Human freedom is constrained by the mind's content and physical ability

[untermensche]

Writing in the New York Review of Books, Gould has characterized the gene-centered perspective as confusing book-keeping with causality. Gould views selection as working on many levels, and has called attention to a hierarchical perspective of selection. Gould also called the claims of Selfish Gene "strict adaptationism", "ultra-Darwinism", and "Darwinian fundamentalism", describing them as excessively "reductionist". He saw the theory as leading to a simplistic "algorithmic" theory of evolution, or even to the re-introduction of a teleological principle.[19] Mayr went so far as to say "Dawkins' basic theory of the gene being the object of evolution is totally non-Darwinian."[20]

Gould also addressed the issue of selfish genes in his essay "Caring groups and selfish genes".[21] Gould acknowledged that Dawkins was not imputing conscious action to genes, but simply using a shorthand metaphor commonly found in evolutionary writings. To Gould, the fatal flaw was that "no matter how much power Dawkins wishes to assign to genes, there is one thing that he cannot give them – direct visibility to natural selection."[21] Rather, the unit of selection is the phenotype, not the genotype, because it is phenotypes that interact with the environment at the natural-selection interface. So, in Kim Sterelny's summation of Gould's view, "gene differences do not cause evolutionary changes in populations, they register those changes."[22] Richard Dawkins replied to this criticism in a later book, The Extended Phenotype, that Gould confused particulate genetics with particulate embryology, stating that genes do "blend", as far as their effects on developing phenotypes are concerned, but that they do not blend as they replicate and recombine down the generations.[5]

Since Gould's death in 2002, Niles Eldredge has continued with counter-arguments to gene-centered natural selection.[23] Eldredge notes that in Dawkins' book A Devil's Chaplain, which was published just before Eldredge's book, "Richard Dawkins comments on what he sees as the main difference between his position and that of the late Stephen Jay Gould. He concludes that it is his own vision that genes play a causal role in evolution," while Gould (and Eldredge) "sees genes as passive recorders of what worked better than what".[24]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolution

Richard Dawkins replied to this criticism in a later book, The Extended Phenotype, that Gould confused particulate genetics with particulate embryology, stating that genes do "blend", as far as their effects on developing phenotypes are concerned, but that they do not blend as they replicate and recombine down the generations.

This is not a counter argument. It is missing the point.

 

[Juma]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolution

Richard Dawkins replied to this criticism in a later book, The Extended Phenotype, that Gould confused particulate genetics with particulate embryology, stating that genes do "blend", as far as their effects on developing phenotypes are concerned, but that they do not blend as they replicate and recombine down the generations.

This is not a counter argument. It is missing the point.

That is not a useful comment. What point?

 

[untermensche]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolution



This is not a counter argument. It is missing the point.

That is not a useful comment. What point?

The fact that individual genes don't blend as they are passed on does not give them agency. It does not answer Gould's, and others, criticisms.

But you have to read Gould's book to know his criticisms.

 

[Juma]

That is not a useful comment. What point?

The fact that individual genes don't blend as they are passed on does not give them agency. It does not answer Gould's, and others, criticisms.

But you have to read Gould's book to know his criticisms.

It is as simple as this: what brings evolution to this world is genes. no genes -> no evolution.

 

[untermensche]

The fact that individual genes don't blend as they are passed on does not give them agency. It does not answer Gould's, and others, criticisms.

But you have to read Gould's book to know his criticisms.

It is as simple as this: what brings evolution to this world is genes. no genes -> no evolution.

The thing is, genes don't interact with the world, organisms do.

If you don't interact with the world you cannot be subject to evolutionary forces.

All you can do is either mutate or replicate accurately.

 

[Juma]

It is as simple as this: what brings evolution to this world is genes. no genes -> no evolution.

The thing is, genes don't interact with the world, organisms do.

If you don't interact with the world you cannot be subject to evolutionary forces.

All you can do is either mutate or replicate accurately.

The organism are part of this world too. To the genes they are part of the environment.

 

[untermensche]

The thing is, genes don't interact with the world, organisms do.

If you don't interact with the world you cannot be subject to evolutionary forces.

All you can do is either mutate or replicate accurately.

The organism are part of this world too. To the genes they are part of the environment.

Genes don't interact with the environment.

But until you read Gould you will not get the entire argument which I won't be presenting here. Again it is a 149 page chapter and many levels of argument.

It is there. It is essential reading to discuss this topic, along with Dawkin's.

 

[Juma]

The organism are part of this world too. To the genes they are part of the environment.

Genes don't interact with the environment.

But until you read Gould you will not get the entire argument which I won't be presented here. Again it is a 149 page chapter and many levels of argument.

It is there. It is essential reading to discuss this topic, along with Dawkin's.

Of course genes interact with the environment!

 

[untermensche]

Genes don't interact with the environment.

But until you read Gould you will not get the entire argument which I won't be presented here. Again it is a 149 page chapter and many levels of argument.

It is there. It is essential reading to discuss this topic, along with Dawkin's.

Of course genes interact with the environment!

That is not any kind of argument.

As Gould says this is "confusing book-keeping with causality".

The genes record the changes that occur but they cause nothing.

Genes don't even cause mutations, again all they do is record them.

 

[Juma]

Of course genes interact with the environment!

That is not any kind of argument.

I have altready mentioned that the organisms are part of the environment.


That the genes interact with the organism cannot be a suprise.

 

[untermensche]

That is not any kind of argument.

I have altready mentioned that the organisms are part of the environment.


That the genes interact with the organism cannot be a suprise.

No genes do not interact with organisms.

This has been explained. The gene is completely different from the protein. It is the plan for the protein.

The blueprint does not interact with the building anymore than the gene interacts with the organism.

 

[fromderinside]

That is not a useful comment. What point?

The fact that individual genes don't blend as they are passed on does not give them agency. It does not answer Gould's, and others, criticisms.

But you have to read Gould's book to know his criticisms.

Logic test. Because bosons con't be measured in humans and only earth, water, phlegm, and bile can be found in humans, bosons cannot be mass actors.

How's that for reading his book to know his criticisms? Argument: if I don't see it it can't have agency.

 

[Juma]

I have altready mentioned that the organisms are part of the environment.


That the genes interact with the organism cannot be a suprise.

No genes do not interact with organisms.

This has been explained. The gene is completely different from the protein. It is the plan for the protein.

The blueprint does not interact with the building anymore than the gene interacts with the organism.

First: genes is not a blueprint, it is more like code.

Second: Then how are the proteins generated from the genes? Guesswork? Pure coincidence? Minsreading?
Of course not: the mechanism that created the protein interacts with the genes.

 

[untermensche]

The fact that individual genes don't blend as they are passed on does not give them agency. It does not answer Gould's, and others, criticisms.

But you have to read Gould's book to know his criticisms.

Logic test. Because bosons con't be measured in humans and only earth, water, phlegm, and bile can be found in humans, bosons cannot be mass actors.

How's that for reading his book to know his criticisms? Argument: if I don't see it it can't have agency.

Your logic fails.

Bosons do not code for mass actors, they are mass actors.

But again, reading what Gould said about this, in it's entirety, is essential to anybody serious about this issue.

 

[untermensche]

No genes do not interact with organisms.

This has been explained. The gene is completely different from the protein. It is the plan for the protein.

The blueprint does not interact with the building anymore than the gene interacts with the organism.

First: genes is not a blueprint, it is more like code.

Same distinction. There is the genome and there is the phenome. There is the blueprint and there is the building.

Second: Then how are the proteins generated from the genes? Guesswork? Pure coincidence? Minsreading?

The fact you know that something is "generated" also shows you know they are two distinct things. And the question is not generation, it is interaction. Yes the genome generates the phenome but it does not interact with it. The phenome interacts with the world not the genome.

Of course not: the mechanism that created the protein interacts with the genes.

Yes there is an intermediary between the gene and the protein, they never interact.

 

[Juma]

First: genes is not a blueprint, it is more like code.

Same distinction. There is the genome and there is the phenome. There is the blueprint and there is the building.

No. The blueprint is a model, (or rather: a collection of projections of the model). The genes aint.

The fact you know that something is "generated" also shows you know they are two distinct things. And the question is not generation, it is interaction. Yes the genome generates the phenome but it does not interact with it. The phenome interacts with the world not the genome.

Yes there is an intermediary between the gene and the protein, they never interact.

So people talking over mobiles doesnt interact?

 

[untermensche]

So people talking over mobiles doesnt interact?

Yes there is interaction back and forth.

Once the phenome exists it has no back and forth interaction with the genome. There is no interaction. They exist as two completely distinct entities unable to communicate with one another.

 

[fromderinside]

Logic test. Because bosons con't be measured in humans and only earth, water, phlegm, and bile can be found in humans, bosons cannot be mass actors.

How's that for reading his book to know his criticisms? Argument: if I don't see it it can't have agency.

Your logic fails.

Bosons do not code for mass actors, they are mass actors.

But again, reading what Gould said about this, in it's entirety, is essential to anybody serious about this issue.

Look. As I believe I said before I'm about the same age as Gould except I haven't pull the plug yet. Oer academic tracks vary somewhat since I choose to serve around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and wound up completing my formal education some what later at about the same time as did Steven Pinker. I use these markers because I began as a comparative psychologist, later an evolutionary psychologist and sociobiologist, which means I crossed a lot of the same territory as did Gould. Unlike Wilson and Dawkins My specializations were human sensation and comparative sensory systems in vertebrates. So I know a bit about dentation and comparative fossil study. Its important to understanding both behavior and impetus for development of such as the senses. However, unlike Gould, I also specialized comparative neural systems.

So believe me I've read Gould, what Gould read, and much more. So when I came across this passage in  Steven Jay Gouldmy head began bobbing up and down:

I just didn't trust Gould. ... I had the feeling that his ideological stance was supreme. When the 1996 version of 'The Mismeasure of Man' came and he never even bothered to mention Michael's study, I just felt he was a charlatan.

He's not a charlatan that I'll give you. He just lets his political investments guide him too much. Through te years there were just too many stories of Gould currying favor among the political class. It prob ably wasn't intentional nor an act, but it does leave his positions with a political flavor.


Having explained myself I'm leaving this discussion knowing you don't give a damn. Too bad, we could have had a discussion.

 

[untermensche]

So believe me I've read Gould, what Gould read, and much more.

Yet you don't even know his objections.

Maybe you read some Gould in the past but you clearly have not read the chapter in which he addresses this matter.

And Gould's politics is something I don't know about. I have never noticed a political slant to anything he has written about specific mechanisms of evolution. Maybe you have an example.

 

[fromderinside]

So believe me I've read Gould, what Gould read, and much more.

Yet you don't even know his objections.

Maybe you read some Gould in the past but you clearly have not read the chapter in which he addresses this matter.

And Gould's politics is something I don't know about. I have never noticed a political slant to anything he has written about specific mechanisms of evolution. Maybe you have an example.

Read the example I gave from chapter eight. nuf sed