Other Brains

I was watching a nature documentary the other night about slime (The Secret Mind of Slime, PBS). Scientists have experimented on slime and discovered that it can perceive, process information, learn, memorize, and even decide. Slime is smart. Slime is intelligent. One of the scientists (“slimatologists”) speculated agreeably that slime could be the evolutionary origin of brains: because slime uses electrical circuits to conduct its intelligent business, and that is what the brain uses too. Electricity is the source of intelligence in slime and in brains, with brains just a more sophisticated form of slime. We must therefore think again before we denigrate something with the word slime. A slimy brain is a smart brain. In the course of elevating slime’s image, the program also drew attention to roots—because roots also turn out to be intelligent. They can perceive, learn, and decide—at least in a primitive form. One of the scientists put it by saying that the plant’s brain is under ground with its reproductive parts above ground, thus inverting the typical arrangement. He illustrated the point by producing a plant pot with a human doll head down in the soil, feet pointing upwards. It is as if the tree has its head buried in the earth with its limbs held aloft: the clever parts of the tree spend their lives under ground while the lowlier parts waft in the breeze. It is a striking image, illustrating the power of images, and one that set me thinking. Apparently two types of life-form are conceivable and even actual: a brain-up form like almost any animal you can think of, and a brain-down form exemplified in a primitive fashion in plants. Head in the air or head buried in the ground—two possible phenotypes, two evolutionary options.

            This raises intriguing questions. Why haven’t plants capitalized on the brain-down option, having already blazed the trail? Why don’t we see sophisticated brains stuck in the ground while the rest of the organism pokes out above ground? Wouldn’t natural selection favor the emergence of such brains, as it has favored brains that float above the earth’s surface? Slime and roots are pretty impressive intelligence-wise, but why not ascend to the heady heights (so to speak) of lizards and llamas? Yet nothing like this populates our planet. That is an evolutionary puzzle to be set beside other evolutionary puzzles such as the origins of sex or consciousness. There seems no natural obstacle to it, and better brains are generally a good idea. The sense organs needn’t be buried as well, preventing them from responding to events above ground; they could hover in the clear air and relay their messages to the brain lurking beneath. After all, the sense organs of terrestrial animals are generally at some distance from the brain, with non-zero time intervals between reception and response. The eyes could be attached to branchlike structures (think giraffes) and still serve the visual cortex hidden under ground. The brain could then issue orders to sway or withdraw or bristle or spray poison—whatever might prove useful in the battle to survive. Plants already have ingenious ways of thwarting predators, and they could no doubt use some more intelligent adaptations orchestrated by a smart root-brain. Is it that given their niche they simply have no need for smarter brains? That is hard to credit: other things being equal, brains are handy organs to possess, which is why so many roaming animals possess them. Is it that plants don’t move and so don’t need brains?^[1] Now we are talking, but again this doesn’t really explain the absence of brain-down creatures, since it is not clear that locomotion is the sole reason that brains evolve. There could be plenty of aboveground limb motion to organize–and why shouldn’t the creature move around under ground? Why shouldn’t the brain-down creature be a burrowing creature? It might even withdraw its air-dwelling appendages as it burrows, thus making subterranean motion easier, protruding them again when it finds a new place to live; or it might simply slice through the earth with parts both below and above ground. There is no good reason why its dual ecosystem should rule out developing a bigger brain. So it is a real question why we don’t find truly intelligent trees with the brains the size of an elephant’s. After all, some animals are amphibious, or exist partially under water and partially above water: why shouldn’t the same be true of the earth medium? Wouldn’t the brain be safer ensconced under ground away from predators that exist only on the surface of the planet? That is how many whole animals lead safer lives, so why not keep the vital brain under ground with only the organism’s leaves and branches sticking out? Trees have been around for an awfully long time and you would think that evolving a better brain might have occurred to them. It seems peculiar that only brain-up organisms have taken advantage of this dandy little adaptation.

            Imagine a planet on which things are very different: here there are many organisms that have adopted the brain-down lifestyle. It is nothing unusual, with colonies and even cities composed of such inverted (to us) creatures. They might have developed technologies that compensate for their relatively static mode of life, such as flying machines for delivering mail. They stay put but they like it that way (like Phillip Larkin). Perhaps the atmosphere on this planet is toxic to brains like theirs, or just too hot or too cold. In any case their brains do better comfortably placed under the planet’s surface; indeed, they might be the dominant life form on the planet, with the up-brainers relatively low in the biological order. Here it pays handsomely to store your brain snugly under ground. It is as if plant life has undergone the kind of acceleration that animal life underwent on planet earth during the Cambrian—with many types of intelligent and brainy organism now enjoying the partially belowground lifestyle. It may even be thought de rigueur to exist in this form—a cut above, so to speak. The brain-downers may find the brain-uppers rather a pathetic lot, not fully “evolved”, mildly absurd. Why carry your brain around in a bony box in the open air where it can easily get knocked about? Better to keep it within the soft embrace of the earth sheathed in a nice flexible waterproof membrane. Brain injury is virtually unknown among these creatures, and not having to keep the brain aloft enables brains to grow to enormous size. These are some seriously smart subterranean brains. So there is nothing logically problematic about the brain-down lifestyle—nothing contrary to sound biological theory. It is just an accident that earth is devoid of such eminently reasonable creatures. We brain-uppers suffer from a prejudice that makes us think that our way is the only way, but plants already contain the seeds of a different way of living—the head down, genitals up way.

            From a broader perspective, indeed, the difference is not as great as we might parochially suppose. After all, plants do move around a fair bit: they sway and bend in the wind, they grow upwards and downwards, they drop their leaves, they swarm up walls, they send out their pollen, and they travel with the earth’s diurnal rotation and orbit round the sun. They are not the static entities we are apt to imagine. They are a lot livelier than mountains or rocks. On the other hand, how much do organisms equipped with legs or wings actually move? Some never stray far from their place of birth during their whole life, a matter feet in some cases. Even the sprinting cheetah doesn’t cover that much ground and is a good deal slower than light. From the point of view of the universe, things on planet earth are pretty sluggish, pretty earthbound. The brains of animals are stuck in the earth’s atmosphere, even if not buried under ground, and they really don’t move that much more than plants. To an alien species used to freer modes of travel, all of life on earth might seem as if it is rooted to the spot. And what exactly is the difference between under ground and over ground? In addition to the gases of earth’s atmosphere there is dust, water vapor, pollutants, flying insects, and birds—all contributing to the solidity of what we call the air. Compared to empty space, earth’s atmosphere is part of the ground, just a bit less cluttered (compare the oceans). And our heads encounter all sorts of resistance as we wander strenuously around: wind, water, obstacles, and projectiles. It is true that our brains are located above our feet, but in the wider scheme of things this doesn’t seem so crucial (consider snakes); and anyway they are not always above our feet, as when lying down or upside down. The difference between creatures with their heads in the sand or mud and creatures with their heads in the air is just not that deep. So, again, it is puzzling why we don’t find organisms whose brains are stowed under ground like roots. There is nothing about the location of our brains—and those of most animals on earth—that sets the standard for how a brain has to be located. Other brains might live out their days enjoying other accommodations. Other creatures might be like that scientist’s doll with its head stuck in the soil. Elsewhere in the universe subterranean slime might be the material basis of most intelligence.^[2]Co

^[1] Let me note that it is the function of roots to keep a plant rooted in place (among other functions), i.e. to keep the plant at rest. This enables plants to avoid the depredations of wind and other forms of displacement—which less rooted organisms have more trouble with. As the function of legs is to enable movement, so the function of roots is to prevent it—both are locomotive functions. A tree is not like a rock, which doesn’t move as a matter of simple physical inertia; roots are ingenious devices of motion prevention. 

^[2] Someone should write a science fiction story based on this possibility entitled Slime Wars or Under Dune or Planet of the Trees. What about the idea of creatures whose brains exist at the center of their planet with the rest of their life conducted at the surface?

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) a type of organism, specifically a parasite.^[1] Parasites are passed from host organism to host organism, seldom killing the host but syphoning off its energy resources. Typically they are hard to get rid off by normal mechanical means and can be a damn nuisance (sometimes worse). The parasite needs its host to survive, so too much debilitation is not desirable from its point of view: it must be relatively benign (not like a regular predator). Being a type of organism, usually small (fleas, lice, worms), it has both a phenotype and a genotype, these being geared to its life as a “guest at someone else’s table” (as the original Greek word suggests). It is also subject to random mutation and natural selection (sometimes intentional medical selection). It takes up residence in or on the body and proliferates from that snug perch. It is an animal like other animals, though a particularly crafty one. How then are memes significantly like parasites?

            First we must overcome the idea that minds are non-biological things. I take it I don’t need to say much to dislodge that old idea: minds evolve, are aspects of brains, have a genetic basis, and are subject the usual rules of natural selection. Belief, desire, and consciousness are biological phenomena. Accordingly, memes, being mental entities, qualify as biological too—they are an aspect of the organism, a manifestation of life. But this is not sufficient to make them count as organisms themselves, even of the parasitic type. The question is whether they meet the other conditions for being (parasitic) organisms. They are clearly replicators, as organisms are, and also genes. Organisms replicate by generating offspring and not by simple division. Likewise, memes don’t divide into two when they replicate; rather, they generate copies of themselves in their hosts. So we know that memes are biological replicators, which is a good start. Further, we can say that they syphon off energy from their hosts: they take up residence in a human brain and persist there by dint of the energy available in a brain. No too much of that energy—that could be fatal—but enough to stay in existence and replicate themselves in another brain. Like parasites, memes can be a nuisance, but they are not usually so obtrusive as to threaten the life and health of the host. The lice in your hair may make your skin itch, and the memes in your mind can make your mind irritated—but they don’t kill you. You may want to get rid of an annoying jingle or manner of speech, as you may want to get rid of any parasites that come to your attention. Some parasites, however, are okay (gut bacteria) and some memes are welcome to stay. So we can say that memes have some of the causal, behavioral, and functional aspects of parasites: they operate in the same kind of way. They are not predators exactly, but they are scroungers, freeloaders, unwelcome guests (sometimes). Both have a sort of life of their own—a will of their own, interests of their own. The meme seems intent on its own survival even if you don’t like having it around: it is “selfish”. It is more organism-like than gene-like in this respect: more like an autonomous entity with self-directed goals. It is more like an active life form than a recipe for creating life forms.

            But does the meme have a phenotype and a genotype? If we count language as a meme, a very large one, we can find literal equivalents of these notions: its phenotype is universal human grammar and its genotype is the genetic program that is innate in the human animal. Language genes build languages in brains, as limb genes build limbs in bodies. The language meme thus literally has a phenotype and genotype. But what about more standard examples of memes— such as jingles, fashions, and ideologies? Here the phenotype is the psychological profile of the meme: its phenomenology, semantic content, and behavioral dispositions. These determine (in conjunction with other factors) its staying power and contagiousness—its ability to survive and reproduce. A rapidly fading musical meme will not get transmitted, e.g. by humming. The meme’s phenotype is what seals its fate as a viable entity, particularly the way it meshes with the human mind. In this it is just like a parasitic organism. But does it have a genotype too? Possibly, if it is innately fixed, but generally not, so here the analogy may seem to break down. However, we must not be too parochial when it comes to genes. Not all life forms are necessarily grounded in DNA molecules; on other planets the underlying replicators might be chemically quite different. The abstract concept of the gene is just “whatever underlying structures account for heritability” or some such definition. Genes encode and they build—but they can do this in different ways in different conditions. So do memes harbor anything that meets this abstract description? I think they do and must. First, they are constructed from more primitive elements as they pass from one mind to another: it is not a matter of a rubber stamp or cookie-cutter. The meme can only enter another mind if it is first analyzed and then actively reproduced. The jingle must be heard and processed and converted into an inner melody: it must be capable of such analysis and conversion, and it must be constructed from simpler components (notes, rhythms, lyrics^[2]). The components have to be copied and strung together so as to resemble the original. This is a non-trivial task. Importantly, the brain must contain states and processes that correspond somehow to the meme’s apparent phenotype—hidden layers of machinery. This is starting to look a lot like a genetic substrate in the wide sense, i.e. a mechanism of transmission. Not chunks of DNA, to be sure, but units that act somewhat as DNA acts—constructively and reproductively. The meme has something analogous to cellular structure; indeed in the broad sense of “cell” (the word derives from monks’ cells) it has cells—basic compositional units. It has a fine-grained mechanism of reproduction that goes beyond its manifest phenotype.^[3] The efficiency of this mechanism is key to its survival and competitive potential—how well it does against other memes vying for the same mental space (“Jingle Wars”). So it looks like the analogy is holding up pretty well: memes are biological replicators with phenotypes and genotypes (widely conceived). Maybe they can even be said to grow and die: the Catholic meme grew over the centuries and it looks now to be in decline, possibly to die out eventually. Memes become extinct or lose their dominance (Beatle Mania, Communism, the Twist). They are parasites that have their day in the sun but can lose their grip with the passage of time, as bodily parasites can. 

            Memes are thus very like parasites, but are they literally parasites? It seems to me that this is not an unreasonable way to characterize them: once we get over the prejudice that minds are not biological the way is clear to classifying memes as mental parasites. They parasitize the mind (brain): they get in there and live off its resources. What if there were conscious physical parasites that invade the brain and suck up its nutrients, affecting the way the host’s mind functions? They might inject ideas into the host mind, possibly as an aid to their survival. Wouldn’t these be just like our memes—units of energy exploitation with a psychological nature? Parasites of the body have evolved in the usual way, and so have parasites of the mind—selfish replicators in their own right. Each has adopted the parasitic lifestyle, with the brain the focus of the mental kind. So there are actually two types of life on earth: the DNA-based type and the type preferred by the memes. We don’t know much about the basic processes and structures in the case of memes, but we have reason to believe that such processes and structures exist, maybe to be revealed by neuroscience. Perhaps there is a finite set of meme components for human memes and a finite number of combinatorial principles: these are the fundamental transmittable units of the meme universe. They may be quite ancient and fairly recondite—rather like genes—but they are the generative foundation of all meme activity. Whole ideologies may be the elephants of the memo-sphere, evolving from much smaller and simpler memes drawn from bygone days. If this is right, memes are literally living parasites feasting on the brain’s energy reserves.^[4]

^[1] In fact Dawkins alludes to this possibility, quoting Nick Humphrey: “When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell” (p.192). However, he does not pursue this suggestion, preferring to focus on the analogy with genes. Whether other authors have run with the idea I don’t know.  

^[2] I remember an old Mike Leigh film in which a character went around the whole time singing, “Tasty, tasty, very very tasty; they’re very tasty”, clearly playing host to a meme he couldn’t control (even now that meme resonates in my mind).

^[3] We have a name for this mechanism: imitation. But imitation is a complex process of analysis and synthesis, requiring underlying generative machinery, and capable of degrees of effectiveness. It is the meme analogue of the mechanism of inheritance that we now know is based on the DNA molecule (at least on planet earth).

^[4] Parasites exploit weaknesses in the body’s defenses, immunological and mechanical; similarly memes exploit the mind’s natural receptivity and plasticity. It is good to be a fast learner, a cognitive sponge, but this can lead to stuff creeping in that does nobody any good. Dangerous ideologies are the price we pay for being easily educable—as parasites exploit the body’s surfeit of energy resources. The human mind is susceptible to meme intrusion because of its generous cognitive endowment; other animals are not much prone to such intrusion.

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, as in raising their young. They exhibit kin altruism. That is to say, the individual organism is not always beneficent in relation to itself: sometimes it acts to benefit organisms not numerically identical with it. It has been pointed out that the same is not true of genes: they always act to preserve and benefit themselves.[1] No gene ever predisposes an organism to act in such a way that that gene goes out of existence—or else it would go out of existence! There are no genes that benefit other alien genes, no altruistic genes. There are genes for altruism in organisms (kin-directed altruism) but not genes that sacrifice themselves for other genes. When an animal nurtures its offspring at its own expense it is benefitting its own genes, but genes don’t do anything comparable in relation to other genes. Genes are invariably selfish, while organisms are only intermittently so. Genes are selfish according to biological law, while organisms are selfish only in so far as that benefits their genes.[2]

That is the orthodox picture and its logic is inescapable, but closer analysis reveals that it misses something important. This is that the organism’s actions serve also to reproduce its own phenotype—an organism similar to itself. If the parent organism sacrifices itself for its offspring, its survival comes into question; but its phenotype marches on. Not, to be sure, its entire phenotype, since its genes mix with those of another organism with a different phenotype, but more so than if it had no offspring at all. It uses the other organism in order to ensure that a partial copy of itself is passed into the next generation. It shares space with another organism’s phenotype in order to carry on its journey through time. So we can say that the phenotype survives in cases of individual self-sacrifice—just as the genes survive in such a case (the latter is a means to the former).[3] Thus the phenotype is a selfish entity too. The phenotype never acts so as to benefit an alien phenotype—as it might be, an antelope’s phenotype acting so as to benefit an elephant’s phenotype—but rather it always acts so as to propagate instances of itself. The individual organism promotes the survival of its own phenotype by benefitting its own offspring. It doesn’t benefit itself qua individual organism, but it does benefit the suite of traits we call its phenotype (including its extended phenotype). To use philosophical terminology, it doesn’t benefit this token of its phenotype (viz. itself) but it does benefit the type of its phenotype (hence the use of “type” in “phenotype”). It helps produce more tokens of this type—otherwise known as babies. The type is more abstract than the token, less of a concrete particular; it is more of a universal or general kind. If evolution is a path through the space of all possible phenotypes, then the individual organism acts so as to maximize the chances of a particular such path. Accordingly, phenotypes can be viewed as self-perpetuating entities, leading to copies of themselves (or partial copies), and hence “selfish” in the technical sense. They are like genes in this respect and unlike the individual organisms that contain them—those dispensable temporary tokens. They are immortal in the way genes are immortal and individual organisms are not.

It might be thought that there is a significant asymmetry between genes and phenotypes, namely that genes promote themselves not just entities like them. It isn’t that the organism is a survival machine for similar genes in future generations but for these particular genes. Organisms produce tokens of their phenotypic type in future generations, but genes qua tokens sail through to the next generation and beyond—they get to survive not just genes similar to them. But brief reflection shows that this is false: the physical particulars that constitute genes in one body do not themselves survive in a future body. They disintegrate along with the organs and cells of that body once death supervenes. They become food for bacteria and victims of entropy. What survive are numerically distinct physical entities that replicate the originals. It is just as if I were to make a copy of a coin and then melt down the original: the type of the original survives but not the token. Likewise, these particular strands of DNA go the way of all things—into dust and disorder—but their type persists into the future in the form of numerically distinct material particulars (ultimately atoms). The old type is embodied in a new token. So when we say that an organism’s genes survive in its offspring we speak loosely: we don’t mean those specific bits of matter but their type or form. A copy of x is not x—it is something just like x. It is qualitatively identical (or close to it) but not numerically identical. So it is not that my genes are immortal in the sense that those very physical particulars will go on indefinitely (as elementary particles do); rather, their specific type travels on down the generations—copies of my originals not the originals themselves. Genes replicate themselves; they don’t just survive as is. Genetic perpetuation is genetic reproduction. But then, they are not different from phenotypes: they too are types not tokens, kinds not instances of kinds. The individual organism acts altruistically so as to benefit genes just like its own (but not literally its very own, i.e. the ones sitting inside its body); and similarly it acts so as to perpetuate a body like its own by producing and preserving a (partial) copy of its phenotype. Instances of a phenotype have no immortality, and nor do instances of a particular type of gene—they will perish with the organism’s particular body. Not that anyone I know of has ever claimed otherwise, but it is good to be clear about the logic and ontology of the situation: tokens come and go, whether of genes or phenotypes, but types go on in perpetuity (or until extinction). So genes are not selfish in the sense that they are solely concerned with their own survival qua physical particulars—that being impossible under normal conditions—but rather in the sense that they are hell-bent on producing copies of themselves. But the same is true of phenotypes—body plans, brain designs, types of psychology—and so do not differ logically from genes. Both are selfish as to type but not as to token. Organisms areselfish as to token, at least a lot of the time, since they are very concerned to make sure things go their way and the devil take the hindmost. I want me to survive not someone just like me! I don’t much care if my twin lives to carry my genes and my phenotype; I am more concerned about this individual thing called “I”. I don’t even much care if my genes and phenotype survive as long as I do. That is true honest-to-God selfishness, not the watered down kind exhibited by genes and phenotypes. It is as if the gene is saying to itself, “I don’t care if I survive so long as there are copies of me in the future”, and similarly for the phenotype; but the self is concerned precisely with itself—that with which it is numerically identical not just anything qualitatively similar to it. Sure, I may be glad if copies of me survive, but I don’t confuse this with my own immortality. Nor do the genes make this confusion, being well aware of the distinction between numerical and qualitative identity. Compared to me, my genes are quite selfless beings—as is my phenotype. Wanting my particular body to persist into the future (say by cryogenesis) is not the same as wanting a body similar to mine to persist into the future. The latter is the kind of “selfishness” proper to genes and phenotypes not the former.

We can then say that phenotypes are selfish in the way genes are selfish: both (metaphorically!) want copies of themselves to go on down the generations. Neither is more selfish than the other (though both pale in comparison to me). That is, phenotypes that successfully produce copies of themselves are favored by natural selection, while phenotypes that fail to cut it in the reproductive stakes are apt to fall by the wayside. Ditto for genes: the genes that do well are the ones that produce survival machines (bodies and brains) capable of winning the reproduction wars. To do that the gene doesn’t need physically to hop into the next organism, like a coin going from pocket to pocket; it just needs to replicate itself in that organism—copies not persisting originals. To put it differently, the operative unit is the type not the token: it is what gets passed on or not. The type needs a token if it is to have real-world impact, but the token is a dispensable entity in the wider scheme of things—it can safely go the way of all flesh. The unit of natural selection is really an abstract type not a concrete token. It is closer to the meme than is sometimes realized: the meme produces copies of itself but its original can disappear without a trace. The brain that housed the first meme of a jingle, say, can be reduced to pulp and yet the meme itself survives in copies of the original token. The meme is what is common to its embodying tokens not any of these tokens individually. In principle it can be realized differently in states of the brain in different individuals, and it is certainly not identical to any one of them. The same could true of genes, though it appears not to be in the actual world: that is, tokens of the same gene type could in principle be realized in different chemical configurations, though the chemical composition would have to duplicate the functional properties of the gene. You could in principle replace DNA with some other molecule and have the same gene type so long as it functioned to build the same body (“the prosthetic gene”). Genes could be multiply realized, as philosophers say. So it is wrong to identifygenes or memes with certain physical configurations, though no doubt there are lawlike correlations. Both belong at a more abstract theoretical level. What is selfish in biology, then, is really fairly abstract—gene types not gene tokens (ditto for phenotypes). This is really implicit in the notion of a copy: nothing is a copy tout court but only in certain respects. The gene is not copied with respect to its physical context or its time of existence or its movement through space; it is copied with respect to its informational content and its internal molecular architecture. It is the same for copies of paintings: not the way the light was shining on the original or its historical period or what the original painter was thinking at the time it was created, but rather a subset of its properties concentrated in its shapes and colors.[4] The logical form of “copy” is given by “x is a copy of y with respect to R”—that is, relative to certain selected features. The selected features are what matters to the copy not the totality of its properties. It is the same with genes and phenotypes: general features that are relevant to what these things do, not the particularity of the individual instance (a scar on the body, a little jiggle in the DNA). The ontology of biology is thus more abstract than might be supposed, less tied to physical particulars (in this it resembles the ontology of psychology).

Let’s rank the biological world on the score of selfishness. Individual organisms are often genuinely selfish but not invariably so (including humans); genes are invariably selfish, but their selfishness does not concern their individual survival as bits of matter, but rather the survival of copies of themselves; phenotypes are selfish in the manner of genes, type not token, copy not original; memes (also part of the biological world) are always selfish, being concerned to spread themselves through as many minds and brains as possible, rather like a selfish parasite; species and groups are not selfish at all, never acting for their own good or anyone else’s.[5] As to selflessness, only individual organisms manage this feat, serving the interests of both genes and phenotypes (and I suppose memes). In nature, it’s mainly every man for himself.

[1] Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene (1976) is the locus classicus.

[2] Let it be noted that organisms like humans can be literally selfish, culpably so, while genes are selfish only metaphorically, and not culpably. The metaphor can readily be cashed, but I won’t do that now (see Dawkins).

[3] Since genes don’t always make perfect copies of themselves, the difference between genes and phenotypes with respect to fidelity is a matter of degree. Also, there is non-sexual reproduction.

[4] Many copies of things are not to scale or use different materials or don’t weigh the same—yet they are still copies.

[5] Species make no effort to avoid extinction, though it is not wrong to say that they can perform collective actions, e.g. moving to another continent. Nor do they replicate themselves. Nor do they aid any other species at their own expense. They are neither selfish nor selfless. You couldn’t write a book called The Selfish Species (or The Selfless Species).