Gregg,

Thanks for the clarification. Yes, I didn't think all memes are justifications. But where I part from your Justification Hypothesis (I think expanding on it) is that I think we can say that all memes are selected by something we could call a "justification" because of the nature of their special fitness landscape. 

It's probably a stretch to say that an organism is "justified" by its fitness in its environment. But because the fitness landscape of memes is our goals/values/intentions measured up against a largely abstract reality (platonic forms, whether or not they are "real"), ALL memes have to be sensed as right, good, or reasonable to reproduce. This is the case for even the most superficial of memes.

Because our own intentions are part of the fitness landscape of our memes, and the fitness landscape is largely abstract reality, I think it's appropriate to use the term justification for the selection of memes. A justification is "the act of showing something to be right or reasonable" 

Memetic evolution is intrinsically intentional (based on fundamental interests) and there are right and wrong answers to whether or not a behavior fits our fundamental intentions. As culture evolves, it gets better at determining what is in its best interests at an accelerating pace. 

Culture learns.

I had an idea that intelligence is merely pseudo-randomly generated patterns with a goal as the fitness landscape. Intelligence is clearly more than that, but that's the basic Darwinian nature of intelligence, and also meaning and intentionality.

If you look at the evolution of a technology, like the car, you can see how a darwinian process of patterns being selected by an intention is taking place. 

Daniel Dennett talks about how intelligent design is like a crane that reaches up beyond the gene and processes intentionality. In my understanding, intentionality is mostly just virtual evolution that gets refined over time as we learn which intentions to have (which goals to use as our internal fitness landscape). 

I'm pretty sure the question still remains as to the nature of teleology. Are the goals just randomly mutating, and being selected by pleasure and pain and accumulated knowledge? It seems so to me, because how could we have any foresight to make an end cause the beginning without virtual evolution in our heads?

Gregory Stock, in the excellent book Metaman pointed our the future possibilities are increasingly determining the present as Metaman grows smarter (Metaman is basically culture). This is because we're simulating more possibilities and measuring them up to our goals more rapidly.

On Sat, Aug 11, 2018 at 10:51 AM, Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Jamie,

  Let me quickly address your question about culture (and Culture) and society and the concept of memes. I then need to head out for the day and will be back tomorrow or Monday at the latest.

 

  The short issue with memes is that there are many things that people would label a “meme” that is not a justification. Indeed, many people argue that what defines culture at large are learned practices that are repeated. Consider the classic example of monkeys washing potatoes. This was a “cultural invention,” if you use the term broadly (I argue it is “proto-culture, not culture with a Capital C, which refers to the systems of justification). And it would be a meme in most definitions. But it surely is not a justification. There are many other examples. Going back to the basketball example. Kareem Abdul Jabar’s skyhook could be a meme (if others started copying it), but the act of a skyhook is not a justification.

 

  Justifications exist in the medium of human language. Culture is the shared systems of meanings that people have. Societal evolution is broader than that, although they are intimately related. Consider all the stuff Mark writes about in terms of his techno-constructivist perspective. The iPhone was a major innovation that influenced the evolution of society, but an iPhone is not a justification per se.  Justifications are the explicit intersubjective worlds that people create to form a narrative about what is happening and why. Memes (as they were conceived by Dawkins) are units in groups that get replicated, the evolution of which provides a frame for human society in general.  

 

  Bottom line, I do believe that the concept of meme can be applied to justifications in an interesting way. However, I don’t think one could effectively classify all memes as justifications proper. I also see that Culture as justification systems are arguably the central defining feature of human society, but they are not all of human societies (they are not the actions of humans, nor the buildings that humans live in). Behavioral investment practices (washing potatoes, skyhooks) may well evolve or operate differently than systems of justification.  

 

  More on the evolution of truth coming.

 

Hope you are well.

G

 

From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Mathew Jamie Dunbaugh
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2018 1:36 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Culture is intentional

 

I would add to my argument that culture evolves towards the pragmatic truth this:

The reason I'm using the term "the pragmatic truth" is because I think that it's the combination of reality and our values that select for memes. 

The environment (just like biology)_plays a part in selecting memes, but a more abstract, meta reality also plays a huge part, and it's how the intentions and values of culture (fundamentally laid down in the domain of Mind) shape us according to the constraints of reality that the fitness landscape of memes is formed. 

The constraints of reality and the intentions laid down in the domain of Mind (behavioral investment theory) are the fitness landscape. 

 

And I would argue that culture, even on the large scale, is like a super-organism in the process of learning about reality and figuring out what its intentions should be according to its basic intentions of survival and well-being. 

So we try to acquire the descriptive (correspondence and coherent) truth in order to achieve our intentions.

Am I correct in using the term "pragmatic truth" as the fitness landscape for memes, because it's where reality meets our goals?

 

 

 

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