Dawkins argues that nature is red in tooth-and-claw—and thus represents a poor source of moral guidance. However, my view is that this conception of nature has been rather exploded by subsequent authors—such as Robert Wright with Non-Zero. Nature is actually rather cooperation-friendly. It looks like a quite reasonable source of moral guidance to me—since it came up with humans. Of course, it is not itself moral. It is not even an agent, let alone a moral agent.
The proposed idea is not that “cultural evolution” and “biological evolution” are the same thing.
The idea is that these concepts are nested as follows:
(physical(biological(cultural))).
They are not disjoint, like this:
(physical) (biological) (cultural).
I don’t think non-cultural evolution is a particularly useful natural category—but if you really want to have a name for it, perhaps consider “nuclear evolution”—since most non-cultural inheritance is on the cellular level. However please don’t refer to it as “biological evolution”: that is just wrong.
It looks like a quite reasonable source of moral guidance to me—since it came up with humans.
A broken clock is right twice a day.
I don’t think non-cultural evolution is a particularly useful natural category
It the thing that designed the DNA of all life on earth. It’s useful to be able to talk about That Thing That Designed Life without people randomly bursting in saying that whatever you said about evolution is wrong because cultural evolution is a counterexample. Nobody was talking about cultural evolution, and it just isn’t relevant to this discussion.
However please don’t refer to it as “biological evolution”: that is just wrong.
I’m getting a bit tired of debating semantics with you. You can call it fig pudding for all I care.
The idea that non-cultural evolution is responsible for all the earth’s DNA seems like a fundamental misconception to me. In particular, our DNA is the product of gene-meme co-evolution—and something similar is probably true of many other animals. Evolution is responsible for the planet’s DNA, not some cut-down version of evolution that excludes cultural inheritance. However, I observe that you don’t seem very interested in this discussion—which is fine.
Dawkins argues that nature is red in tooth-and-claw—and thus represents a poor source of moral guidance. However, my view is that this conception of nature has been rather exploded by subsequent authors—such as Robert Wright with Non-Zero. Nature is actually rather cooperation-friendly. It looks like a quite reasonable source of moral guidance to me—since it came up with humans.
Of course, it is not itself moral. It is not even an agent, let alone a moral agent.
The proposed idea is not that “cultural evolution” and “biological evolution” are the same thing.
The idea is that these concepts are nested as follows:
(physical(biological(cultural))).
They are not disjoint, like this:
(physical) (biological) (cultural).
I don’t think non-cultural evolution is a particularly useful natural category—but if you really want to have a name for it, perhaps consider “nuclear evolution”—since most non-cultural inheritance is on the cellular level. However please don’t refer to it as “biological evolution”: that is just wrong.
A broken clock is right twice a day.
It the thing that designed the DNA of all life on earth. It’s useful to be able to talk about That Thing That Designed Life without people randomly bursting in saying that whatever you said about evolution is wrong because cultural evolution is a counterexample. Nobody was talking about cultural evolution, and it just isn’t relevant to this discussion.
I’m getting a bit tired of debating semantics with you. You can call it fig pudding for all I care.
The idea that non-cultural evolution is responsible for all the earth’s DNA seems like a fundamental misconception to me. In particular, our DNA is the product of gene-meme co-evolution—and something similar is probably true of many other animals. Evolution is responsible for the planet’s DNA, not some cut-down version of evolution that excludes cultural inheritance. However, I observe that you don’t seem very interested in this discussion—which is fine.