0124 A meme involves an interventional sign-relation, whose sign-vehicle_3c (SV_i) fills in the slot for species impressa_2a(SO_i) while providing clues to a relevant content-level normal context_3a and potential_1a (SI_i).

A meme also involves a specifying sign-relation, where a content-level species impressa_2a (SV_s) specifies a species expressa_2b (SO_s) within a situation-level normal context_3b and potential_1b (SI_s).

0125 Here is a general picture of the specifying sign.

0126 Obviously, the interventional sign-object occupies the same content-level actuality_2a as the specifying sign-vehicle.

The adaptiveness of the subsequent specifying sign weighs (takes into account) the initial bias (perhaps, affordance) provided by the interventional sign’s interpretant.

0127 In chapter nine, Dennett considers spoken words as paradigms of memes.

What about the gesture-words of hand talk… er… “sign language”?

Surely, these are even more paradigmatic because the gesture-word images and points to its referent.

0128 What if language evolves in the milieu of hand talk?

Here is a scenario to think about.

A warm rain falls all afternoon on my mixed forest location in eastern Africa, around a million years ago.  My Homo erectus comrades can’t do much, so they huddle under trees and nap.  The next day, the clouds have not given way, and I can smell something and I know what that something is.  Mushrooms are sprouting!

0129 How do I know this?

A mental module has evolved, over the course of generations, specifically devoted this opportunity, the smell and the taste and the weather conditions are all encoded, because those of my ancestors who responded to the mushroom-related opportunity reproduced more successfully that those who did not.

Plus, I don’t have a leash.

0130 However, I need to recruit others.  I need volunteers willing to work for food and share the riches with others.  In time, others will return the favor.  So, I initiate an interventional sign-relation.

0131 By Dennett’s account, my hand talk words constitute “a meme,” a unit of culture, containing semantic information, a difference that makes a difference, and a piece of know-what worth having.

0132 By a scholastic’s account, my hand talk words constitute the sign-object of an interventional sign-relation (SO_i).

I don’t know whether medieval schoolmen successfully formalize the causality inherent in the interventional sign as a relational being.  According to Comments on John Deely’s Book (1994) New Beginnings, Latin-writing scholars formalize the specifying and the exemplar sign-causalities.  The discovery of the interventional sign, which has all the characteristics of Dennett’s notion of “an inversion of reason”, appears in Comments on Sasha Newell’s Article (2018) “The Affectiveness of Symbols”.  Both commentaries are available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0133 Whatever the accounting, my intervention sign initiates a specifying sign, leading to a wonderful mushroom harvest and contributing to our team (and our band’s) reproductive success.

0134  What is this “inversion of reason” business?

The interventional sign-relation inverts the commonplace notion that the sign-vehicle is visible (and thus, a subject) and the sign-object is mental (and thus, an object).

The specifying sign-relation reverts the inversion back into the commonplace notion.

0135 Both sign-relations intimate an affordance.

In this instance, the two affordances speak with one voice, saying, “Our team can gather many more mushrooms than a single individual.  We can gather enough to feed all the other potential (but not, at this weather moment, actualized) teams in the band.  Plus, we can dry and hide the rest.  Time is short.  Get to work!”

0136 Notably, this affordance cannot be articulated using hand talk.

How can one picture or point to “team”, “potential” or “affordance”?

Nonetheless, the affordance includes the potentials within the purely relational structure of the scholastic interscope for how humans think.

Clearly, each member of the team conjures the same relational structure, even though each individual possesses a different brain.

Only one more step is required to answer the question, “What is a meme?”

0137 From the previous blogs, I know that the meme is bound to the species impressa_2a.

In the species impressa_2a, the sign-object of the interventional sign (SO_i) weds the sign-vehicle of the specifying sign(SV_s).

The question arises, “How are the two united?”

0138 Aristotle’s hylomorphe meets the definition of Peirce’s category of secondness.  The category of secondness consists of two contiguous real elements.  My nomenclature puts the contiguity into brackets: one real element [contiguity] other real element.

0139 The two real elements are subject to the law of noncontradiction.

Plus, the contiguity is not a real element, even though it seems to be.

Ironically, I intend to use the word, “substance”, to label the contiguity.  The word has a long pedigree.  After being used for philosophical discourse for thousands of years, the word does not have much use in our current modern Age of Ideas.  Some people call table salt, “a substance”.  Some moderns call addiction to cocaine, “substance abuse”.  So, my technical postmodern adoption of the term, “substance”, as the contiguity between matter and form, marks a turning point, the dawn of a new age of understanding.

More or less.

The hylomorphe stands at the beginning of the Greek Age of philosophy.

0140 Here is a picture of Aristotle’s hylomorphe.

0141 For this application, the meme is a species impressa_2a manifesting the following hylomorphic structure.

0142 Dennett devotes several chapters to memes, including chapter ten (“The Meme’s Eye Point of View”) and eleven (“What Wrong with Memes?  Objections and Replies”).

0143 This picture of the meme satisfies Dennett’s concept of the meme.

How so?

Memes are units of cultural information.  Memes allow competence without comprehension.  At the same time, memes play a role in comprehension.  

0144 Of course, this picture also challenges Dennett’s notion of the meme.

How so?

The meme is a hylomorphe constructed with sign-elements of two sign-relations.

This brings me back to competence, as opposed to comprehension.

Competence merely requires both signs to function.

Comprehension depends on how apparent the interventional sign is.  How well does the interventional sign-action_2a(SO_i), which like inversion of what we imagine a sign-object to be, convey what is happening_3a and the potential of ‘something happening’_1a (SI_i)?

After all, comprehension implies that a person registers what is happening_3a and the potential of ‘something’ happening_1a(SI_i), while decoding an ongoing event_2a (SO_i).

0145 This raises a related issue, asking “What is the proper metaphor for memes?”

According to Dennett (following Richard Dawkins, who originally promotes the idea that memes are phenomena subject to scientific inquiry), memes are like viruses.  Each meme pursues own reproductive fitness.  So, a cultural unit may have traits that exist simply because they are advantageous to its replication.  Yet, the host must matter, because the host carries the meme, just like host carries a virus.

This makes me wonder.

Are viruses the most appropriate analogy for memes?

Or are synapses?

Virus do not form connections.  Synapses do.  The meme as hylomorphe connects the sign-object of an interventional sign(SO_i) with the sign-vehicle of a specifying sign (SV_s).

0146 A Darwinian paradigm where memes are like viruses leads to different predictions than one where memes are like synapses.

Take a glance at the following figure where a meme is a hylomorphe and ask, “Does this figure look more like one neuron [cultivating] a synapse to another neuron or a virus [infecting] a host?“

Okay, that was a rhetorical question.

0147 If memes are hylomorphic entities, then other characteristics of memes become obvious.  Memes offer competence without comprehension.  Memes are informational beings.  They survive because they encourage the evolution of neural networks.  Plus, they offer affordances.  Neurons make their living by trafficking in information. Information consists in opportunities to form relevant synapses and to cost-cut synapses that are no longer busy.

Here is a picture of Dennett’s characteristics of memes.

0148 The three characteristics of memes highlight the fragility of modern theories that account for cultural phenomenawith poorly-defined labels, such as “beliefs” or “ideas”.  Modern social theorists cannot account for why beliefs or ideas arise in the first place and how they are replicated among individuals.  Meme theorists can.

0149 So, what do social scientists say in response?

Do I hear laughter echoing down the hallways of the College of Social Science?

Or is it it the Colleges of Social Sciences?

0150 In chapter eleven, Dennett defends the meme research project against detractors, who tend to be modern social scientists. Some of these professionals employ the paradigm of natural history to explain human adaptations.  Some of them ignore human evolution altogether.

0151 Once again, here is the Darwinian paradigm, beloved by natural historians.

In the normal context of natural selection_3b, an adaptation_2b emerges from (and situates) a niche_1b, which is the potential_1b of an actuality independent of the adapting species_2a.   The biologist considers an adaptation_2b, as a situation-level actuality, with the goal of first, identifying the actuality independent of the adapting species_2a and second, delineating the specific potential that is either exploited or avoided_1b.

0152 Now, replace the natural-historical terms with versions that derive from Dennett’s meme project.

In the normal context of cultural selection_3b, an explanation for a meme_2b emerges from (and situates) an affordance_1b,which manifests the potential_1b of the hylomorphic structure of the species impressa_2a, as pictured above.

0153 What does this imply?

The social scientist should consider the meme as an adaptation_2b, as a situation-level actuality, with the goal of first, identifying the content-level actuality_2a where a sign-object of the interventional sign-relation substantiates the sign-vehicle of a specifying sign-relation_2a and second, delineating the specific affordance that is either exploited or avoided_1b.

0156 Clearly, the modern anthropologist faces a more complicated and confusing task than the natural historian, because the meme_2a is embedded in the scholastic interscope depicting the way humans think.

0189 In Dennett’s version of the evolution of our minds, consciousness and user-end illusion coincide.  There is no example greater than the musical memes concocted by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Tunes are memes.

0190 Words are memes.

When it comes to spoken words, sometimes the less said, the better.  Fewer words allow the user to engage neurons with less forward guidance.  Clues to the content-level normal context_3a and potential_1a are not present to guide the evolution of an adaptive perception_2b.

So, when I go to the neighbor, to present the dead cat, and to confess Daisy’s guilt, I only say, “I took Daisy off her leash this morning and she got away and killed your cat.  Here it is.  If you want me to bury it, then I will.  If you want me to buy you a new cat, I will.”

0191 Then she starts to cry and says, “It’s not my cat.  It’s my mother’s.”

Her mother died around five years ago.

The man who I thought was her husband?  That is her brother.  Her brother and her lived with mother until her death.  Mother would not let her children go.  She would not let anything go.  She was a maven of the world and her concerns were with the world.  She was an activist who took her children to demonstrations in order to signal that she, above all, cared for the children.  Her last request to her daughter?  Take care of the cat.

0192 My neighbor continued her tale.

The old house was too full of mother’s memes… er… memories of her mother.  So, she and her brother agreed to sell the old house and to move somewhere new.  They bought the house next door to mine.

Soon, her brother realizes that this is his opportunity to construct a life of his own.  That is why he comes by with less and less frequency.  The verge is overgrown.  Her brother is engaged to be married.  He has made a down-payment on a house in a different neighborhood.

0193 No, that is not her cat.  It is her mother’s.  I can go and bury it.  She does not want another.

After a pause, I say, “This Sunday, do you mind coming to church with me?  Service is at nine o’clock.  I can come by at eight-thirty.”

0194 The words that I speak are memes, units of culture, pieces of semantic information, offering something that makes a difference, a novel affordance, a clue to what is happening_3a and a new sense that something can happen_1a.  The reason that these memes are present, at this moment, is not because the words want to replicate, but because I want the words to bear a meaning, a presence and a message.

0195 Just as a biologist reflects upon an adaptation_2b, according to a normal context_3b and potential_1b, in order to become aware of the actuality independent of the adapting species_2a, my neighbor will reflect on the phantasm_2b that adapts to this moment and provides an illusion_3b of consciousness_1b.  The entire scholastic interscope_2a comes alive.  What is happening_3a?  What does it mean to me_3b?  Does this make sense_3c?