Chapter
Eleven
The function of consciousness
Selfplex. A memeplex which is formed when people
use language that includes references to self. sentences such
as ‘I believe x’, ‘I think y’, ‘I hate z’ give an advantage to
memes x, y, and z over simply stating them. In the pro-
cess, they contribute to belief in an ‘I’ who has the beliefs,
thoughts, and desires. Although the original function was to
spread the memes, we now use self-referential language to
express many non-memetic ideas, too (e.g. ‘I feel angry’).
Viral memes. some memes succeed because they
are true or useful or beautiful, while others use tricks to per-
suade people to copy them. Viral memes include email viruses,
Ponzi schemes, and ineffective diets and therapies. Dawkins
calls religions ‘viruses of the mind’ because they infect peo-
ple by using threats and promises, trick them by discouraging
doubt, and reward them for passing on the memeplex.
Internet memes. Images, videos, or texts,
often humorous or surprising, that are copied, sometimes
with deliberate variations, and passed on to potentially
millions of others by internet users.
Tremes. technological memes that are copied, varied,
and selected by machines without human involvement.FIGURE 11.11 • St Paul’s cathedral is a meme-spreading monument.
The beautiful vistas, awesome dome, inspiring
paintings, and delightful music all make people want
to worship there, and in the process they spread the
memes of Christianity.memes depend on the variable-fidelity copying of
human interactions.
Among the similarities are that both genes and
memes compete selfishly to be copied, their only
interest being self-replication. Some memes suc-
ceed because they are useful to us, such as the vast
memeplexes of technology and the arts and sci-
ences. At the other end of the spectrum are memes
that use tricks to get themselves copied. Many of
these are essentially ‘copy-me’ instructions backed
up with threats and promises, such as email viruses,
pyramid schemes, and religions (Dawkins, 1976).
In the middle are vast swathes of culture that are
sometimes useful and sometimes destructive, like
political and financial institutions. Based on these
principles, memetics has been used to explain many
aspects of human behaviour and human evolution,
including the origins of our big brains and our
capacity for language (Blackmore, 1999). A model
of creativity involving the evolutionary processes of
‘blind variation’ (generating ideas in divergent think-
ing) followed by ‘selective retention’ (convergent
thinking to refine specific ideas) seems to align with
brain data derived by several different methods, and
involves activity in the default mode network during
the first phase (Jung et al., 2013).
The concept of memes is a central part of Dennett’s
theory of consciousness. He describes a person
as ‘the radically new kind of entity created when a
particular sort of animal is properly furnished by – or
infested with – memes’ (1995b, p. 341), and a human
mind as ‘an artifact created when memes restructure
a human brain in order to make it a better habitat
for memes’ (p. 365). On his view, the human brain is
a massively parallel structure that is transformed by
its infection with memes into one that seems to work
as a serial machine. Just as you can simulate a par-
allel computer on a serial one, so the human brain
simulates a serial machine on parallel machinery. He
calls this the ‘Joycean machine’ after James Joyce’s
stream-of-consciousness novels, which tried to con-
vey the parallelism of consciousness through the
seriality of language. So, with this virtual machine
installed, we come to think about one thing after
another, and to use sentences and other mental
tools, in a way that suits language-based memes.
This is how the self, the ‘centre of narrative gravity’
(Chapter 16), comes to be constructed: ‘our selves