Language and the language faculty co-evolved and to understand one you must understand the other; however, we do not yet have a good theory of how culture evolves, Luke McCrohon of the University of Tokyo told an audience in Torun, Poland today.
McCrohon examined the meme idea proposed in Dawkins book The Selfish Gene as an analog to the gene, but the meme idea is a bit vague. Dawkins never gave a clear definition and it has many of the mysteries that befell the concept of meaning. Is it in the brain or the environment or neither? There is also uncertainty about the meme’s phenotype, its observable properties.
This genotype/phenotype distinction is important when thinking about evolution. When discussing gene evolution, genotype refers to the physical gene in the DNA molecule while phenotype refers to the trait that is expressed by the gene. It is notable that genotypes are what mutate, while phenotypes are what get selected. This process leads to what McCrohon called a single–stage life cycle: The genotype is transmitted sexually. If the phenotype survives, the genotype is passed on to another generation.
In discussing cultural replication McCrohon said he wanted to avoid the meme/phenotype confusion and proposed a terminology based on Chomsky. Chomsky distinguishes between i-language (or internal language) that is located in the brain and e-language (or external language) that is located in the environment. McCrohon proposed that cultural replication is based on i-memes (in the brain) and e-memes (that is in the environment). The terminology was a little surprising because Chomsky uses the distinction to say that what interests him is i-language in the brain and to dismiss e-language with all its historical and cultural baggage. But McCrohon was not proposing that we dismiss e-memes and focus on the i-memes.
Dawkins proposed that memes “propagate themselves … by leaping from brain to brain.” That analogy operates more like a virus than sexually transmitted DNA. Swine flue, for example, replicates by leaping from body to body. But, says McCrohon, memes cannot leap directly from brain to brain. The route has to be (1) an i-meme is externalized as an e-meme and then (2) the e-meme is internalized in another person as an i-meme. This process has two-stages of replication. First, the i-meme replicates the e-meme in the environment and then the e-meme replicates itself in another brain. The replication is twofold. The i-meme and e-meme are interdependent. They have separate existences and properties, but are mutually dependent for replication. Potentially, therefore, two different replications offer two possible points of selection.
Put in more familiar terms the points of selection can be considered creation and learning.
- The i-meme creates an external e-meme. For example, my brain generates commands to speak the word chrysanthemum. The i-meme is externalized in the form of an e-meme.
- An e-meme, in this case krisantmom, is learned by someone else. The e-meme is internalized in the form of an i-meme.
In evolution, faithful replication is quite important. It turns out that in biological evolution there are a number of features that insure faithful replication. Cultural evolution has to be faithful at both the creation and learning points.
The presentation was more provocative than conclusive, but it left a number of points to chew on. Memes seem so metaphorical that they do not inspire confidence that they refer to anything real, and this blogger at least was glad to have something serious to think about. For example, it appears that i-memes and e-memes must evolve in lock-step but the initial variation can appear with either the generated e-meme or the learned i-meme. Thus, a new pronunciation might appear as a change in the way something is created or the way it is learned. But if the change is to survive the other end of the cycle has to be able to process it. Thus if the ability to create changes, the process will only continue if the ability to learn adapts, or vice-versa.
Even so, it remains abstract in the extreme. We have no idea what a replicable unit of culture is, either in the internal or external form, and we have even less reason to believe that i-memes or e-memes boil down to something as uniform as a gene. Furthermore, there is as yet no clear selection process. I asked MeCrohon about that and he said he has postponed discussing selection at this conference in favor of outlining the basic question of what memes are. One thing is clear though, we need to understand cultural evolution before we can ever understand how humans became such a talkative species.
Comments