Metaphor and the fallacy of division in Dawkins' use of the term "selfish gene"

When Dawkins clarifies what he means by the term "gene" in the title of his work, he states that it refers not an to individual but to a whole population of genes of a certain type. He then proposes that we apply a metaphor as a kind of shortcut for understanding the conclusions of mathematical genetics: imagine that the gene is an individual trying perpetuate itself by competing with its allele and cooperating with other genes in producing a vehicle that will behave in such a way as to enable the genes to survive to the next generation. According to this heuristic, those genes that are most ingenious at producing effective survival machinesl will tend to become predominant in a population.

This metaphor is, in my opinion, a great device for giving a basic idea about population genetics. But Dawkins also uses it to make a philosophical point, and in doing so seems to change the subject in a manner that is misleading. He talks of individual genes using an individual organism as a vehicle for surviving: "As the cistrons leave one body and enter the next, as they board, sperm and egg, for the journey to the next generation, they are likely to find that the little vessel contains their close neighbors of the previous voyage, old shipmates with whom they sailed..." This is clearly poetic language and shouldn't be taken as anything more than that. But there is a serious point behind this imaginative description: i.e., that individual genes use individual organisms as survival machines. The problem with this point is that to use something -- even in the metaphorical sense -- requires that one exist before and after the use of that thing. But individual genes come and go out of existence many times before an organism reproduces. So it couldn't be the case that these ephemeral entities act so as to survive to the next generation. Yet this metaphor seems at first glance to be a natural extension of the metaphor he has already introduced. What, then, is the problem?

I think the problem is that talk of replicators using organisms as survival machines is incoherent--even as a metaphor. That is because the gene signified by the term "selfish gene" is not an individual but a personification or idealization of a gene population. As an idealization it does not, pace Dawkins, interact with a concrete individual organism. To suggest that it does is to speak incoherently. But I may be misreading Dawkins: he may intend to depict the gene type (the idealization of a gene population) as using an organism type (the idealization or personification of a population of organisms). This alternative reading does not render the metaphor incoherent, but it does not seem to support the point Dawkins wishes to make about how individual genes and organisms interact. For the fact that a gene population can outlast a population of organisms (and in that sense uses the organism population) does not imply individual genes of that type use the respective individual organisms. To think that it does is to commit the fallacy of division. One can imagine scenarios in which two populations, A and B, interact with population A outlasting B, but without any individual in population A outlasting the individual in population B with which it interacts. The same is true for population A "using" population B. That this is in some sense true does not imply that an individual in population A uses an individual in population B. That is precisely what Dawkins supposes. And in so doing he commits the fallacy of division while forgetting, after he has drawn his conclusion, that he started with a metaphor.

P F Strawson's Freedom and Resentment: the argument laid out

Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson. He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal. My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this. I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true. Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist. In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...

response to friend who suggested that the self is a democracy of neural parts

This is a nice way to try to avoid being cornered re the irreality of the self if you're a reductionist, for you can assert that a pattern obtains at the microscopic level that is not all that unlike the pattern found at the societal level. No need for the one self that does it all: instead, you have many sub-selfs that compete for dominance or take turns guiding the whole. The problem with this is, however, that the voters/officials are all zombies. None of them thinks about the whole as such. And perhaps none of them thinks even about themselves (unless one is a panzoist). None of them makes a comparison of alternatives. The more this proposed democracy seems like a zombocracy, the more consciousness will be seem to be epiphenomenal. Furthermore, if the oneness of the self is less real than the multiplicity of explanatory neural parts, then why can't each of these neural parts be conceived of as democracy as well? And why not parts of these parts, et...

interesting article by Jimmy Akin on death before the Fall

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/did-animals-die-before-the-fall/ Akin below: Aquinas.... writes: In the opinion of some, those animals which now are fierce and kill others, would, in that state, have been tame, not only in regard to man, but also in regard to other animals. But this is quite unreasonable. For the nature of animals was not changed by man's sin, as if those whose nature now it is to devour the flesh of others, would then have lived on herbs, as the lion and falcon. Nor does Bede's gloss on Genesis 1:30, say that trees and herbs were given as food to all animals and birds, but to some. Thus there would have been a natural antipathy between some animals [ Summa Theologiae I:96:1 ad 2 ]. Aquinas thus holds that it was not all death that entered the world through man's sin, but human death.

The Human Question

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