Subject: 
        Re: [evol-psych] Richard Dawkins: Our big brains can overcome our selfish
        genes
   Date: 
        Tue, 12 Feb 2002 14:45:34 -0600
   From: 
        Steven Ravett Brown 
     To: 
        




Frans de Waal2/12/02 1:39 PM

> Dawkins wrote:
> If any species in the history of life has the possibility of breaking
> away from short-term Darwinian selfishness and of planning for the
> distant future, it is our species. We are earth's last best hope ...
> 
> -------------------
> 
> The irony of it all is that Darwin himself was no proponent of
> "short-term Darwinian selfishness." It is Dawkins' (and T. H.
> Huxley's) cardboard version of Darwinism that is the problem.
> 
> Dawkins is going around saying that we can break with Darwin, that we
> should get rid of (some of) our biological heritage, whereas Darwin
> himself was adamant, in "The Descent of Man," that human kindness and
> morality belonged within an evolutionary framework. Instead of
> ascribing these and other enlightened capacities to exterior forces -
> an inherently dualistic, religious view - Darwin saw them as products
> of nature.
> 
> -- Frans de Waal
> 

It may be that Dawkins' interpretation of Darwin is incorrect. But I find
(what I take to be) his general point interesting and persuasive. That is,
whatever characteristics human beings have: kindness, cruelty, and so forth,
and however much those are due to evolution, it is still the case that we
seem to have the most capacity for self-awareness and for acting on that
self-awareness, of any animal on this planet. Thus, we may become more aware
of trends or characteristics of our culture, or of our "human kindness" or
its lack than other animals, and that awareness has the potential to lead to
enhancing or altering those characteristics. It does, at least, seem to be a
consequence of awareness that altered action is possible, and of lack of
awareness, that action cannot be altered.


Steven Ravett Brown
[email protected]