Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1999 23:43:08 -0700
From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: Gods, Apes, Genes - Language


Matti J{rvinen wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 30 Apr 1999, hugh bone wrote:
> 
> 
> > Humans and animals exhibit selfishness, but they have "minds"  - genes
> > or photons don't have minds; they just persist in their destiny as do
> > the 14 billion-year old photons which impact orbital telescopes,
> > ending their long journey from the Big Bang.
> 
> Sorry for being studip,but I always thought the point being (in Dawkins`
>  and friends) that persons,minds,whatever are NOT the units displaying
> this famous selfishness.Who are the selfish ones,then?Genes,exactly the
> genes,statistically and for the most part.
> 
> The case is obviously not that we were attributing intentionality to the
> genes.It´s rather that what we call intentional is really functional,and
> what is functional means actually context-dependent (context being the
> causal network on micro-level).
> 
> So,as you already pointed out,"selfishness" is a dramatic device.But what
> kinds of avenues could this kind of materialist thinking open for the
> postmodernist-mafia who´ve this far been all so eager to engage in all
> sorts
> of spiritualist enterprises?
> 
> yours,matti.

*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*

Hi matti,

I guess spirit can be the supernatural, or Soul I, in the Dawkins/Pinker
debate, and I never thought of the post-modernists as being very soulful
in that sense.

But they delight in context-dependency, don't you think?

That which is "not-spirit" amd not supernatural must be matter. 

Soul II in the Dawkins/Pinker debate is "not-matter" and if I understand
correctly, the genetic code is not matter, but a recipe which can be
written with letters on paper and filed away until the geneticist needs
it to cook up something new.  

Then the code will instruct matter to grow into the prescribed form. 
So if I think merely of the genetic code, it has no mind and no matter,
but only spirit or soul.  If I think of the gene as chemicals residing 
in a living body, it is tissue, something material.

regards,
Hugh