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Sat 17 May, 2014 09:39 am
Does "what is the level of the action?" mean "what is the concrete content of the level of the action?"?
Context:
The logic of Darwinism concludes that the unit in the hierarchy
of life which survives and passes through the filter of natural
selection will tend to be selfish. The units that survive in the world
will be the ones that succeeded in surviving at the expense of their
rivals at their own level in the hierarchy. That, precisely, is what
selfish means in this context. The question is, what is the level of
the action? The whole idea of the selfish gene, with the stress
properly applied to the last word, is that the unit of natural
selection (i.e. the unit of self-interest) is not the selfish organism,
nor the selfish group or selfish species or selfish ecosystem, but the
selfish gene. It is the gene that, in the form of information, either
survives for many generations or does not. Unlike the gene (and
arguably the meme), the organism, the group and the species are
not the right kind of entity to serve as a unit in this sense, because
Levels:
Ecosystem
Species
Group
Organism
Gene
@contrex,
contrex wrote:
Levels:
Ecosystem
Species
Group
Organism
Gene
Sorry, I knew these.
My question is "failed to catch the nuance of "what is"".
Does "what is" mean "what is the concrete content of"?
@oristarA,
oristarA wrote:My question is "failed to catch the nuance of "what is"".
Does "what is" mean "what is the concrete content of"?
"What is the level of the action?" = "At what level does the action happen?"
@oristarA,
I think Ori that it means the gene is "primary" in terms of selfishness inasmuch as its effect doesn't necessarily promote survival depending on the organism's immediate circumstances; whereas in the long run, the gene itself is more likely to do so