Bill Benzon recently authored a series of posts critical of Daniel Dennett and memetics. These posts were cross-posted to the Replicated Typo blog. The posts are listed below:
- Dan Dennett on Words in Cultural Evolution
- Cultural Evolution, Memes, and the Trouble with Dan Dennett
- Dan Dennett on Words in Cultural Evolution
- More on Dennett on Memes
- Roles in Cultural Selection: Replicators, Interactors, and Beneficiaries
- Watch Out, Dan Dennett, Your Mind’s Changing Up on You!
- Culture Memes Information WTF!
- The Memetic Changeover: When and Why?
- Stir-fry memetics
- What's a meme? Where I got my conception
- The Memetic Mind, Not: Where Dennett Goes Wrong
- How the Meme became a Pest
- Cultural Evolution: Some Terminology
- Information WTF 2: The Candy Itself
- How Do We Account for the History of the Meme Concept?
- Dennett’s Preformationist Memetics
- Memes as Data: Targets, Couplers, and Designators
- The Mind is What the Brain Does, and Very Strange
- Cultural Evolving, So What?
- Turtles All the Way Down: How Dennett Thinks
- Dennett Upside Down Cake: Thinking About Language Evolution in the 21st Century
I responded in various ways at the time, writing a post explaining what I thought was wrong with Bill Benzon's position that memes don't enter minds titled: The excesses of externalism.
Bill Benzon is correct that Daniel Dennett doesn't mention meme phenotypes very frequently (though he doesn't ignore them completely!). I disagree with him about almost everything else.
I'd describe the series as being Bill 'venting' about memes. Bill has described the term "meme" as "a brilliant coinage", saying "I think the term is brilliant, which is why I use it". However, he seems less enthusiastic about the current usage of the term.
The content of these essays doesn't seem very coherent to me - though it certainly makes irritating and frustrating reading for memeophiles such as myself.
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