Memes
The intentional stance is an epistemic position taken up in response to an unthinkable other. Its purpose is to make something easier to understand. When this is forgotten, the result is fallacious reification. This is thought to have occurred in the case of memetics.
...a cultural meme pool can be thought of as an intentional system only insofar as it remains an object of philosophical enquiry. As soon as it is reified as actually involving intentions, adopting either a "design stance" (What did the individual human meme-maker intend?) or a "physical stance" (What is an intended meme made of?) becomes more appropriate. (p. 95)
The author called this "Dennett's Rule." He showed that, in the case of memes, the intentional stance became increasingly implicit over time: as the idea of an "idea virus" was popularized further, the stance eventually dropped away entirely.
The main difference between Blackmore’s replication of the meme and Dennett’s... was that Blackmore dropped the intentional stance even as she kept its active interpretation. While the stance had been implicit in Dennett’s discussions of the meme, it was absent in Blackmore’s. As a result, following the publication of The Meme Machine, the meme was reified completely. (p. 97)
Read more about this topic: Intentional Stance