Ideas are Not Replicators but Minds Are--论文代写范文精选

从记忆的检索项可以触发，世界观发展理念的想法主要是通过社会交换，一个想法参与文化的演变，揭示产生的世界观,它的某些方面影响暴露在外的世界观。如果一个想法影响看似不相关的领域，这并不意味着独立的文化血统。下面的essay代写范文进行叙述。

Abstract
An idea is not a replicator because it does not consist of coded self-assembly instructions. It may retain structure as it passes from one individual to another, but does not replicate it. The cultural replicator is not an idea but an associatively-structured network of them that together form an internal model of the world, or worldview. A worldview is a primitive, uncoded replicator, like the autocatalytic sets of polymers widely believed to be the earliest form of life. Primitive replicators generate self-similar structure, but because the process happens in a piecemeal manner, through bottom-up interactions rather than a top-down code, they replicate with low fidelity, and acquired characteristics are inherited. Just as polymers catalyze reactions that generate other polymers, the retrieval of an item from memory can in turn trigger other items, thus cross-linking memories, ideas, and concepts into an integrated conceptual structure. Worldviews evolve idea by idea, largely through social exchange. An idea participates in the evolution of culture by revealing certain aspects of the worldview that generated it, thereby affecting the worldviews of those exposed to it. If an idea influences seemingly unrelated fields this does not mean that separate cultural lineages are contaminating one another, because it is worldviews, not ideas, that are the basic unit of cultural evolution.
Keywords: associative network, acquired characteristics, autocatalytic closure, conceptual closure, culture, evolution, idea, origin of life, replicator, self-replication, worldview 

Does Culture Evolve like Biological Lineages Do
It is clear that cultural entities (such as ideas, habits, mannerisms, attitudes, and languages, as well as artifacts such as tools and art) evolve in the general sense of incremental change reflecting the constraints and affordances of an environment (Campbell 1987; Csanyi 1989; Cziko 1997; Gabora 1997; Hull 1988a; Lorenz 1971; Lumsden and Wilson 1981; Plotkin 1997; Popper 1963; Hofbauer and Sigmund 1988). Ideally we could flesh out a theoretical framework for this process that unifies the psychological and social sciences as did the theory of evolution for the biological sciences. 

Accordingly, there have been attempts to develop formal mathematical (Boyd and Richerson 1985; Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981; Schuster and Sigmund 1983) and computational (Gabora 1995; Spector and Luke 1996a, b; Baldassarre 2001) models of cultural evolution. Evolutionary theory has been also applied in general terms to units of culture referred to as memes (Aunger 2000; Blackmore 1999, 2000; Dawkins 1976; Dennett 1995; Gabora 1996) as well as to the analysis of growth and change in economics (Borgers 1997; Borkar et. al. 1998; Metcalfe 2001; Rivkin 2001; Saviotti and Mani 1995; Witt 1992), financial markets (Farmer and Lo 1999), social customs (Durham 1991; Marsden 2001), art (Sims 1991), and the design of artifacts in primitive societies (Lake 1998). However, the endeavor to frame culture in evolutionary terms has not taken hold. It certainly hasn't had the effect of uniting previously disparate phenomena and paving the way for further inquiry, the way Darwin's theory of how life evolves through natural selection did for biology. Why not?

There are many complex aspects to this issue. This paper addressed the question of whether anything in culture, or the cognitive machinery that underlies it, constitutes a replicator, and explores implications for how to proceed with a theory of how culture evolves.

Two Kinds of Replicators
Thus, for Dawkins, a replicator makes copies of itself that survive long enough to copy themselves, and this continues for generations, producing lineages. The physical body that houses the replicator and gets it from place to place is referred to as the vehicle, or interactor (Hull 1988b). So long as replication is imperfect and thus introduces variation, and environmental interaction selects out the least fit, lineages evolve. But the replicator concept, as it was formulated, leaves open the crucial question: what sort of structure can make copies of itself? Or, to put it in more passive terms as sagely advocated by Sober and Wilson (1994), Godfrey-Smith (2000) [1] and others: what kind of structure has copies of itself made? At this point it is perhaps a good idea to note that, following in the footsteps of von Neumann (1966), when I use the word 'self' in phrases such as 'self-description' or 'self-replication', I mean not by the self but of the self.

In this section we will examine two kinds of replicators. First we consider replicators that use a self-assembly code such as the genetic code. Second we consider a more primitive sort of replicator, such as life prior to the evolution of the genetic code. In the section that follows, we examine whether cultural entities are replicators of either sort.

Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics
We saw that, like autocatalytic sets of polymers, worldviews do not evolve with the efficiency of a symbolic code, but in a piecemeal manner, largely through the expression, assimilation, and accommodation of cultural entities in the course of social interaction. This has important consequences for how traits get passed on from one generation to the next.

Let us briefly re-examine one aspect of the significance of the transition from uncoded to coded replicators in biology. With the advent of the genetic code, acquired characteristics were no longer passed on to the next generation. The presence of explicit self-assembly instructions, and the separate use of them as interpreted and uninterpreted information, meant that the replicant did not incorporate changes to the parent that occurred during development or in maturity. Thus for example, if one cuts off the tail of a mouse, its offspring will have tails of a normal length. Prior to coded replication, this was not the case. A change to one polymer would still be present in an offspring after budding occurred, and this could cause other changes that have a significant effect on the lineage further downstream. There was nothing to prohibit the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

Note that it is often said that because acquired traits are inherited in culture, culture should not be viewed in evolutionary terms. It is somewhat ironic that this critique also applies to the earliest stage of biological evolution itself. What was true of early life is also true of the replication of worldviews: there is nothing to prohibit the inheritance of acquired characteristics [5]. Consider again the example of the musical score. One can imagine a sort of molecular construction that could be understood by a musician as a musical score and played accordingly, and that had, encoded in it, instructions for how to piece together molecules in its surrounding medium to generate identical or similar molecular musical scores. One could modify the 'parent' score, and this would accordingly change how it was played. Unless one changed that particular part of the score that dealt with making copies of itself, the next generation of musical scores would not be affected [6]. Thus, changes acquired during any particular generation of this score could not be passed on. But this is not the case for the sort of musical score with which we are familiar. They do not contain a self-assembly code. (Nor do they need one, since we do the replicating of cultural entities, contextually modifying them according to our wishes, needs, and desires.) So once again there is nothing to prohibit the inheritance of acquired characteristics. We hear a joke and, in telling it, give it our own slant; we create a disco version of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and a rap version of that. Moreover since it is not Beethoven's Fifth per se that is evolving, but the worldviews of individuals exposed to it, we do not have to worry about 'contamination of cultural lineages' if listening to it has an affect on, say, the book one is writing.

Conclusions
We have seen that an idea is not a replicator because it does not consist of coded self-assembly instructions. It does not make copies of itself; it may retain structure as it passes from one individual to another, but does not replicate it. Does this mean that culture does not constitute an evolutionary process, or that an evolutionary process does not require replicators?

Some are happy to say that evolution does not require replicators of any sort (see commentary on a recent target article by Hull et. al. 2001). However, in the case of culture, it is not necessary to abandon the view that replicators play a vital role in evolution if we posit the notion of a primitive replicator. A primitive replicator generates self-similar primitive replicators, but in a piecemeal manner, and with low fidelity. A pre-RNA autocatalytic set is an example of a primitive replicator. A worldview-an interconnected network of ideas that together constitute an internal model of the world-is another example. Just as polymers catalyze reactions that result in the formation of other polymers, the retrieval of an episode or concept (or a creatively reconstructed blend of many items) from memory can in turn trigger other episodes or concepts, which get recursively re-described in terms of one another in a stream of thought. Each episode or concept thereby gets integrated into this associative structure, which evolves idea by idea, largely through social exchange, sometimes mediated by artifacts. As worldviews become increasingly complex, the artifacts they manifest in the world become increasingly complex, which necessitates even more complex worldviews, et cetera. Through this evolution of worldviews, today's culture is rooted in the culture of the past. Because the process of worldview formation works through 'bottom-up' interactions rather than a 'top-down' code, characteristics accumulated in one generation can be transmitted to the next.

In dis-analogy with the gene, an idea cannot be assumed to act like a replicator because it does not come packaged with the other elements of one's worldview. However, this problem is bypassed by viewing any idea as evidence concerning the state of the worldview that generated it. The idea participates in the evolution of culture by revealing some aspect of this worldview (which is a replicator) and thereby affecting the worldviews (other replicators) of those exposed to it. And if it is worldviews that are evolving, not ideas, then if this idea eventually exerts an effect on seemingly unrelated fields this does not mean that separate cultural lineages are contaminating one another.

In summary then, culture may be viewed as a process of evolution, but the replicator is not a cultural entity such as an idea, attitude, or piece of knowledge. It is an associatively-structured, interconnected network of them; that is, an internal model of the world, or worldview. Moreover, if we wish to describe culture in evolutionary terms we must be willing to forgo the requirement that its evolution involve coded replicators, and that they replicate with high fidelity. A worldview is a replicator of a primitive, uncoded sort, more like that of the earliest form of life than present-day life, and subject to the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

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