On Dawkins’s selfish gene. Here (2014):
Daniel Dennett (30 minute mark, approx): Rupert, you twice used the word dishonest in your characterization, of first, Dawkins on selfish genes, and then me on computers and brains. I have to say, I think it’s you’re the one that’s being dishonest. Those were both caricatures. You know that Richard Dawkins went way out of his way again and again to show you how to cash out the metaphor of selfishness and show what it means predictively and explanatorily in evolutionary biology and that explanatory matrix has been confirmed and extended in hundreds of experiments. You can’t understand transposons, you can’t understand a great deal of what goes on with genomic printing, if you don’t have that picture which he brilliantly called the picture of selfishness at the gene level. That’s one caricature of yours. And you imposed dualism on him and you imposed dualism on me. And again, it’s a wilful caricature. The whole point of my work on minds as software running on brains as computers has been, just as Colin says, to move away from the simple view of a computer like your laptop; no, the brain isn’t like your laptop much at all. But it is still, as he says, it’s still a computer, nd even to the point where we can profitably and predictably think about the downloading of new tricks, new cognitive talents to the brain, much the way we download new apps to our iPhones and our computers. No, your caricatures are very funny, but that’s all they are, and that’s not the way to deal with serious views.
Rupert Sheldrake: All right, I do hope I can reply to that. First of all, I do think that the selfish gene is an exceedingly misleading metaphor. I think that attributing selfishness to genes—he admits it’s a metaphor, of course, in the small print in The selfish Gene, he says it’s just a metaphor— Dawkins’s metaphors, Instead of enlightening research on —I mean, he’s done very little research on transposons, or actually rather little research at all for many years.
I don’t think that they’re particularly helpful; I think that modern research on genes which shows they’re far more complex and networks of interaction, there’s epigenetic modifications … It all looks hopelessly old-fashioned now. I think they’re metaphors which are past their sell-by date. I don’t they’ve been a very important part of research in actual molecular biology of genes. I think they’ve had a huge popular effect. His book, The Selfish Gene has sold vast numbers of copies to people who are not engaged in scientific research. It’s had a big social effect. I’d dispute that it’s a key player in the actual workings of biology.
And insofar as computer metaphors that rely on software and apps, I think they are intrinsically dualistic. don’t think it’s a caricature to say that they are dualistic; they are. Programs, software, hardware is a kind of dualism. And I think that these app metaphors and computer metaphors do raise a whole question, they have an implicit dualism, even an explicit dualism, which is not pure mechanism. I don’t think they are deliberately dishonest in many cases. I am sorry to say it again, I think it is a confusion of thinking that underlies them.
And you’ll probably totally disagree and say I am caricaturing your view, but I don’t think I am.
Sheldrake trashed here, of course.
Readers? Thoughts?
See also: Rupert Sheldrake likes Dembski’s Being as Communion
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Dawkins has always been a waste of fresh air. He is nothing more than an atheist preacher with a small but vocal following.
His science is pathetic and his theology, which he tries to argue often, is shocking. The man is a joke and his fellow so called “brights” feel the same.
Besides the fact that the ‘selfish’ gene is wrong, and besides the fact that the selfish gene ‘inflicted an immense damage to biological sciences’, for over 30 years:
Besides those two facts, is the fact that by terming the gene ‘selfish’ it forces one to illegitimately impart a form of ‘agent causality’ on the gene that atheists/materialists have no business imparting to a gene.
Some may object that saying a gene is selfish is ‘just a metaphor’ but the fact of the matter is that illegitimately imparting agent causality in biology is rampant. In fact, Stephen Talbott has pointed out that it is impossible for Darwinists to describe the complexities of life without illegitimately using terminology that invokes agency,,,
This working biologist agrees completely with Talbott:
But why can’t biologists avoid using ‘words that imply intentionality, functionality, strategy, and design’? It is because atheists/materialists have illegitimately hijacked ‘agent causality’ from theists in their bid to be ‘scientific’.
The following Professor, who is a former atheist, gets this point across more clearly than anyone else I have heard:
C.S. Lewis humorously stated the point like this:
In other words, law or necessity does not have causal adequacy within itself. i.e. Law is not a ‘mechanism’ that has ever ’caused’ anything to happen in the universe but is merely a description of a law-like regularity within the universe. Only agent causality has causal adequacy within itself and that is the primary reason why people will forever be trapped in using words that imply agency when describing actions in biology or whether describing actions in the universe. That is simply the way it has to be. As was stated before by the biologist, ‘we simply cannot avoid them’.
So do you ever have any of your own ideas?
as to: “So do you ever have any of your own ideas?’
As an atheist/materialist, you should really try to honestly ask yourself that very question!
As a theist, ‘I’, as a person with a conscious mind, of course have my ‘own ideas’.
Whereas you as an atheist, ‘you’ can’t really have ‘your own ideas’ because there is really no ‘you’ with a ‘mind’ to have your ‘own ideas’ in the first place. “You” having your ‘own ideas’ is only an illusion foisted off on the illusion of you by the randomly colliding molecules of your brain!
“Whereas you as an atheist, ‘you’ can’t really have ‘your own ideas’ because there is really no ‘you’ with a ‘mind’ to have your ‘own ideas’ in the first place. “You” having your ‘own ideas’ is only an illusion foisted off on the illusion of you by the randomly colliding molecules of your brain!”
Yeah but you’re using your brain to say that brains are unreliable unless god exists therefore you’re using your brain to believe god exists.
Self defeating.
One simple way of demonstrating that the mind is not the same thing as the brain comes from utilizing the ‘Law Of Identity’ to separate properties of mind from properties of the brain:
Immaterial Mind – video (Law Of Identity)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=720zEnzgTyM
Mind-Body Dualism – Is the Mind Purely a Function of the Brain? by Michael Egnor
Conclusion: Strict materialism predicts that mental function will always correlate with brain function, because mental function is the same thing as brain function. Dualism predicts that mental function and brain function won’t always correlate, because mental function isn’t the same thing as brain function. The Cambridge findings are more consistent with the dualist prediction than with the strict materialist prediction.
http://www.godandscience.org/e.....alism.html
Six reasons why you should believe in non-physical minds – podcast and summary (Law of Identity: 6 properties of mind that are not identical to properties of the brain, thus the mind is not the brain)
http://winteryknight.wordpress.....cal-minds/
The Mind and Materialist Superstition – Six “conditions of mind” that are irreconcilable with materialism: Michael Egnor, professor of neurosurgery at SUNY, Stony Brook
Excerpt: Intentionality,,, Qualia,,, Persistence of Self-Identity,,, Restricted Access,,, Incorrigibility,,, Free Will,,,
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....super.html
Alvin Plantinga has a humorous way of getting this ‘Law of Identity’ point across:
Alvin Plantinga and the Modal Argument (for the existence of the mind/soul) – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOTn_wRwDE0
That consciousness can exist apart from the temporal brain is heavily implicated in NDEs
“It (my body) looked like pretty much what it was. As in void of life.”
Pam Reynolds – Extremely Monitored Near Death Experience – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNbdUEqDB-k
And another wall of Gish galloping.
Ever notice most people here are capable of having their own discussions?
If DNA replicates (and it does, we can all agree upon that), and if that replication leads to a new life (and it does), and if that new life’s DNA enables it to run faster, eat more, have a better immune system, THEN that replicated genome will be preserved.
In effect the most successful phenotype generated by the most successful genotype survives.
That’s kind of like preserving itself, almost selfish, without the intention of being selfish of course. These processes proceed naturally, there is no need to attribute human emotion to them. Still ‘the selfish gene’, really is genuine new idea, and a genuine clever turn of phrase.
RvB8 & CH: I suggest that DNA does not replicate itself and is not even fully chemically stable, it is part of a complex integrated system that as a whole exhibits the capability of cellular self replication; a case of FSCO/I pointing to its only known or plausible adequate source, intelligently directed configuration — design. As for the self-serving dismissive reference to the hundreds of debates on the mass of evidence that undermines the a priori evolutionary materialist thesis, that double ad hominem of accusing both the man who won the debates and those you would deride as of like ilk backfires. Backfires by way of implying willful obtuseness and accusatory hostility rather than willingness to address evidence soberly on its merits. KF
More assertion, still no mechanism
as to
actually, DNA does not replicate itself, it is better to say that DNA is replicated,,, but anyways:
Actually if the characteristic of selfishness were played out in full the picture you envision would be vastly different. Instead of evolving to greater and greater heights of functional complexity as you picture it, the result would actually be the opposite:
If evolution were actually the truth about how all life came to be on Earth then the only ‘life’ that would be around would be extremely small organisms with the highest replication rate, and with the most mutational firepower, since only they would be the fittest to survive in the dog eat dog world (i.e. ‘selfish’ world) where blind pitiless evolution rules and only the ‘fittest’ are allowed to survive. The logic of this is nicely summed up here:
i.e. Since successful reproduction is all that really matters on a neo-Darwinian view of things, how can anything but successful reproduction be realistically ‘selected’ for? Any other function besides reproduction, such as sight, hearing, thinking, etc.., would be highly superfluous to the primary criteria of successfully reproducing, and should, on a Darwinian view, be discarded as so much excess baggage since it would, sooner or later, slow down successful reproduction.
Moreover, this inherent trait of selfishness within Darwinian theory is not what we find in the empirical evidence. Time after time we find micro-organisms helping each other, and us, in ways that have nothing to with their individual ‘fitness to reproduce’ i.e. nothing to do with their ‘selfishness’.
The following researchers recently were ‘surprised’ by what they found:
Indeed, instead of eating us, time after time these different types of microbial life are found to be helping us in essential ways that have nothing to do with their individual ability to successfully reproduce, (i.e. nothing to do with their ‘selfishness’),,
Design is a mechanism and your ignorance is not an argument.
DNA does NOT replicate- DNA gets replicated as part of the cell replication process.
Moreover, the modern synthesis, i.e. ‘the selfish gene’, is, to reiterate once again, found to be false:
etc.. etc..
In that sense I am a dualist – in fact I would guess almost everyone is. The interesting thing is that any software can be implemented as hardware. That’s why hardware simulators work.