{"id":799,"date":"2004-01-06T18:32:32","date_gmt":"2004-01-06T22:32:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=799"},"modified":"2004-01-06T18:32:32","modified_gmt":"2004-01-06T22:32:32","slug":"a-failure-of-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=799","title":{"rendered":"a failure of voice"},"content":{"rendered":"

My current profile is Dan Dennett, so I’m rereading his books, and once more filled with irritation at the idea of memes. I really don’t see how it adds anything except a specious impression of precision to what we already know. And then there is the active voice, which goes all the way back as far as The Selfish Gene<\/em>: genes are called ‘replicators’. Now, I have done this myself, but I now think this may be the beginning of the whole confusion. The point about genes — and their ancestors — is that they are replicatees<\/em> — they don’t copy themselves: they have qualities which cause their environments to copy them.<\/p>\n\n


\nThis is what makes the ‘replicator\/vehicle’ terminology so misleading. I make a point of using David Hull’s terms, ‘replicator’ and ‘interactor’. But even this probably makes us overestimate the role of the gene in the whole thing.<\/p>\n\n

With that said, I think that Dennett on consciousness and ‘the place of value in a world of facts’ is admirably clear and instructive. I am appreciating Consciousness Explained<\/em> much more than when I first read it, 15 years ago, which has to be a test of value in a book. He’s quite right about Zombies, for instance.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My current profile is Dan Dennett, so I’m rereading his books, and once more filled with irritation at the idea of memes. I really don’t see how it adds anything except a specious impression of precision to what we already … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}