Philosophical Musings 4 QuantumBrain

There are several points from the original blog of this title that I would like to review. This comes having attended a seminar given by Dr. Susan Blackmore entitled “What does it feel like to be a rat?”. Following a personal communication with her after the talk, she brought my attention to the idea of memes, a term coined by Richard Dawkins. To quote the most reliable of all educational sources out there, Wikipedia:

A meme (pronounced /miːm/) comprises a unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices; such units or elements transmit from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. The etymology of the term relates to the Greek word mimemafor mimic.^[1] Memes act as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures.^[2]

Richard Dawkins coined the word “meme” as a neologism in his book The Selfish Gene (1976) to describe how one might extend evolutionaryprinciples to explain the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. He gave as examples melodies, catch-phrases, and beliefs (notably religious belief, clothing/fashion, and the technology of building arches).^[3]

Meme, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

In light of this, I would like to replace my use of the term “evolutionary emotion” in the original with meme. Not only does this describe what I mean more accurately but “emotion” can be misleading. An emotion gives rise to a distinct physiological response and as such has a definate physical presence, unlike what I was trying to describe for consciousness. Of course, one could argue that emotions are learnt and are thus encapsulated by the term “meme”.