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omnivorousabstraction 's review for:
The Selfish Gene
by Richard Dawkins
Really ingenious concept: that we can, for the purposes of scientific explanation, see humans as individual machines for the replication of individual 'selfish' genes. Dawkins puts the idea to brilliant scientific use in explaining many features of animal and human behaviour patterns, and also to quasi-philosophical use, especially regarding iterative prisoner's dilemmas (a fantastic chapter, worth reading on its own), and memes as units of cultural inheritance.
Still, I came away with worries about how Dawkins takes this notion to relate to e.g. the philosophy of mind, and ethics: it is by no means simple or obvious or uncontroversial to make claims such as he makes, that in one sense we are determined by our genes, yet in another we can somehow 'escape' their 'tyranny' over us or 'disobey' the pressures they exert. Interpreted unsympathetically, Dawkins is just incoherent - but even for a sympathetic reader, more needs to be said, and Dawkins should not dispel such worries so glibly in his footnotes, even if he is not to be the person who resolves these issues....
Still, I came away with worries about how Dawkins takes this notion to relate to e.g. the philosophy of mind, and ethics: it is by no means simple or obvious or uncontroversial to make claims such as he makes, that in one sense we are determined by our genes, yet in another we can somehow 'escape' their 'tyranny' over us or 'disobey' the pressures they exert. Interpreted unsympathetically, Dawkins is just incoherent - but even for a sympathetic reader, more needs to be said, and Dawkins should not dispel such worries so glibly in his footnotes, even if he is not to be the person who resolves these issues....