My recent memetic research on the ontology of memes provided a novel view of how humans conceptualize and understand. Let me summarize this somewhat complex finding.

Memes are a duality and unity of strategic memes and material memes.

Memes as quanta

Strategic memes are quantum-like “objects, ” meaning they have properties like physical quanta. Apart from many other phenomena arising from this ontological definition, the most important one is that they are in a superposition (quantum indeterminacy) until measured. Only when measured do they decohere themselves into ” observable objects” that exist in time and space determinacy and can be explained by classical mechanics.

The measurement of strategic memes happens when they enter human brains.

What happens when they enter human brains? What is a measuring “device” in human brains?

Measurement of memes

Here comes the most challenging part. No other device can measure memes than memes themselves. In brains, neurons, dendrites, synapses, and other neural substrates provide the infrastructure for memetic activities. Unlike precepts that execute in brains without the help of memes, like in all animals, concepts that result from a memetic activity abuse the cerebral structure to perform so-called human thoughts.

Here, we should turn around the perspective and ask ourselves how human concepts develop in infants. They develop through accepting memes from their environment, which increasingly occupy their cerebral infrastructure.

Here comes the most crucial shift from Susan Blackmore’s theory that memes group into meme complexes. No. As quantum-like entities, they create memetic fields.

Memetic fields and learning

Each meme that enters the brain adds its vector value to the existing memetic field, thus reshaping the curvature of the existing meme. That is how we learn. By adding memes, we enrich and also reshape the existing memetic field.

It is thus a memetic field that measures memes. When a meme (strategic meme) enters the memetic field, it decoheres into a material meme. At that moment, we say that we have comprehended something.

As it is so often, we can prove the theory by using negative examples.

Blind spots of a comprehension

Starting with the analogy, let’s ask ourselves what perceptual blindspot is. That is a point in the retina that has no photoreceptors. We can say that photons enter our eyes, yet those that fall onto the blind spot we do not perceive.

Similarly, there are conceptual blindspots, but the mechanism behind them is different.

The blind spot of conceptions is the curvature of the memetic field. It can happen that the strategic meme that enters the memetic field creates such a material meme that its vector is repelled from the existing memetic field. Such a meme does not enrich the existing memetic field (we do not learn); even more, we are unaware that such a meme exists. We do not hear what they say loud enough.

We often say that we do not hear what we do not want to hear. Yet, we should understand that this is not a conscious activity. It happens without our will. I’m not describing a situation where one person understands, and another does not. There are even more awkward situations when someone is unaware of anything to be understood while another person clearly understands it. A meme repels from the first person so that he is unaware of it.

For a novel neuroscience

A memetic field theory is a homolog of quantum field theory. A homology means they are not similar or analog, but memetic field theory evolved from quantum field theory. Memetic field theory is an evolutionary descendant of quantum field theory.

The neuroscience that deals with precepts is deeply rooted in quantum field theory and thus cannot understand comprehension—conception. Thus, neuroscience should accept that genetics (quantum mechanics) and memetics (memetic mechanics) coevolve and that neuroscience is incomplete without memetic fields.