My favorite thing about meme theory is the story of the Journal of Memetics, which was founded in 1997 to give the "science" of memes some academic plausibility and included all the usual suspects (Dennett, Dawkins, Blackmore) on its advisory board. It closed in 2005 with an issue that has to be seen to be believed: alongside a few feeble attempts to assert the continuing relevance of meme theory, there was an article explaining "why memetics... has failed to produce substansive results." Far from attempting to dodge the issue, the author states flat out that memetics has no explanatory power and is "a short-lived fad whose effect has been to obscure more than it has been to enlighten." The fact that Dennett continued to promote memetics even after the flagship journal of the discipline effectively published its own obituary is... well, not astounding, and it doesn't tell us anything about Dennett's stubborn commitment to discredited scientific paradigms that we didn't already know, but it's still pretty funny.
One other reason the journal closed was that, after the initial rush of speculative articles in the "towards a memetics of X" vein, it turned out there wasn't much concrete to say about memes, so it was hard to actually find articles to publish.
Just wanted to spread the word. Addison Hart, David's brother, posted a "DBH Surgery Fund" and GoFundMe link on his Substack. It sounds like DBH will be needing serious back surgery.
I attended a talk he gave in Perth, Oz, perhaps 20yrs ago. I remember nothing of interest about it. It was organised by the Univ of Western Australia philosophy dept, which might as well not exist.
It will always be a source of wonder to me that a man as naturally intelligent as Dennett could have made himself so foolish through sheer dogmatism. All creeds and orthodoxies are dangerous things. Or, to quote a television program from many years ago (script by Douglas Adams under a pseudonym), “It amazes me that so enormous an intellect can inhabit so small a mind.”
what a brilliant & hilarious analysis & assessment! i must confess my sheer enjoyment of the takedown breached any illusions i might have had about my objectivity.
hope you’re doing better. certainly keeping you in prayer.
He had his moments. It was actually his article "On Giving the Libertarians What They Say They Want" that convinced me that the analytic conception of libertarian free will was incoherent (or at least not worth having).
I will grant you he was more tolerable then the other "Horsemen" (God I cringe even writing that) as he didn't have the smug pompousness of Harris, the misinformed condescension of Dawkins or the radically sneering revisionism of Hitchens. Surprisingly he considered himself an agnostic anti-theist or in his own words a "quasi militant atheist."
What he got right as a philosopher tended to come from his fanatical consistency to his materialist worldview. A lot of it was more of a reductio ad absurdum for materialism, but at least he didn't shy away from unwelcome consequences (even if he never went quite as far as the Clown Prince of Eliminative Materialism, Alex Rosenberg).
Well, unlike the latter two, at least he didn't call for the arrest of the Pope during Benedict XVI's visit to the UK. And I would like to hope that his not being a UK citizen was not the only reason for that.
I've also heard that he was a pleasant person, which sets him apart from Dawkins, who seems to have been just as pompous and combative as you would expect (Rupert Sheldrake's account of their meeting while Dawkins was filming a documentary paints him as a fanatical crank who seemed to think he knew where every conversation was going before it even began).
Yes I’m afraid there seems to be few redeeming qualities to Dawkins. The same of course goes for the other living Horseman, Harris is a truly disgusting human being most of the time
My favorite thing about meme theory is the story of the Journal of Memetics, which was founded in 1997 to give the "science" of memes some academic plausibility and included all the usual suspects (Dennett, Dawkins, Blackmore) on its advisory board. It closed in 2005 with an issue that has to be seen to be believed: alongside a few feeble attempts to assert the continuing relevance of meme theory, there was an article explaining "why memetics... has failed to produce substansive results." Far from attempting to dodge the issue, the author states flat out that memetics has no explanatory power and is "a short-lived fad whose effect has been to obscure more than it has been to enlighten." The fact that Dennett continued to promote memetics even after the flagship journal of the discipline effectively published its own obituary is... well, not astounding, and it doesn't tell us anything about Dennett's stubborn commitment to discredited scientific paradigms that we didn't already know, but it's still pretty funny.
One other reason the journal closed was that, after the initial rush of speculative articles in the "towards a memetics of X" vein, it turned out there wasn't much concrete to say about memes, so it was hard to actually find articles to publish.
Just wanted to spread the word. Addison Hart, David's brother, posted a "DBH Surgery Fund" and GoFundMe link on his Substack. It sounds like DBH will be needing serious back surgery.
Here's a link to Addison's post:
https://addisonhodgeshart.substack.com/p/david-bentley-hart-surgery-fund
Edit: The goal has been reached:
https://addisonhodgeshart.substack.com/p/dbh-surgery-fund-update
I attended a talk he gave in Perth, Oz, perhaps 20yrs ago. I remember nothing of interest about it. It was organised by the Univ of Western Australia philosophy dept, which might as well not exist.
It will always be a source of wonder to me that a man as naturally intelligent as Dennett could have made himself so foolish through sheer dogmatism. All creeds and orthodoxies are dangerous things. Or, to quote a television program from many years ago (script by Douglas Adams under a pseudonym), “It amazes me that so enormous an intellect can inhabit so small a mind.”
what a brilliant & hilarious analysis & assessment! i must confess my sheer enjoyment of the takedown breached any illusions i might have had about my objectivity.
hope you’re doing better. certainly keeping you in prayer.
Daniel Dennett was to me 50% intelligent and 50% sophist.
Well, then, given how intelligent he was, his sophistry must have been titanic.
You know I always wanted to ask you, will you write a blog about process theology? (Whitehead,Hartshorne,Cobb etc.)
No. Everything I have ever written on theology makes it clear I reject it. I have nothing to add that isn’t obvious.
Well considering you're a walking thesaurus I guess I got a little lost in translation.
I’m having a translation done of several of my books into demotic.
He had his moments. It was actually his article "On Giving the Libertarians What They Say They Want" that convinced me that the analytic conception of libertarian free will was incoherent (or at least not worth having).
I will grant you he was more tolerable then the other "Horsemen" (God I cringe even writing that) as he didn't have the smug pompousness of Harris, the misinformed condescension of Dawkins or the radically sneering revisionism of Hitchens. Surprisingly he considered himself an agnostic anti-theist or in his own words a "quasi militant atheist."
What he got right as a philosopher tended to come from his fanatical consistency to his materialist worldview. A lot of it was more of a reductio ad absurdum for materialism, but at least he didn't shy away from unwelcome consequences (even if he never went quite as far as the Clown Prince of Eliminative Materialism, Alex Rosenberg).
Well, unlike the latter two, at least he didn't call for the arrest of the Pope during Benedict XVI's visit to the UK. And I would like to hope that his not being a UK citizen was not the only reason for that.
I think there was enough respectability about the man for that to be the case. He was certainly very kind to those who knew him from what I’ve heard
I've also heard that he was a pleasant person, which sets him apart from Dawkins, who seems to have been just as pompous and combative as you would expect (Rupert Sheldrake's account of their meeting while Dawkins was filming a documentary paints him as a fanatical crank who seemed to think he knew where every conversation was going before it even began).
Yes I’m afraid there seems to be few redeeming qualities to Dawkins. The same of course goes for the other living Horseman, Harris is a truly disgusting human being most of the time