Meme theory = mayavada?

[Big Momma]

And brains, don't forget brains. Don't let Iskcon misogynists score by showing that you don't got 'em.

[Papa]

Won't straight deny it, will you Shiva? Keep evading a flat denial; that could get you in trouble eh?

[Nitaidas]

Came across this passage in a book I am reading at present, Dennett's Freedom Evolves, the main argument of which is that free will and a deterministic world are not incompatible. Naturally, at some point memes come up and what he has to say has a bearing on what was discussed before in this thread.


"One further source of resistance to Darwinian thinking in this charged context needs to be exposed and disarmed before we can proceed comfortably. A deep and persistent misunderstanding of Darwinian thinking is the idea that whenever we give an evolutionary explanation of a human phenomenon, in terms of either genes of memes, we must be denying that people think! This is sometimes a by-product of the caricature of genetic determinism, whose imaginary adherents say: "People don't think, they just have lots of unthinking instincts." But it can also be found in a caricature (sometimes, I must admit, a self-caricature) of theorists of cultural evolution who say, in effect: "My memes made me do it!"---as if memes (say, the memes of calculus or quantum physics) could do their work in their human hosts without requiring those human hosts to do any thinking. Memes depend on human brains as their nesting places; human kidneys or lungs wouldn't do as alternative sites, because memes depend on the thinking powers of their hosts. Being involved in thinking is a meme's way of being put through its paces and tested by natural selection, just as getting one's protein recipe followed and getting the result out in the world is a gene's way of being tested. If memes are tools for thinking (and many of the best of them are just that), they have to be wielded for their phenotypic effects to show up. You still have to think." (p 186, Freedom Evolves, Dennett, 2003)