Stephen J - yes, the spread of a belief/ behaviour by imitation has been proposed by some researchers in human society - for a long time. It certainly didn't start with Dawkins and his 'memes'. But criticism of this has been quite strong; that is, such an approach, that defines cultures as created by diffusion and copying from each other, 1) ignores the functionality of the belief/behaviour and assumes that ALL people find ALL beliefs/behaviour functional; 2) it ignores the concept that beliefs/behaviour are rational adaptations to local economic and ecological realities; and 3) ignores the commonality of the biology of humans, in that the common need for language, the family unit, maintenance of long-term modes of behaviour - are biological aspects of the species. ..and 4) ignores those societies which have common modes of behaviour but have never been in touch with another similar group.
In other words - the mimesis-diffusion explanation for human culture has been heavily criticized long before Dawkin's reductionist memes. Edwina ----- Original Message ----- From: Stephen Jarosek To: 'Clark Goble' ; 'Peirce-L' Sent: Friday, October 16, 2015 10:24 PM Subject: RE: Open axiomatic frameworks (was: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality) Paradoxically, I actually owe Dawkins for my divergence into semiotics. As a university student, I was plodding along within the context of the mainstream “it’s all in the selfish genes” narrative for some considerable time until I discovered memetics. That got me thinking first in terms of imitation as a fundamental principle not just for humans but for any organism, including cells and neurons, and developed on from there. It was very innovative for Dawkins to introduce memetics into the narrative. It’s unfortunate that he never developed it further than that. Animism may have been common, but the anthropocentrism seating the human form in the image of god at the centre of the universe is not very helpful, and has held us back... contrast this Occidental anthropocentrism against Buddhism. A Copernican scale of revolution in the life sciences is long overdue. sj From: Clark Goble [mailto:cl...@lextek.com] Sent: Thursday, 15 October 2015 10:42 PM To: Peirce-L Subject: Re: Open axiomatic frameworks (was: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality) On Oct 15, 2015, at 5:15 AM, Stephen Jarosek <sjaro...@iinet.net.au> wrote: It is the "life because genes because natural selection" narrative. Does he push that? Certainly he does pushback against various primarily religiously inspired beliefs that tend to dismiss the history of evolution. However I don’t think he claims that explains life. I certainly think his particular approach to atheism could use a heavy dose of careful philosophical study. But in terms of evolution I’m not sure I have a whole lot of complaints beyond his thinking it says more about religion than it does. (It’s always easier to go up against non-sense arguments by the ill informed than from sophisticated interlocutors) Peirce was not God. His semiotics was framed from a fairly anthropocentric perspective, given that his thinking originates from an Occidental paradigm that did not attribute consciousness to non-human entities. I’m not sure what you mean here. Animism was a fairly common belief even in late antiquity. At a minimum the platonists ascribed to the planets consciousness. (They are the daemons often) I don’t know enough about the nuances of late antiquity to say much about how animals were views. Again I don’t know the details of the views of St. Francis of Assisi or his later followers but I’d assume they’d give animals a bit more status than even many today do. Certainly Peirce is far more expansive in what he calls mind. (Consciousness is a bit trickier but at times he appears to see consciousness as the inward part of a “swerve” of chance - and thus inherent in the universe) The introduction of biosemiotics into the Peircean narrative changes all that. Biosemiotics is certainly interesting. I’m not quite sure it is as revolutionary to a Peircean perspective as you suggest. (I’m not sure that’s worth getting bogged down into mind you) It seems to me Peirce already saw his semiotics as having great breadth in biology. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
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