I have not read all of Dennett’s works as of today I am sorry to say. I have read Consciousness explained, Darwins Dangerous Idea, and Freedom Evolves. From reading Freedom evolves I became entrigued in Ainslie, and have since read Breakdown of will, and found it extremely thought provoking, and pretty much dead on.
I seem to see a strong link between, Ainslie’s population of selves, and Dennetts formulation of meme theory. Dawkins took the leap in applying natural selection to the mind, Dennett took the idea, and went further with it, but he seems to think that although there are parallels, that mementic evolution is also very different. Mostly I think that Dennett doesn’t believe we can create a one to one isomorphism with DNA, and Chromosomes to the mind. I think he is right with his careful aproach to the mind, not wanting to be a “greedy reductionist”. But could mementic evolution and organic evolution be even more parallel then Dennett has taken the idea? Wouldn’t Ainslie’s theory be the possible foundation for such a merger? If the human mind is a population of selves, discounting hyperbolically, and evolving via natural selectioni, could the Selves just be mementic structures? They would have to be wouldn’t they.
Memes become associative, they create a network(a chromosome), and the phenotypic effects is an entity( such as microsoft). But the human being isn’t the entity, its the populations of these memetic entities, these memetic structures, that are competing for hyperbolically discounted rewards,(although some meme structures have found a new trick, of discounting exponentially, could this become a baldwin effect?), via natural selection.
Does this extend meme theory any way, or is it just a pragmatic observation?? The human mind as many of us understand is not a cartesian theatre(those who don’t are fairly ignorant) . We know this, and Ainslie’s theory strikes home that idea. Ainslies population of hyperbolic discounters, are akin to the animals in the animal kindom, and dawkins memes are their gene pool.
My question is has Dennett taken his model of Memes further then he had in Darwins Dangerous idea? and does this theory now include more of Ainslie’s population of Hyperbolic Discounters?