behavior, a neural network, a computation, not even a sign or a medium, nor any relationship among things, though all of these may be generated by and productive of meaning. Nor is it a private 'domain' accessible only by some kind of introspection. Rather meaning is a public 'domain' where people share the products of human understanding first by common habits of action (in which diverse networks are recognized) and then through the use of language and language-like media. Meaning is the 'domain' in which people understand one another, argue with one another, give reasons, establish goals, set up norms, define kinds, etc.-- more or less effectively according to the purpose, intelligence, language skills, and education of the parties involved. Meaning is historical because language is constitutive of history; it is also deeply affected by human temporality and historical forgetfulness because the community/lifeworld milieu in which it is transmitted has gains and losses over time; it is local and social, because it is the product of active local interests and social communities and constitutive of their interests; it is then neither once-and-for-all fixed, nor ever perfect and unchanging. Finally, though subject to change under transmission, it is not on this account devoid of truth, rather is meaning the instrument through which truthfulness makes its appearance in the lifeworld.
- After Post-Modernism: The Scope of Hermeneutics in Natural Science, Patrick A. Heelan
While memes can be a useful metaphor for the units of meaning transmitted in such manner, Understanding that memes are not simply transmitted in the way that genes are, but in fact go through a process of interpretation during every transfer, limits the accuracy of the meme metaphor. Very few memes remain directly recognizable through enough generations to substantially mimic genetic behaviour. It also demonstrates what is missing from the “hard facts” of empirical science when displaced from their cultural and historical context, which is, quite simply, meaning itself. The reduction of meaning to “information” in the meme metaphor misses the crucially important factor that “information” requires an interpretation to be anything other than noise, and that this interpretation will naturally be conditioned by the cultural and historical milieu in which the interpretation occurs, as well as by the individual quirks, ideology, and personal preferences of the interpreter.
“Meanings are adopted from traditions of interpretation, or constructed or re-constructed in keeping with the responsibilities, constraints, and presumptions of rational hermeneutical method (see below). One of these responsibilities is that each legitimate meaning be appropriately fulfilled in a reader's experience or imagination. One of the constraints is the relative richness or poverty of the linguistic and cultural resources available to the reader. One of the presumptions is that there is no single legitimate meaning relevant to all readers of, say, a text (and suchlike material), for meanings depend on use. One kind of use that a text or sentence serves is its ability to be asserted as true in a chosen context by a user. Contexts and uses are multiple. A text then is like any piece of equipment, it can usually be used successfully for several meaningful cultural purposes. The uses are not arbitrary, for nothing but nonsense would be gained by arbitrary use, but this does not imply that there is forever just a single legitimate meaningful use. But, as in the case of the hammer, for each useful purpose there are lifeworld criteria as to how well a text performs for this purpose. There may be a conventional priority of uses with 'ownership' set by cultural tradition, building tools are to be used for construction, scientific results are to be used by scientific research communities-- but no one use or 'ownership' need go unchallenged either by logic or by experience, nor should any one use become the sole property of just one interested group.”
- After Post-Modernism: The Scope of Hermeneutics in Natural Science, Patrick A. Heelan
If the “bare facts” of the natural sciences are as culturally-laden and dependent on context as anything within the human sciences, natural science has no basis in conceiving itself as having any priority in its explicative function over explanations derived from other traditions. The perception of the superiority of the methodologies of the natural sciences over other methodologies has come only from the productionist aspect of technological advance, in which an explanation that centres itself on predictive accuracy is simply more immediately useful. The development of technology is both the driving force behind modern science in its ability to produce new experimental equipment and therefore new situations and contexts for the development of theory, and in the sense that the promotion of the methodologies of natural science is primarily in the interests of the continued development of technology itself. A hydroelectric dam functions and meets the aims of its designers whether its meaning is understood or not, but without its socio-cultural-conceptual context simply exists to store up energy in the technological pursuit of turning everything into an immediately available resource.
Perhaps with Dawkins' experience in exposing earlier fallacies he and his followers can be
persuaded to step back from their faith in natural science as the solution to every problem. Evangelism
is not really a suitable position for any proponent of science to take, people ignorant of the realities of
science need to be made aware of these realities and their applicability to other areas of experience in a
manner consistent with the measured approaches used in the sciences themselves. The weaknesses
inherent in the current positions of SCC evolutionary analysts only provide ammunition for the
ignorant proponents of ridiculous mimicries of science such as Intelligent Design, and keep the
wasteful and damaging “debate” underway. The gaps between brain, mind and society in current
evolutionary science are all too easily exploited by those who prefer religion, ideology or politics to
science. Extending the use of the developed methodologies of the human sciences to natural science itself is the only potentially useful means we have that could bring about a change from a busy and unthinking cyclical dependence of scientific theory and technological development, which without taking note of socio-cultural-conceptual contexts has no particular purpose and no basis for self-critique or self-understanding, and reduces humanity itself to a mere means to a purposeless end.
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