This article by Dawkins:
Viruses of the Mind
is mainly what shaped my negative opinion of him.
It is the height of scientism, IMO.
you are the media you consume.
I am pragmatic. You need a different model for relationships than you do for appreciating art. Sometimes the entire idea of a model might be... unhelpful.
You need a different model for relationships than you do for appreciating art.
Indeed. How does that relate to understanding how the brain operates?
With regard to the mind, I think that attempts at a purely positivistic understanding are not very promising. So I think that scientific research into the mind should, preferably, incorporate a significant 'internal' perspective. I explained this at greater length here.
Discounting law as a science, the only fields of research I know enough about to start to recommend specific methodologies are in social science (political science; political economy). Within these fields, the analytic narratives approach shows some promise in combining qualitative and quantitative research.
I do not think that this approach can be easily transplanted to anthropology because the set of issues dealt with in that field is just different. I also don't know how it would relate to mental research.
To my knowledge, it has never gotten past that stage to the actual work of science (like, in social science, formulating and isolating dependent and independent variables, testing them empirically, contrasting results with alternative hypotheses to show why a better explanation has been yielded...).
And: If you want to think about thought at all, banish "meme" from your vocabulary. A crude and reductionist parallel to an overly crude and reductionist interpretation of genes as the operational components of DNA, the concept of "meme" is useful only if your goal is to reduce thinking to inanity.
What I know of Dawkins is not inspiring further interest on my part. The Fates are kind.
What I know of Dawkins is not inspiring further interest on my part.
Your preference for denunciation rather than specific, reasoned argument doesn't inspire interest in what YOU have to say. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
He's proposing a(n occasionally somewhat speculative) model for how social constructs spread and compares some of its features to those of religion. He then comes (unsurprisingly) to the conclusion that religion is a social construct. Now, one can certainly argue with his model and one can certainly question his analogies, but what part of the basic strategy is not a valid exercise?
Section 4 (about whether science is also a mental virus) is weakly argued, though. It reads more like a case of apologetics and special pleading than a real argument (I think that there is a case to be made that the conclusion is at least partially correct, but this piece clearly does not make that case).
That being said, I too have the impression that Dawkins occasionally errs on the scientistic side. But I don't see how that affects his arguments vis-a-vis religion.
This, however, was good for a laugh:
It came in an interview with a rabbi undertaking the bizarre task of vetting the kosher-purity of food products right back to the ultimate origins of their minutest ingredients. He was currently agonizing over whether to go all the way to China to scrutinize the menthol that goes into cough sweets. ``Have you ever tried checking Chinese menthol... it was extremely difficult, especially since the first letter we sent received the reply in best Chinese English, `The product contains no kosher'...
Looks like they thought 'kosher' was some kind of contamination :-P
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
