Richard Dawkins and the pathetic fallacy

Looking again at 'The Information by James Gleick. I want post some notes on the subject of personification. The subtitle is; the gene/meme machine runs off the road

Quotes and comments;

301. 'Natural selection directs the whole show.' - Gleick [1.]

- I see no evidence natural selection [NS] is a creative force. This isn't a fact, it's a claim. In my opinion it's a claim without a warrant. NS doesn't create new information or new organs or organisms; all it does is work on things already in existence. e.g. weeding out the lame and the weak isn't a creative process, nor is 'favoring' slight variations and 'disfavoring' others.

More personification on display here. NS is portrayed as the conductor of an orchestra.

301. "Ideas have retained some of the properties of organisms. Like them, they tend to perpetuate their structure and to breed; they too can fuse, recombine, segregate their content; indeed they too can evolve, and in this evolution selection must surely play an important role

- Retained?
Ideas and organisms can't be spoken of in the same terms. They're radically different entities. (You'd think scientists would know this; aren't they big on classification.) This is nothing but poetry (bad poetry). This isn't science. We don't observe any of this. This is just giving the data a twisted interpretation.

I can't believe these people are serious.... I really can't. This is light years beyond silly.
To say ideas evolve is pathetic. This is just equivocation. (You'd think scientists would want to use words more carefully. Isn't precision a goal of science?)

This is an anti-scientific and poetic way of looking at things. I suppose we should have expected it; this is the nonsense that results when scientists try to take over all areas of life.

301. 'The American neurophysiologist Roger Sperry had put forward a similar notion several years earlier, arguing that ideas are “just as real” as the neurons they inhabit.

- I thought only the physical was real.
Gee; if ideas are real then god is real. How do these guys go on to deny the existence of god given this wacky metaphysics of theirs?

301. ''Ideas have power, he said.
Ideas cause ideas and help evolve new ideas. They interact with each other...''

- This is the sad result of reductionism. It's people who have ideas, people who have power, people who evolve' new ideas. It's people who interact with each other. We see here the death of man (the death of god theology morphed into a death of man theology) Under the reductionist rubric, man disappears from the scene... being replace by the brain, and by ideas, chemicals, information.

This isn't science, this a kind of dehumanizing religious view. (It's as if some people had a lust to degrade mankind; themselves being exempt of course.)

302. "And they [ideas] also interact with the external surroundings to produce in toto a burstwise advance in evolution that is far beyond anything to hit the evolutionary scene yet.'' - Roger Sperry

- So; ideas are the cause of evolution eh? Hmm. Sounds a lot like saying ideas are the cause of creation :=}

This is more equivocation. ie. any change caused by human ideas (not ideas generic) is not (by any definition) evolution. We're told over and over that e. is a natural, undirected process. It's simply bad science (bad method) to call human intervention by the same name as darwinian evolution.

Ideas haven't caused technology (and its effects) it's been people who have done this. (What warrant does he have to strip credit from the real people who were responsible and to hand the credit to some phantasm called an idea?) This is a dehumanizing way to speak.

302. 'Richard Dawkins made his own connection between the evolution of genes and the evolution of ideas. His essential actor was the replicator, and it scarcely mattered whether replicators were made of nucleic acid.
His rule is “All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.”

- Scarcely mattered! Give me a break. Is it good science to equate biological actors with immaterial objects? Is that considered good method?

His rule? is this a rule he discovered looking into a microscope or a telescope?
This isn't a fact, it's just a claim. It's not an observation, it's just a spin on the data.

All life? how can a scientist equate a living organism with an abstraction called an idea? Do ideas breath? Do they excrete? (Well, maybe some of his do.) Is that good science? Is that good method? This is more reductionism. This is getting close to saying all things are just numbers, or it's all just math. (Or it's all just information.)

To conflate biological replicators (having DNA, etc.) with ideas is a confusion of categories. Is to do so considered good science? To say a cell and an 'idea' are both replicators is to spout nonsense. Such a statement has no meaningful content. Maybe this is truly how things appear to him, but if it is, he's deluded.

His claim isn't in any way scientific. (Am I at war with 'science' if I point out these absurdities?)

As usual dawkins is ignoring the problem of information; of where new information comes from. (Does he have a 'replicator' for that? Not that I know of.) In this fantasy version of the real world, you don't need a source of information.

302. “I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this planet,”
he proclaimed at the end of his first book, in 1976.

- An idea isn't alive; not in any scientific sense of the word. It's merely a greeting card variety of metaphor that supports his claim. He's confused metaphor and reality.

302. 'For this bodiless replicator itself, Dawkins proposed a name. He called it the meme, and it became his most memorable invention...'

- A bodiless replicator eh? Sounds as real as his original replicators, or any of those dreamt up by the OOL crowd.

For someone who claims to be a defender of science, dawkins is awfully big on metaphors isn't he? In fact he depends on them. He's a kind of darwinian poet. He gives things new names, he invents names, he invents stories, puts spin on things, looks at things upside down, goes about standing on his head. It's all great fun I guess; but it's not science.
- I thought for the materialist only the physical was real. What's his foundation for calling ideas real?

Materialism;
1. The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.
- I don't know how a materialist can call ideas real, alive and evolving; not without betraying his own worldview. There's no way he reason consistently and logically from one to the other.
2. 'The metaphysical doctrine that matter is the only substance, and that matter and its motions constitute the universe.
3. 'The doctrine that all phenomena are to be accounted for by the fortuitous concourse of atoms, in connection with certain laws or tendencies toward laws...
- the materialist must contend that ideas are the product of a fortuitous concourse of atoms. e.g. the theory of e. must be explained purely by physics. (I think this is impossible, even for a word spinner like Dawkins.)

Here's a comical instance of dawkins defending materialism by denying materialism. ie. only if m. were untrue could his claim make sense.

302. “Memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation,” he wrote. They compete with one another for limited resources: brain time or bandwidth.

- Is that a testable claim? If it's not, it's not science. This is typical Dawkins; giving his reductionist spin on things and calling it science.

Memes a leapin' - gee; must be spring. (Maybe the royals ought to make Dawkins poet laureate.)

I see that man himself has disappeared into the reductionist void gifted to us by scientism.
To say ideas compete is just plain silliness. Only people compete. Is this kind of equivocation (and reification) good science? Is this good method? (That Dawkins presents himself as a defender of scientific method is a farce. He believes in the poetic method to be sure; but not the empirical method.)
- see my post; Whatever happened to (real) science?

303. Speaking of memes in music, Gleick writes; 'This one,
a notorious though shorter-lived invader of brains, overran an immense population many times faster.

- Yes; we're back to yesterday's post and the replicator invasion [see the invasion of the replicators]. To speak of ideas as invaders of brains is both stupid and grotesque. (Man is the 'missing link' in this new anti-human theology of reductionism.) To speak of ideas overrunning a population is meaningless. It has no scientific content. This is poetry not science. I thought there was no place for poetry in science. (e.g. Genesis), but I guess it's only 'religious' poetry that's been banned. Apparently Darwinian poetry is permitted.

303. 'Even more pervasive and indelible are the smile of Mona Lisa, The Scream of Edvard Munch, and the silhouettes of various fictional extraterrestrials. These are memes, living a life of their own, independent of any physical reality.

- I have no idea how that makes sense in terms of materialism.
It's nonsense to speak of ideas as living. (I realize that biblical writers refer to scipture as the living word, but that certainly doesn't apply to so called memes - though this might be where the meme idea came from.) This isn't science. Empirical science has been abandoned; even as its great defenders claim to be defending it against creationism.

It's only a theist who has the right to speak of an entity existing independent of physical reality. (Here we have the irony of the materialist defending materialism by adopting, for the moment, the metaphysics of theism.) R. Dawkins claims that god cannot possibly exist, because nothing that doesn't have a physical form can exist. ie. god as spirit is an impossibility. Apparently a meme can do what god cannot. (This makes no sense to me, but then I'm not a physicalist.)

Memes are living a life of their own eh? I wonder if anyone's told them :=} Good grief. (Is the god meme alive and well and living a life of his own? Is that the new theology? Let's see; if the god meme is alive, does this mean he can communicate with me, and I with him? What would this mean? Does this mean prayer is valid after all?) This meme idea deserves only to be laughed at. (When I say that I mean it's replicators deserve to be laughed at.)

303. 'Memes emerge in brains and travel outward, establishing beachheads on paper and celluloid and silicon and anywhere else information can go.

- We have 'memes' and brains, but no people apparently. (I wonder if James Gleick exists; maybe he's just a meme.) This is a horrid way to speak.
Travel outward? more personification.
Establish beachheads? more personification.
Establish a beachhead on paper and silicon? more poetry and personification.
- is personification good science? Is it good method? I thought science was all about depersonifying nature. I thought it was a great 'crime' to personify nature, or anything in nature. Whatever happened to that?

Personify;
1. 'To treat or regard as a person; represent as a rational being; treat, for literary purposes, as if endowed with the sentiments, actions, or language of a rational being or person, or, for artistic purposes, as if having a human form and nature.
- I thought personification was what religion did, and that this was its great crime. Whatever happened to that?

303. 'They are not to be thought of as elementary particles but as organisms.
- he means their complex ideas, not simple 'ideas' like numbers or colors. (As if those were simple.)

- This is more personification. I think he's been deliberately vague and confusing here; that he wants people to think of memes as living organisms.

303. 'The hula hoop itself is a meme vehicle. So, for that matter, is each human hula hooper—a strikingly effective meme vehicle...'

- This extends Dawkins' metaphor of the selfish gene; the model of man as a gene vehicle. ie. as man carries genes, he carries memes. As he's a plaything of some genes, he's a plaything of some memes. Man has been 'dethroned' by the gene and the meme. The lesser has become the greater. This is a dismissal of the idea of responsibility. Dawkins is trying to defend materialism by doing away with morality; as morality makes no sense in a materialist universe. In this model, man is a helpless victim of his genes. (He's a gene/meme machine I guess.) The christian critique of materialism has been that it has no basis for giving men a moral code. Dawkins deals with this critique by denying man is a morally responsible creature. Being a robot slave of selfish genes man doesn't need a moral code; such a code makes no sense since man has no free will, and can only do as the genes command.

304. “A wagon with spoked wheels carries not only grain or freight from place to place; it carries the brilliant idea of a wagon with spoked wheels from mind to mind.”- Daniel Dennett 'Hula hoopers did that for the hula hoop’s memes...'

- A wagon doesn't carry an idea. One might say it's an embodiment of an idea, but without a human being to see it, and to comprehend it, it's nothing.

G. speaks of as the hula hoop were a person, a person that possessed memes.
To say lula hoopers did something for the hula hoop meme is utterly nonsensical. This isn't science. This is a rhetorical interpretation of the data; it's nothing but spin. No one observes this. They observe hula hoops, and people using hula hoops. That's empirical descriptive science. The rest is spin; metaphysical speculation.

304. 'The meme is not the dancer but the dance

- Is that a scientific claim? I wonder if it's testable.

304. 'We are their vehicles and their enablers.

- We are their vehicles he tells us.
I almost wish I was making this stuff up, but I'm not. (The book I've enjoyed so much is transforming itself into some Lovecraft horror tale.) This is more from the new death of man theology. (e.g. you've no doubt read the claim man is just a bag of chemicals.) Dawkins is the high priest of this new religion, and apparently Gleick is an acolyte.

305. 'Memes may be stories, recipes, skills, legends, and fashions. We copy them, one person at a time. Alternatively, in Dawkins’s meme-centered perspective, they copy themselves.

- They copy themselves? This is an example of what we call the pathetic fallacy.

305. For Dawkins; 'selfishness is defined by the geneticist as the tendency to increase one’s chances of survival relative to its competitors.

- This is typical Dawkins; redefining concepts in a Richard friendly manner. i.e.winning the debate via definition. (He's responding to the criticism genes can't be selfish.) Selfishness has been turned from immoral human behavior (condemned by Christianity) into a amoral survival project. As usual his goal is to promote materialism. i.e. morals, not being physical, aren't real; therefore they're redefined as instincts or programs. His 'science' is teleological. The goal of all his 'scientific' writing is the promotion and defense of materialism. He turns everything to this end; even if it means badly distorting the data, inventing metaphors, or turning basic science upside down. He allows nothing to get in the way of the project.

305. 'Dawkins’s way of speaking was not meant to suggest that memes are conscious actors, only that they are entities with interests that can be furthered by natural selection. Their interests are not our interests.

- Only people have interests, and 'memes' aren't persons. To speak of 'natural selection' in this context is a travesty of real science. Natural selection is an undirected process of species conservation. To equate NS with the process of human idea transmission is ludicrous. You're comparing an undirected process to human beings. This is a wild category mistake. This is making nonsense of the English language.

To equate our interests with the 'interests' of memes is buffoonery. These people have reified an abstraction (or metaphor) and are acting as if it's alive and has personality. We need to ask if this has anything to do with science. (Is reification good science? is it good method?)

305. 'When we speak of fighting for a principle or dying for an idea, we may be more literal than we know.

- People aren't (as far as I'm aware) being literal when they say they're fighting for an idea. Good grief! What this means is they're willing to die for the embodiment of an idea; the idea as it's been expressed in society, in their homeland. It's means they're willing to die for the people who live according to the idea. I have no idea how Gleick can be so thick. (I've said it before; materialism destroys the mind... it renders people idiotic in their propositions.)

Notes;
1. The Information - James Gleick/301.
2. 'Personification is an ontological metaphor in which a thing or abstraction is represented as a person.[1]
The term "personification" may apply to:
* A description of an object as being a living person or animal as in: "The sun shone brightly down on me as if she were shining for me alone". In this example the sun is depicted as if capable of intent, and is referenced with the pronoun "she" rather than "it".
* An outstanding example of a quality or idea: "He's invisible, a walking personification of the Negative" (Ralph Ellison).
- remind you of anyone :=}
- someone ought to tell Dawkins and his fan club that memes are an it not a he or she; that they're objects not persons.
Examples;
# Father Time
# Mother Nature
- Another example is natural selection; the 'tinker' who hobbles together the hodgepodge machinery we call a human being.
3. 'The pathetic fallacy or anthropomorphic fallacy is the treatment of inanimate objects as if they had human feelings, thought, or sensations.[1] The pathetic fallacy is a special case of the fallacy of reification. The word 'pathetic' in this use is related to 'pathos' or 'empathy' (capability of feeling), and is not pejorative.
- to treat ideas (memes) as alive and living is an example of the pathetic fallacy. (This is not exactly considered good science... or it wasn't at one time.)