Agathon

[CrONoS]

Do you want to say:
" Memes are bull****.
" Memes act like in an organical/instinctives pattern.

Maybe you better think this way:
How an Ideology change itself by pressure. (Material, technologics, cultural, spiritual)?
Since Ideology are a kind of memes

[Nostromo]

Perhaps do the ethics of manure eating.

You're one of those, are you? Do whatever rocks your boat, Asher.

Of course, it has to be between two consenting adults. However, given that manure isn't adult nor able to consent, you could get into some legal trouble...

[CrONoS]

Do you have sexual desire if you never met a woman.

What form is taking the sexual desire if you have never seen a woman.

[Apocalypse]

Originally posted by cronos_qc
Do you want to say:
" Memes are bull****.
" Memes act like in an organical/instinctives pattern.

Maybe you better think this way:
How an Ideology change itself by pressure. (Material, technologics, cultural, spiritual)?
Since Ideology are a kind of memes

Part of my problem with it is that memes ignore research in cognitive psychology and social psychology.

[VetLegion]

nevermind

[Nostromo]

Do you have sexual desire if you never met a woman.

What form is taking the sexual desire if you have never seen a woman.

Weird questions. Who never met a woman? You should ask your shrink, they're more psychological questions, if you ask me.

[Nostromo]

Part of my problem with it is that memes ignore research in cognitive psychology and social psychology.

Do they? IRC, Dawkings, the well-known biologist, invented the concept. But I'm pretty sure some cognitive scientists wrote papers about memes, maybe to point out that they ignore their research

[Apocalypse]

Originally posted by nostromo


Do they? IRC, Dawkings, the well-known biologist, invented the concept. But I'm pretty sure some cognitive scientists wrote papers about memes, maybe to point out that they ignore their research

Well, different psychologists have different theories. The problem is that memes aren't really testable and ignore research that is testable.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Apocalypse
Actually the interesting one that I've heard of right now is something that would support the "memes are retarded" theory.

That sounds good. I think it is an interesting idea and would require some real philosophical work, so it would be a good way to do something you like and get a good grade. You'd want to establish some criteria for what counts as a real thing (causal powers and so on) and show how memes cannot be members of that set, or cannot be reduced to entities that are members of that set.

I don't really have a well-defined concept of what a meme is supposed to be, but I'd be careful about mounting any argument that could be used to dispute the existence of theories, since if a meme is just a bunch of ideas, so is a theory in some sense.

If you were going to go the hardcore eliminativist route, then memes would really be akin to the entities described by folk psychology, but that would be a very high price to pay.

The greatest merit of your proposal is that it sounds like something I'd actually want to read, rather than yet another borefest on abortion or whatever that a grader would be merely obliged to read.

[Apocalypse]

Well memes is just one idea. If you have any other ideas, I would really appreciate it. And it's not for a grade, I was thinking about something for an undergrad research symposium. Or just something that could be put in a grad school application eventually.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Apocalypse
Well memes is just one idea. If you have any other ideas, I would really appreciate it. And it's not for a grade, I was thinking about something for an undergrad research symposium. Or just something that could be put in a grad school application eventually.

There's literally thousands of things you could do. That topic seems a particularly good one because it is of contemporary relevance and people will want to talk about it.

A boring way of doing it would be to do a study of philosopher X, or some hackneyed topic like mind-brain identity, anti-realism or scepticism. The meme topic would enable you to apply lessons from philosophy of mind and philosophy of science to something that people other than philosophers actually care about.

If you did a good job of it, it would certainly help in applying to grad school. If you aren't applying to do philosophy it would be a good idea to do a topic like memes or the failure of intelligent design theories because these things are more likely to interest the sort of people who will be reading your application.

[Sandman]

I've always thought that memes have the whiff of pseudoscience about them. What's interesting is that they tend to be supported by people who otherwise have excellent scientific credentials.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Sandman
I've always thought that memes have the whiff of pseudoscience about them. What's interesting is that they tend to be supported by people who otherwise have excellent scientific credentials.

I don't think that there's a doubt that memes exist in some sense or other. Darwin's theory of evolution and other theories share features with memes. The controversy seems to revolve around whether memes have causal powers.

Again, there isn't much doubt that thoughts have causal powers. My belief in the theory of evolution causes me to say and do certain things, and it is a token of a particular type. Whether the type has any existence independent of the token is another thing entirely. That is something I am comfortable talking about given my background in Greek philosophy, but the modern causal stuff is not something I have done a lot of.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Asher
There are none.

Perhaps do the ethics of manure eating.

[Pekka]

Spiff, it's funny because it's true.