The Parasitic Meme When Richard Dawkins introduced the word “meme” in The Selfish Gene he did so on the model of the word “gene”, and his discussion of the concept urged an analogy with genes—notably because both are replicators. I want to urge a different analogy (possibly identity), between memes and organisms: the meme is like (maybe is) […]
Is Instantiation a Relation? I propose to address a question of high obscurity, hoping at least to make some clear points. As philosophers we are accustomed to using the word “instantiate” to describe what is involved when an object has a property—say, a ball is red. We say that the ball instantiates the property of […]
The Selfish Phenotype Organisms often act selfishly, i.e. so as to benefit themselves. They compete with other organisms for food and mates; their behavior is anything but altruistic. Human organisms are a case in point. But they don’t always act selfishly—sometimes they act so as to benefit others at their own expense, […]
Real Appearance Philosophers are apt to speak of appearance and reality as if the two are opposed. But this is too simple: appearances are necessarily real and realities necessarily appear. The dichotomy no doubt has its origin in cases of perceptual illusion—the stick in water appears bent but in reality is not. Here […]
Fearing Morality In the past people were taught to love God and to fear Him (making sure to capitalize the divine pronoun on pain of incurring His wrath). The fear was as important as the love. Since morality was closely tied to God, consisting of His divine Commandments, people also feared morality: […]
Replicators The concept of replication is central to biology. For instance, Richard Dawkins makes heavy and illuminating use of it in The Selfish Gene and elsewhere. Here I will offer some analytical remarks about the concept, with special reference to the question of what counts as replication: what is replication and […]
The Selfish Biosphere The gene is selfish with respect to whole organisms: it replicates itself by using organisms as survival machines that might have to sacrifice themselves for the genetic good, as in raising young. Genes bear the same kind of relation to individual organisms that people used to think applied […]
Two Concepts of Freedom It is hard not to feel the pull of both of the standard positions on free will. On the one hand, it seems right to say that a free action is one that is in accordance with the agent’s desires, as opposed to one that is forced on […]
Truth and Meaning What have truth and meaning got to do with each other? A dominant view has it that the two are deeply connected—specifically, meanings are truth conditions.[1] The view comes in several varieties, but the central thought is that the meaning of a sentence consists of the state of affairs […]
The Selfless Machine In a striking passage from The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins writes as follows: “Other replicators perhaps discovered how to protect themselves, either chemically, or by building a physical wall of protein around themselves. This may have been how the first living cells appeared. Replicators began not merely to exist, […]