Crowding out Memetic Explanation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10705809 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rosa Cao (0000-0002-1726-477X, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 87 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 1160-1171 |
| Publication date | 2020-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Philosophy of Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-8248 • E-ISSN: 1539-767X |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1086/710518 |
| OpenAlex | W3041176669 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 13 |
Memes have been proposed to explain wide swathes of human culture and language use. I argue that what is really doing the explanatory work in many of these cases is a basic mechanism of information transmission, which is distinct from memetic evolution by natural selection in significant ways. Perhaps the most significant of these is that information transmission depends primarily on the interests of the users of information, rather than the reproductive interests of the informational entities—‘memes’—themselves. Although my main target is memetic approaches, this argument also applies to some other, nonmemetic, theories of cultural evolution
Altruism (biology) · Argument (complex analysis) · Biology · Cultural transmission in animals · Epistemology · Evolutionary biology · Information transmission · Mechanism (biology) · Memetics · Natural selection · Selection (genetic algorithm) · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · Anthropology · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Language and cultural evolution · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |