[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Thank you for your reply i will read carefully  later on , later alligator ...kidding

You are an honest consistent  guy with yourself ,a guy with integrity ,without self-deceit ,without self-delusions , without magical thinking , or self-illusions : i do respect and salute that in you, as a person , i mean it  .


Take care

Thanks for that, but the reality is that we're all stuck here. None of us want magic in our model, but we have yet to find a way to remove it without becoming nihilists, and nihilism feels highly unsatisfactory - you only have to pinch yourself to provide yourself with a serious objection to it. We feel as if we are substantially more than soulless machines making false assertions about feelings that don't exist. But we shouldn't be surprised that this problem won't break open for us because it has always been the biggest puzzle of them all and has blocked the way of anyone who has tried to tackle it. It is important though that we pin down and understand the fundamental problem before we waste time trying to solve it, and that is what I have attempted to do. When I look at the writings of other people on consciousness though, most of them appear to be completely bonkers, so the odds tell me that it's likely that I am completely bonkers too and am just too stupid to realise it. The most bonkers ones do all have something in common though, and that is that they make the mistake of thinking consciousness can emerge out of complexity without depending on an injection of magic, and that appears to be the mainstream "scientific" position on consciousness. These people need to ask themselves what they are causing to suffer when they torture a biological machine, because if it isn't the atoms or smaller particles, and if it isn't the energy locked up in the system, and if it isn't the fabric of space in from which these other things might be built, then what is it? Sentient geometrical arrangements or sentient pluralities just don't do it for me. Torturing a mere pattern and trying to make it suffer is pretty way out. Even so, it's not beyond possibility that there could be sentiences elsewhere linking in to biological machines and being sentient for them without it happening by magic, as would be the case if this world is virtual and the real us are sitting somewhere on the outside with all our inputs and outputs wired into it, so when you think of it like that it doesn't really matter so much that they're wanting consciousness to emerge out of complexity. Yes, that's a point I have always missed in the past, right up to the moment of writing this. They can make the link to something sentient in any way they like and it doesn't really matter. What matters is how that sentience is supposed to interface with an information system to inform the information system as to its existence (the existence of sentience). That is the key problem which needs to be tackled if any real progress is ever to be made towards understanding consciousness as a real phenomenon. If anyone can crack this single little problem and find a way to turn experience of sensation into knowledge of sensation, the whole thing will open up and we will be able to work out what we really are: we will be able to point to the soul (meaning the sentient "I" in the machine - no other baggage attached beyond being something that can feel).

Hi, dude :

Look, i do agree with most of what you were saying , form the materialistic point of view at least ,so :
Help me out here ,in order to make dlorde and alcanverd see the light haha :

They both talk about man at least as just a biological evolutionary mechanical process ,while mainly dlorde sees human consciousness or the mind , feelings , emotions ....the human cultural ,ethical, political, economic ,social ...evolution as  kindda independent processes , in the same sense Dawkins says that the human mind is an independent "thing " or rather process which can and must "revolt against the selfish mechanical tyranny of our genes " : selfish is a metaphor ...

They can't have it both ways : these friends of ours seem to be schizophrenic when it comes to body and mind :  either we are just machines , then  it's pretty almost impossible to explain consciousness, feelings , emotions ....because i do not see how the latters can rise from mechanical systems , or we have  just   been confusing those illusions of consciousness, feelings , emotions,pain  ...with reality .
Either way ,we are stuck in this , as you put it earlier .

If our ethics , cultures , societies, ....evolved "independently " from our mechanical bodies , via the interactions between our minds and the environment + via some biological influences ( The fact that our thought process has a biological neurological basis is evidence enough for the fact that our minds get at least influenced by biology, a fact they seem to ignore  ) ,so, if our ethics , societies, cultures ....evolved differently or "independently " , "idependently " ,to some degree at least , how ,on earth , did they do just that .

Thanks, appreciate indeed

Take care .

[dlorde]

...mainly dlorde sees human consciousness or the mind , feelings , emotions ....the human cultural ,ethical, political, economic ,social ...evolution as  kindda independent processes...

What on Earth are you on about now?

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

@ David Cooper :

Please , do tell me what you do think about the following < thanks, appreciate indeed :

There is no place for free will, good or evil , emotions , feelings,consciousness  ....as such at least whatsoever  in the materialistic interpretation of evolution, or rather  they are meaningless in the materialistic evolutionary terms

You've confused the categories there - that's either carelessness or lack of understanding. Free will and good & evil are cultural constructs, the others evolved for very good reasons (literally life or death reasons)

.

(Good and evil do exist both within us and without though ,despite what materialists might say on the subject , from their materialistic world view .
There are  in fact no free will as such , no good and evil as such ....= just illusions , if we would apply to them the right materialistic interpretation at least : free will , good or evil ...cannot rise from our mechanical biological systems : Dawkins and co are therefore not the right representatives of the right materialism : only David Cooper is ...here at least .)

They are not different categories , not in the sense that the one comes from Mars and the other comes from Venus at least , no : they are only different categories which take place at different levels of man : the one is biological and the other is a matter of consciousness shaped by the environment and by world views , not to mention that consciousness has a biological sort of basis also it cannot escape from  .
What you cannot understand is how consciousness or the mind ( I see the human mind or consciousness as a whole process which contains intelligence , emotions, feelings , imagination ...) can rise from those biological mechanical processes ? or as Dawkins put it , we can "revolt against the selfish mechanical tyranny of our genes " by deliberately modifying our selfish behavior via our free will : how, on earth, are we supposed to do just that , if we are just machines = we cannot have a free will = free will is an illusion ,according to this mechanical deterministic materialistic view of the universe , man, life , nature ...

How did our mind get to become such an "idependent " process which could defy and rise above its mechanical basis then ?

How can't you get just that ?

only Dawkins and co club are able to provide the right materialistic interpretation of evolution , as explained above, in the sense that there are in fact no such "things" such as free will, feelings , altruism, emotions, ....= just useful pragmatic survival strategies or built-in in our mechanical systems illusions we get fooled  by by confusing them with reality , no matter how real they might ever appear to be to us ,once again =David Cooper was explaining just that to you , in another thread as well , better than i can ever do .

Yes, and no; perhaps if I make a simple analogy: consider a magician, an illusionist; he develops a range of illusions, 'The Vanishing Rabbit', 'Sawing A Woman In Half', 'Water Into Wine', etc. Now, these all involve a carefully arranged and choreographed set of activities with real objects. But they are not what they seem. There are things happening that give the appearance of the activities described, but none of the described activities real - the rabbit doesn't really vanish, the woman isn't really sawn in half, the water doesn't really turn to wine. Sadly, many people believe they really happen, via paranormal means. When the magician or the people want to discuss them, they use the names of the illusions to identify what they're talking about.

You do not realise the fact that you are the one who's trying to make consciousness rise from our  mechanical biological process via that emergence  magical trick, like an illusionist who apparently makes a rabbit appear from nowwhere .

Useful or pragmatic are  not always  synonymous of the truth though

Are they ever?  Ah, but what is truth?

Exactly .
The truth is a dynamic process .The Truth with a big T is only to be known after death .

No, sorry , those were just rational justifications for my potential behavior you were trying to develop

Yes, that's how discussions on science forums go; you're expected to provide rational justifications for your argument or position.

What i meant was : you were just using some romantic magical thinking...

OK, so you said 'rational justification' when you meant 'romantic magical thinking'; it's probably nothing to worry about, everyone has senior moments now and then.

No, you were just trying to "rationalize " your claims , as we all ,sometimes, try to rationalize our   bad behaviors in order to avoid responsibility, accountability , guilt ..

You were doing just that via magical thinking : get the pic ?

Arguments from incredulity, anecdotes, unsupported assertions, 'no true Scotsman (materialist)' fallacies, special pleading, appeals to what is 'beyond logic, rationality, and science', etc., may be entertaining, but are insubstantial.

No, it's exactly the other way around : your magical romantic thinking contradicts the materialistic mechanical reductionistic interpretation of evolution

You still seem confused - as a response, that's not 'exactly the other way round', it's a complete non-sequitur.

You do not realise that you were using some magical romantic thinking , dude , in relation to ethics , consciousness, feelings , emotions, good and evil ,free will ....= how can they rise from our mechanical biological systems via the natural selection of evolution then ? as social mental cultural constructs ? How ? = only you ,Dawkins and co  , as  illusionists , can explain just that via some mysterious magical tricks   .

No, you should just see them as useful pragmatic survival strategies illusions ,as they actually are in fact , according to the materialistic interpretation of evolution ,once again , David Cooper tried to explain to you .

I can see them however I wish; but as I said, I think it's a valid viewpoint (are you having trouble following these threads?), I just like to acknowledge the subjective experience.

I made a  mistake though when i used to say that Dawkins and co are the real true materialists : they are not , in fact : simply because they do think like yourself via that magical romantic side when it comes to mind and body , cultures, societies , ethics ,free will, good and evil ...

The only real materialist here i have seen is : David Cooper :

So, let's just all move to that thread concerning consciousness , in order to have David Cooper's perspectives on these subjects .

Deal ?

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

...mainly dlorde sees human consciousness or the mind , feelings , emotions ....the human cultural ,ethical, political, economic ,social ...evolution as  kindda independent processes...

What on Earth are you on about now?

Well, you seem to have succeeded indeed in making consciousness, feelings , free will, good and evil, emotions, ethics , cultures, societies, politics, economics , religions or spirituality ...rise from our so-called exclusively mechanical biological systems via the natural selection of evolution, via some emergence magical tricks or magical thinking only you ,Dawkins and co , as bright illusionists , can accomplish :

See my reply to you as displayed  here above , i requested David Cooper to comment on .

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

In other words ,and in short :

How can even science itself ,or any other form of human knowledge  for that matter , to mention just that , how can they ever rise from those evolutionary  exclusively mechanical processes of ours ?

Only some illusionists here such as  our  dlorde can explain just that , i see :

Our dlorde here mainly seems to have surpassed even that big illusionist : David Copperfield .

[dlorde]

You do not realise the fact that you are the one who's trying to make consciousness rise from our  mechanical biological process via that emergence  magical trick, like an illusionist who apparently makes a rabbit appear from nowwhere .

This from someone who claims it's beyond logic, reason, and science?

[dlorde]

... you seem to have succeeded indeed in making consciousness, feelings , free will, good and evil, emotions, ethics , cultures, societies, politics, economics , religions or spirituality ...rise from our so-called exclusively mechanical biological systems via the natural selection of evolution, via some emergence magical tricks or magical thinking only you ,Dawkins and co , as bright illusionists , can accomplish

If I seem to have succeeded, what is the problem?

[dlorde]

How can even science itself ,or any other form of human knowledge  for that matter , to mention just that , how can they ever rise from those evolutionary  exclusively mechanical processes of ours ?

Only some illusionists here such as  our  dlorde can explain just that , i see :

Our dlorde here mainly seems to have surpassed even that big illusionist : David Copperfield .

I've given my preferred hypothesis, and I'm open to new evidence as and when it becomes available.

I notice you've gone very quiet about your own... 

[alancalverd]

So you would define a cow as exhibiting or experiencing bovine phenomena, and not being an uncow. Not a particularly useful contribution to a discussion on the evolution or ecological function of a cow.

No. you're again missing out the key bit about it mooing.

That's my boy!!! You have defined a cow by what it does, which is a whole lot different from "not being an uncow" because I can apply the moo test to any external object and thus identify a cow with no previous knowledge of what it is, or what it is like to be one.

So, what does a conscious being do, objectively, that distinguishes it from all non-conscious entities?

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

... you seem to have succeeded indeed in making consciousness, feelings , free will, good and evil, emotions, ethics , cultures, societies, politics, economics , religions or spirituality ...rise from our so-called exclusively mechanical biological systems via the natural selection of evolution, via some emergence magical tricks or magical thinking only you ,Dawkins and co , as bright illusionists , can accomplish

If I seem to have succeeded, what is the problem?

That was sacrastic ironic meant though , no offense .
Thanks, later

[dlorde]

That was sacrastic ironic meant though , no offense .

None taken; I'm getting used to it.

Maybe you could enlighten this thread with some of the scientific research you referred to, but failed to produce, on another thread:

Many scientific research proved the fact that consciousness could not or cannot be produced by the brain...

 

[cheryl j]

I believe there are things that can be said to "exist" which are in a sense immaterial, such as an isosceles triangle, as well as abstract or qualitative relationships among things - goodness, evil, beauty, meaningfulness, etc.

I don't think consciousness itself falls into that category but is an emergent property of a biological process, much the way a tornado is an emergent state of certain physical environmental conditions of matter and energy. Just my opinion, but it seems to me that if consciousness were truly immaterial, it would not be so strongly altered by physical factors like anesthetics and other drugs, sleep or lack of it, diseases like Alzheimer's, brain trauma, oxygen deprivation,  genetic defects, etc.

[dlorde]

... it seems to me that if consciousness were truly immaterial, it would not be so strongly altered by physical factors like anesthetics and other drugs, sleep or lack of it, diseases like Alzheimer's, brain trauma, oxygen deprivation,  genetic defects, etc.

If it were truly immaterial how could it be affected by physical factors at all? [and conversely, how could it affect the physical, if that is being proposed?]

[cheryl j]

Bombastic talk again : did you ever meet a dog , cat , chimp ....who is or rather which is self-aware ? in the sense that it is aware of its existence , of itself ? that it is aware of its inner life or at least has one ?
A dog might have dreams ,for example ,but when even humans dream (i am not talking here about day dreaming of humans at least  ) , they are unconscious , let alone that they would be self-aware while sleeping and dreaming  at least .
The fact that some chimps might "recognize" themselves in the mirror , apparently it seems , or maybe that's just our human interpretation of their behavior in front of the mirror, does not prove conclusively that they might have or experience some degree of self-awarness, i guess, i do not know for sure thus either, but i do not think any non-human living organism for that matter is self-aware , simply because any degree of self-awarness implies some corresponding degree of intellectual process at least  .
Animals are "conscious" (a reduced form of consciousness , compared to that extended one  of man = there is no comparison between the 2 in fact ) : they experience feel pain, experience feel hunger , anger , sadness, joy ....but animals or any other non-human  living organism can never be self-aware in the above mentioned sense at least .our consciousness, ...

A book I happen to be reading mentions an interesting experiment with chimps. Chimp A sees something threatening but is in no danger himself. Chimp B is in danger, but chimp B cannot see what chimp A can see. Chimp A will signal Chimp B to alert him if he knows that Chimp B cannot see what he can see, but not if he thinks he can. A hall mark of consciousness is not just being self aware, but knowing that others are also aware, and being able to imagine or see something from the perspective of another conscious being. That may not be calculus or poetry, but it is thinking about thinking or awareness of awareness, which is rather sophisticated.

There are also examples of gorillas lying as when KoKo the gorilla told his caretakers that he did not rip the sink off the wall, his pet kitten did it.  Lying, too is advanced thinking. It required the animal to predict his caretaker's reaction to the damaged sink (she'll be mad), to be aware of what someone else knows and doesn't know, and imagine a series of alternate past events that didn't actually happen, but could have. Admittedly, it was not the most convincing lie, although my daughter also blamed things on the cat when she was little.

[dlorde]

A hall mark of consciousness is not just being self aware, but knowing that others are also aware, and being able to imagine or see something from the perspective of another conscious being. That may not be calculus or poetry, but it is thinking about thinking or awareness of awareness, which is rather sophisticated
.... 
Lying, too is advanced thinking.

Even some birds show evidence of theory of mind. The European Magpie can pass the mirror test, showing some sense of self-awareness; the Western Scrub Jay will pretend to hide food if it sees another bird watching, or will hide it then come back and move it when the other bird isn't watching - but only if it has previously stolen food itself; the Little Green Bee-eater shows awareness of what its predators can and can't see. 

I think it's a mistake to see consciousness and self awareness as an all-or-nothing trait. Animals appear to have evolved to emphasize aspects and levels of consciousness, self awareness, and theory of mind, appropriate to their social and environmental contexts. There must be a dynamic balance between the resources required to support such complex behaviours (computational resources, energy consumption, etc.) and the conferred reproductive & survival advantages.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

In his "Selfish Gene " , Dawkins thinks that we are just machines or robots driven by DNA through the natural selection of evolution ,while he also thinks at the same time = a paradox , that we can "revolt against the selfish tyranny of our genes ,and against the "fact " that we were born selfish ,by consciously modifying our selfish behavior ....: selfish gene as a metaphor though " :
Just tell me how are we supposed to do just the latter ,if we are indeed just machines ? : The following are quotes from Dawkins' above mentioned book by the way :


PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION
THIS book should be read almost as though it were science fiction. It is designed to appeal to the imagination. But it is not science fiction: it is science. Cliche or not, 'stranger than fiction' expresses exactly how I feel about the truth. We are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment. Though I have known it for years, I never seem to get fully used to it. One of my hopes is that I may have some success in astonishing others.
Three imaginary readers looked over my shoulder while I was writing, and I now dedicate the book to them. First the general reader, the layman. For him I have avoided technical jargon almost totally, and where I have had to use specialized words I have defined them. I now wonder why we don't censor most of our jargon from learned journals too. I have assumed that the layman has no special knowledge, but I have not assumed that he is stupid. Anyone can popularize science if he oversimplifies. I have worked hard to try to popularize some subtle and complicated ideas in non-mathematical language, without losing their essence. I do not know how far I have succeeded in this, nor how far I have succeeded in another of my ambitions: to try to make the book as entertaining and gripping as its subject matter deserves. I have long felt that biology ought to seem as exciting as a mystery story, for a mystery story is exactly what biology is. I do not dare to hope that I have conveyed more than a tiny fraction of the excitement which the subject has to offer.
My second imaginary reader was the expert. He has been a harsh critic, sharply drawing in his breath at some of my analogies and figures of speech. His favourite phrases are 'with the exception of'; 'but on the other hand', and 'ugh'. I listened to him attentively, and even completely rewrote one chapter entirely for his benefit, but in the end I have had to tell the story my way. The expert will still not be totally happy with the way I put things. Yet my greatest hope is that even he will find something new here; a new way of looking at familiar ideas perhaps; even stimulation of new ideas of his own. If this is too high an aspiration, may I at least hope that the book will entertain him on a train?

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

........train?
xxii Preface to first edition
The third reader I had in mind was the student, making the transition from layman to expert. If he still has not made up his mind what field he wants to be an expert in, I hope to encourage him to give my own field of zoology a second glance. There is a better reason for studying zoology than its possible 'usefulness', and the general likeableness of animals. This reason is that we animals are the most complicated and perfectly-designed pieces of machinery in the known universe. Put it like that, and it is hard to see why anybody studies anything else! For the student who has already committed himself to zoology, I hope my book may have some educational value. He is having to work through the original papers and technical books on which my treatment is based. If he finds the original sources hard to digest, perhaps my non-mathematical interpretation may help, as an introduction and adjunct.
There are obvious dangers in trying to appeal to three different kinds of reader. I can only say that I have been very conscious of these dangers, but that they seemed to be outweighed by the advantages of the attempt.
I am an ethologist,and this is a book about animal behaviour. My debt to the ethological tradition in which I was trained will be obvious. In particular, Niko Tinbergen does not realize the extent of his influence on me during the twelve years I worked under him at Oxford. The phrase 'survival machine', though not actually his own, might well be. But ethology has recently been invigorated by an invasion of fresh ideas from sources not conventionally regarded as ethological. This book is largely based on these new ideas. Their originators are acknowledged in the appropriate places in the text; the dominant figures are G. C. Williams, J. Maynard Smith, W. D. Hamilton, and R. L. Trivers.
Various people suggested titles for the book, which I have gratefully used as chapter titles: 'Immortal Coils', John Krebs; 'The Gene Machine', Desmond Morris; 'Genesmanship', Tim Clutton-Brock and Jean Dawkins, independently with apologies to Stephen Potter.
Imaginary readers may serve as targets for pious hopes and aspirations, but they are of less practical use than real readers and critics. I am addicted to revising, and Marian Dawkins has been subjected to countless drafts and redrafts of every page. Her considerable knowledge of the biological literature and her understanding of theoretical issues, together with her ceaseless encouragement and moral support, have been essential to me. John Krebs
Preface to first edition xxiii
too read the whole book in draft. He knows more about the subject than I do, and he has been generous and unstinting with his advice and suggestions. Glenys Thomson and Walter Bodmer criticized my handling of genetic topics kindly but firmly. I fear that my revision may still not fully satisfy them, but I hope they will find it somewhat improved. I am most grateful for their time and patience. John Dawkins exercised an unerring eye for misleading phraseology, and made excellent constructive suggestions for re-wording. I could not have wished for a more suitable 'intelligent layman' than Maxwell Stamp. His perceptive spotting of an important general flaw in the style of the first draft did much for the final version. Others who constructively criticized particular chapters, or otherwise gave expert advice, were John Maynard Smith, Desmond Morris, Tom Maschler, Nick Blurton Jones, Sarah Kettlewell, Nick Humphrey, Tim Clutton-Brock, Louise Johnson, Christopher Graham, Geoff Parker, and Robert Trivers. Pat Searle and Stephanie Verhoeven not only typed with skill, but encouraged me by seeming to do so with enjoyment. Finally, I wish to thank Michael Rodgers of Oxford University Press who, in addition to helpfully criticizing the manuscript, worked far beyond the call of duty in attending to all aspects of the production of this book.
RICHARD DAWKINS 19761976
1
WHY ARE PEOPLE?
Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence. If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: 'Have they discovered evolution yet?' Living organisms had existed on earth, without ever knowing why, for over three thousand million years before the truth finally dawned on one of them. His name was Charles Darwin. To be fair, others had had inklings of the truth, but it was Darwin who first put together a coherent and tenable account of why we exist. Darwin made it possible for us to give a sensible answer to the curious child whose question heads this chapter. We no longer have to resort to superstition when faced with the deep problems: Is there a meaning to life? What are we for? What is man? After posing the last of these questions, the eminent zoologist G. G. Simpson put it thus: 'The point I want to make now is that all attempts to answer that question before 1859 are worthless and that we will be better off if we ignore them completely.'*
Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun, but the full implications of Darwin's revolution have yet to be widely realized. Zoology is still a minority subject in universities, and even those who choose to study it often make their decision without appreciating its profound philosophical significance. Philosophy and the subjects known as 'humanities' are still taught almost as if Darwin had never lived. No doubt this will change in time. In any case, this book is not intended as a general advocacy of Darwinism. Instead, it will explore the consequences of the evolution theory for a particular issue. My purpose is to examine the biology of selfishness and altruism.
Apart from its academic interest, the human importance of this subject is obvious. It touches every aspect of our social lives, our loving and hating, fighting and cooperating, giving and stealing, our
2 Why are people?
greed and our generosity. These are claims that could have been made for Lorenz's On Aggression, Ardrey's The Social Contract, and Eibl-Eibesfeldt's Love and Hate. The trouble with these books is that their authors got it totally and utterly wrong. They got it wrong because they misunderstood how evolution works. They made the erroneous assumption that the important thing in evolution is the good of the species (or the group) rather than the good of the individual (or the gene). It is ironic that Ashley Montagu should criticize Lorenz as a 'direct descendant of the "nature red in tooth and claw" thinkers of the nineteenth century ...'. As I understand Lorenz's view of evolution, he would be very much at one with Montagu in rejecting the implications of Tennyson's famous phrase. Unlike both of them, I think 'nature red in tooth and claw' sums up our modern understanding of natural selection admirably.
Before beginning on my argument itself, I want to explain briefly what sort of an argument it is, and what sort of an argument it is not. If we were told that a man had lived a long and prosperous life in the world of Chicago gangsters, we would be entitled to make some guesses as to the sort of man he was. We might expect that he would have qualities such as toughness, a quick trigger finger, and the ability to attract loyal friends. These would not be infallible deductions, but you can make some inferences about a man's character if you know something about the conditions in which he has survived and prospered. The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes. Like successful Chicago gangsters, our genes have survived, in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive world. This entitles us to expect certain qualities in our genes. I shall argue that a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness. This gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behaviour. However, as we shall see, there are special circumstances in which a gene can achieve its own selfish goals best by fostering a limited form of altruism at the level of individual animals. 'Special' and 'limited' are important words in the last sentence. Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts that simply do not make evolutionary sense.
This brings me to the first point I want to make about what this book is not. I am not advocating a morality based on evolution.* I am saying how things have evolved. I am not saying how we humans
Why are people? 3
morally ought to behave. I stress this, because I know I am in danger of being misunderstood by those people, all too numerous, who cannot distinguish a statement of belief in what is the case from an advocacy of what ought to be the case. My own feeling is that a human society based simply on the gene's law of universal ruthless selfishness would be a very nasty society in which to live. But unfortunately, however much we may deplore something, it does not stop it being true. This book is mainly intended to be interesting, but if you would extract a moral from it, read it as a warning. Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to.
As a corollary to these remarks about teaching, it is a fallacy— incidentally a very common one—to suppose that genetically inherited traits are by definition fixed and unmodifiable. Our genes may instruct us to be selfish, but we are not necessarily compelled to obey them all our lives. It may just be more difficult to learn altruism than it would be if we were genetically programmed to be altruistic. Among animals, man is uniquely dominated by culture, by influences learned and handed down. Some would say that culture is so important that genes, whether selfish or not, are virtually irrelevant to the understanding of human nature. Others would disagree. It all depends where you stand in the debate over 'nature versus nurture' as determinants of human attributes. This brings me to the second thing this book is not: it is not an advocacy of one position or another in the nature/nurture controversy. Naturally I have an opinion on this, but I am not going to express it, except insofar as it is implicit in the view of culture that I shall present in the final chapter. If genes really turn out to be totally irrelevant to the determination of modern human behaviour, if we really are unique among animals in this respect, it is, at the very least, still interesting to inquire about the rule to which we have so recently become the exception. And if our species is not so exceptional as we might like to think, it is even more important that we should study the rule.
The third thing this book is not is a descriptive account of the detailed behaviour of man or of any other particular animal species. I
4 Why are people?
shall use factual details only as illustrative examples. I shall not be saying: 'If you look at the behaviour of baboons you will find it to be selfish; therefore the chances are that human behaviour is selfish also'. The logic of my 'Chicago gangster' argument is quite different. It is this. Humans and baboons have evolved by natural selection. If you look at the way natural selection works, it seems to follow that anything that has evolved by natural selection should be selfish. Therefore we must expect that when we go and look at the behaviour of baboons, humans, and all other living creatures, we shall find it to be selfish. If we find that our expectation is wrong, if we observe that human behaviour is truly altruistic, then we shall be faced with something puzzling, something that needs explaining.
Before going any further, we need a definition. An entity, such as a baboon, is said to be altruistic if it behaves in such a way as to increase another such entity's welfare at the expense of its own. Selfish behaviour has exactly the opposite effect. 'Welfare' is defined as 'chances of survival', even if the effect on actual life and death prospects is so small as to seem negligible. One of the surprising consequences of the modern version of the Darwinian theory is that apparently trivial tiny influences on survival probability can have a major impact on evolution. This is because of the enormous time available for such influences to make themselves felt.
It is important to realize that the above definitions of altruism and selfishness are behavioural, not subjective. I am not concerned here with the psychology of motives. I am not going to argue about whether people who behave altruistically are 'really' doing it for secret or subconscious selfish motives. Maybe they are and maybe they aren't, and maybe we can never know, but in any case that is not what this book is about. My definition is concerned only with whether the effect of an act is to lower or raise the survival prospects of the presumed altruist and the survival prospects of the presumed beneficiary.
It is a very complicated business to demonstrate the effects of behaviour on long-term survival prospects. In practice, when we apply the definition to real behaviour, we must qualify it with the word 'apparently'. An apparently altruistic act is one that looks, superficially, as if it must tend to make the altruist more likely (however slightly) to die, and the recipient more likely to survive. It often turns out on closer inspection that acts of apparent altruism are really selfishness in disguise. Once again, I do not mean that the
Why are people? 5
underlying motives are secretly selfish, but that the real effects of the act on survival prospects are the reverse of what we originally thought.
I am going to give some examples of apparently selfish and apparently altruistic behaviour. It is difficult to suppress subjective habits of thought when we are dealing with our own species, so I shall choose examples from other animals instead. First some miscellaneous examples of selfish behaviour by individual animals.
Blackheaded gulls nest in large colonies, the nests being only a few feet apart. When the chicks first hatch out they are small and defenceless and easy to swallow. It is quite common for a gull to wait until a neighbour's back is turned, perhaps while it is away fishing, and then pounce on one of the neighbour's chicks and swallow it whole. It thereby obtains a good nutritious meal, without having to go to the trouble of catching a fish, and without having to leave its own nest unprotected.
More well known is the macabre cannibalism of female praying mantises. Mantises are large carnivorous insects. They normally eat smaller insects such as flies, but they will attack almost anything that moves. When they mate, the male cautiously creeps up on the female, mounts her, and copulates. If the female gets the chance, she will eat him, beginning by biting his head off, either as the male is approaching, or immediately after he mounts, or after they separate. It might seem most sensible for her to wait until copulation is over before she starts to eat him. But the loss of the head does not seem to throw the rest of the male's body off its sexual stride. Indeed, since the insect head is the seat of some inhibitory nerve centres, it is possible that the female improves the male's sexual performance by eating his head.* If so, this is an added benefit. The primary one is that she obtains a good meal.
The word 'selfish' may seem an understatement for such extreme cases as cannibalism, although these fit well with our definition. Perhaps we can sympathize more directly with the reported cowardly behaviour of emperor penguins in the Antarctic. They have been seen standing on the brink of the water, hesitating before diving in, because of the danger of being eaten by seals. If only one of them would dive in, the rest would know whether there was a seal there or not. Naturally nobody wants to be the guinea pig, so they wait, and sometimes even try to push each other in.
More ordinarily, selfish behaviour may simply consist of refusing
6 Why are people?
to share some valued

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

........resource such as food, territory, or sexual partners. Now for some examples of apparently altruistic behaviour.
The stinging behaviour of worker bees is a very effective defence against honey robbers. But the bees who do the stinging are kamikaze fighters. In the act of stinging, vital internal organs are usually torn out of the body, and the bee dies soon afterwards. Her suicide mission may have saved the colony's vital food stocks, but she herself is not around to reap the benefits. By our definition this is an altruistic behavioural act. Remember that we are not talking about conscious motives. They may or may not be present, both here and in the selfishness examples, but they are irrelevant to our definition.
Laying down one's life for one's friends is obviously altruistic, but so also is taking a slight risk for them. Many small birds, when they see a flying predator such as a hawk, give a characteristic 'alarm call', upon which the whole flock takes appropriate evasive action. There is indirect evidence that the bird who gives the alarm call puts itself in special danger, because it attracts the predator's attention particularly to itself. This is only a slight additional risk, but it nevertheless seems, at least at first sight, to qualify as an altruistic act by our definition.
The commonest and most conspicuous acts of animal altruism are done by parents, especially mothers, towards their children. They may incubate them, either in nests or in their own bodies, feed them at enormous cost to themselves, and take great risks in protecting them from predators. To take just one particular example, many ground-nesting birds perform a so-called 'distraction display' when a predator such as a fox approaches. The parent bird limps away from the nest, holding out one wing as though it were broken. The predator, sensing easy prey, is lured away from the nest containing the chicks. Finally the parent bird gives up its pretence and leaps into the air just in time to escape the fox's jaws. It has probably saved the life of its nestlings, but at some risk to itself.
I am not trying to make a point by telling stories. Chosen examples are never serious evidence for any worthwhile generalization. These stories are simply intended as illustrations of what I mean by altruistic and selfish behaviour at the level of individuals. This book will show how both individual selfishness and individual altruism are explained by the fundamental law that I am calling gene selfishness. But first I must deal with a particular erroneous explanation for altruism, because it is widely known, and even widely taught in schools.
Why are people? 7
This explanation is based on the misconception that I have already mentioned, that living creatures evolve to do things 'for the good of the species' or 'for the good of the group'. It is easy to see how this idea got its start in biology. Much of an animal's life is devoted to reproduction, and most of the acts of altruistic self-sacrifice that are observed in nature are performed by parents towards their young. 'Perpetuation of the species' is a common euphemism for reproduction, and it is undeniably a consequence of reproduction. It requires only a slight over-stretching of logic to deduce that the 'function' of reproduction is 'to' perpetuate the species. From this it is but a further short false step to conclude that animals will in general behave in such a way as to favour the perpetuation of the species. Altruism towards fellow members of the species seems to follow.
This line of thought can be put into vaguely Darwinian terms. Evolution works by natural selection, and natural selection means the differential survival of the 'fittest'. But are we talking about the fittest individuals, the fittest races, the fittest species, or what? For some purposes this does not greatly matter, but when we are talking about altruism it is obviously crucial. If it is species that are competing in what Darwin called the struggle for existence, the individual seems best regarded as a pawn in the game, to be sacrificed when the greater interest of the species as a whole requires it. To put it in a slightly more respectable way, a group, such as a species or a population within a species, whose individual members are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the welfare of the group, may be less likely to go extinct than a rival group whose individual members place their own selfish interests first. Therefore the world becomes populated mainly by groups consisting of self-sacrificing individuals. This is the theory of 'group selection', long assumed to be true by biologists not familiar with the details of evolutionary theory, brought out into the open in a famous book by V. C. Wynne-Edwards, and popularized by Robert Ardrey in The Social Contract. The orthodox alternative is normally called 'individual selection', although I personally prefer to speak of gene selection.
The quick answer of the 'individual selectionist' to the argument just put might go something like this. Even in the group of altruists, there will almost certainly be a dissenting minority who refuse to make any sacrifice. It there is just one selfish rebel, prepared to exploit the altruism of the rest, then he, by definition, is more likely
8 Why are people?
than they are to survive and have children. Each of these children will tend to inherit his selfish traits. After several generations of this natural selection, the 'altruistic group' will be over-run by selfish individuals, and will be indistinguishable from the selfish group. Even if we grant the improbable chance existence initially of pure altruistic groups without any rebels, it is very difficult to see what is to stop selfish individuals migrating in from neighbouring selfish groups, and, by inter-marriage, contaminating the purity of the altruistic groups.
The individual-selectionist would admit that groups do indeed die out, and that whether or not a group goes extinct may be influenced by the behaviour of the individuals in that group. He might even admit that if only the individuals in a group had the gift of foresight they could see that in the long run their own best interests lay in restraining their selfish greed, to prevent the destruction of the whole group. How many times must this have been said in recent years to the working people of Britain? But group extinction is a slow process compared with the rapid cut and thrust of individual competition. Even while the group is going slowly and inexorably downhill, selfish individuals prosper in the short term at the expense of altruists. The citizens of Britain may or may not be blessed with foresight, but evolution is blind to the future.
Although the group-selection theory now commands little support within the ranks of those professional biologists who understand evolution, it does have great intuitive appeal. Successive generations of zoology students are surprised, when they come up from school, to find that it is not the orthodox point of view. For this they are hardly to be blamed, for in the Nuffield Biology Teachers' Guide, written for advanced level biology schoolteachers in Britain, we find the following: 'In higher animals, behaviour may take the form of individual suicide to ensure the survival of the species.' The anonymous author of this guide is blissfully ignorant of the fact that he has said something controversial. In this respect he is in Nobel Prize-winning company. Konrad Lorenz, in On Aggression, speaks of the 'species preserving' functions of aggressive behaviour, one of these functions being to make sure that only the fittest individuals are allowed to breed. This is a gem of a circular argument, but the point I am making here is that the group selection idea is so deeply ingrained that Lorenz, like the author of the Nuffield Guide, evidently did not realize that his statements contravened orthodox Darwinian theory.
Why are people? 9
I recently heard a delightful example of the same thing on an otherwise excellent B.B.C. television programme about Australian spiders. The 'expert' on the programme observed that the vast majority of baby spiders end up as prey for other species, and she then went on to say: 'Perhaps this is the real purpose of their existence, as only a few need to survive in order for the species to be preserved'!
Robert Ardrey, in The Social Contract, used the group-selection theory to account for the whole of social order in general. He clearly sees man as a species that has strayed from the path of animal righteousness. Ardrey at least did his homework. His decision to disagree with orthodox theory was a conscious one, and for this he deserves credit.
Perhaps one reason for the great appeal of the group-selection theory is that it is thoroughly in tune with the moral and political ideals that most of us share. We may frequently behave selfishly as individuals, but in our more idealistic moments we honour and admire those who put the welfare of others first. We get a bit muddled oyer how widely we want to interpret the word 'others', though. Often altruism within a group goes with selfishness between groups. This is a basis of trade unionism. At another level the nation is a major beneficiary of our altruistic self-sacrifice, and young men are expected to die as individuals for the greater glory of their country as a whole. Moreover, they are encouraged to kill other individuals about whom nothing is known except that they belong to a different nation. (Curiously, peace-time appeals for individuals to make some small sacrifice in the rate at which they increase their standard of living seem to be less effective than war-time appeals for individuals to lay down their lives.)
Recently there has been a reaction against racialism and patriotism, and a tendency to substitute the whole human species as the object of our fellow feeling. This humanist broadening of the target of our altruism has an interesting corollary, which again seems to buttress the 'good of the species' idea in evolution. The politically liberal, who are normally the most convinced spokesmen of the species ethic, now often have the greatest scorn for those who have gone a little further in widening their altruism, so that it includes other species. If I say that I am more interested in preventing the slaughter of large whales than I am in improving housing conditions for people, I am likely to shock some of my friends.
10 Why are people?
The feeling that members of one's own species deserve special moral consideration as compared with members of other species is old and deep. Killing people outside war is the most seriously-regarded crime ordinarily committed. The only thing more strongly forbidden by our culture is eating people (even if they are already dead). We enjoy eating members of other species, however. Many of us shrink from judicial execution of even the most horrible human criminals, while we cheerfully countenance the shooting without trial of fairly mild animal pests. Indeed we kill members of other harmless species as a means of recreation and amusement. A human foetus, with no more human feeling than an amoeba, enjoys a reverence and legal protection far in excess of those granted to an adult chimpanzee. Yet the chimp feels and thinks and—according to recent experimental evidence—may even be capable of learning a form of human language. The foetus belongs to our own species, and is instantly accorded special privileges and rights because of it. Whether the ethic of 'speciesism', to use Richard Ryder's term, can be put on a logical footing any more sound than that of 'racism', I do not know. What I do know is that it has no proper basis in evolutionary biology.
The muddle in human ethics over the level at which altruism is desirable—family, nation, race, species, or all living things—is mirrored by a parallel muddle in biology over the level at which altruism is to be expected according to the theory of evolution. Even the group-selectionist would not be surprised to find members of rival groups being nasty to each other: in this way, like trade unionists or soldiers, they are favouring their own group in the struggle for limited resources. But then it is worth asking how the group-selectionist decides which level is the important one. If selection goes on between groups within a species, and between species, why should it not also go on between larger groupings? Species are grouped together into genera, genera into orders, and orders into classes. Lions and antelopes are both members of the class Mammalia, as are we. Should we then not expect lions to refrain from killing antelopes, 'for the good of the mammals'? Surely they should hunt birds or reptiles instead, in order to prevent the extinction of the class. But then, what of the need to perpetuate the whole phylum of vertebrates?
It is all very well for me to argue by reductio ad absurdum, and to point to the difficulties of the group-selection theory, but the
Why are people? 11
apparent existence of individual altruism still has to be explained. Ardrey goes so far as to say that group selection is the only possible explanation for behaviour such as 'stotting' in Thomson's gazelles. This vigorous and conspicuous leaping in front of a predator is analogous to bird alarm calls, in that it seems to warn companions of danger while apparently calling the predator's attention to the stotter himself. We have a responsibility to explain stotting Tommies and all similar phenomena, and this is something I am going to face in later chapters.
Before that I must argue for my belief that the best way to look at evolution is in terms of selection occurring at the lowest level of all. In this belief I am heavily influenced by G. C. Williams's great book Adaptation and Natural Selection. The central idea I shall make use of was foreshadowed by A. Weismann in pre-gene days at the turn of the century—his doctrine of the 'continuity of the germ-plasm'. I shall argue that the fundamental unit of selection, and therefore of self-interest, is not the species, nor the group, nor even, strictly, the individual. It is the gene, the unit of heredity.* To some biologists this may sound at first like an extreme view. I hope when they see in what sense I mean it they will agree that it is, in substance, orthodox, even if it is expressed in an unfamiliar way. The argument takes time to develop, and we must begin at the beginning, with the very origin of life itself.

[David Cooper]

Look, i do agree with most of what you were saying , form the materialistic point of view at least ,so :
Help me out here ,in order to make dlorde and alcanverd see the light haha :

Do you need anyone else to see the light? None of us can see how consciousness works, but maintaining a diversity of approach is a good thing as it makes it more likely that someone will trip over something useful. What matters from my point of view is that more people understand the problem with translating experience of qualia into data about qualia because if they are aware of this issue they may find some kind of solution which looks completely imposible right up to the point where it jumps out and hits you across the face with a wet fish. If you understand the key problem and know what you're actually looking for, you're more likely to recognise the solution if you stumble upon it. Beyond that, there is no need to evangelise any specific position.

Also, attempts to make people change position are almost always doomed to have the opposite effect, so it's counterproductive to go down that road. People need to make their own journey and not be pushed. It is sufficient to set out an argument and then leave it there. If people take it on board to any degree, they may gain. If they find a fault in it and destroy it, you gain instead by having a faulty argument destroyed, thereby liberating you to find a better approach.

What you cannot understand is how consciousness or the mind ( I see the human mind or consciousness as a whole process which contains intelligence , emotions, feelings , imagination ...) can rise from those biological mechanical processes ? or as Dawkins put it , we can "revolt against the selfish mechanical tyranny of our genes " by deliberately modifying our selfish behavior via our free will : how, on earth, are we supposed to do just that , if we are just machines = we cannot have a free will = free will is an illusion ,according to this mechanical deterministic materialistic view of the universe , man, life , nature ...

People often put ideas across rather badly, framing them in ways that imply that they believe things they don't altogether believe in, so it's always hard to work out what their true position is. Dawkins in the context above is really talking about the ability of our intelligence to override the less intelligent evolved rules of behaviour programmed into our DNA. Our genes set up certain behaviours in us which are not always ideal, but they also generate a general purpose computer in our heads that can do a better job, and when it recognises that there are better ways to do some things (such as suppressing violent instincts in order to create a safer society in which random death by violence is massively less likely), instinctive behaviours can be overridden. He may attribute this to free will as a shorthand, but if you were to pick the point apart with him, he would probably agree that there is no such thing as free will and give a longer, more accurate account.

"...consciousness, feelings , free will, good and evil, emotions, ethics , cultures, societies, politics, economics , religions or spirituality..."

There are a lot of diversions there which don't really have anything to do with consciousness. Free will is not free at all, even if qualia are real: extreme pain, if pain is real, may force you to try to act to try to reduce it in any way you can find, but there is no free will involved in that. Ethics is really just about weighing up the harm people do and minimising it within a system where some harm is necessarily allowed in order to make life fun: if you want the freedom to enjoy walking through a park, it has to be allowable for people to disturb others by walking about through a park. Some people are unable to weigh up the balance properly and will think they are allowed to push other people out of their way rather than walking round them, and some may think it's okay to stick a knife in them at the same time, but there's nothing supernaturally evil going on - all that's happening is that there are faults in the algorithms they run, and these may be caused by genetic errors, errors in the construction of the brain, or a violent upbringing which has taught the individual in question that no one else seems to care about the rules, so why should they.

Politics is an attempt to run things well and to apply morality through law, but it's all mechanistic, some of it being driven by instincts (homosexuality is not acceptable because we're programmed to find it disgusting), some is driven by cultural beliefs (homosexuality is not acceptable because this Holy book says so), and some of it is driven by direct thinking which may be right or wrong (homosexuality is not acceptable because it spreads disease; or homosexuality is acceptable because it does immense harm to people to prevent them from being the people they cannot help but be).

Religion is a kind of science in which magic is allowed as an explanation, but most of it is based on sense on some level. It began with things like hearing an echo coming out of an empty cave: you shout into it and a spirit shouts back at you. That isn't stupidity, but an attempt to understand something which happens to be wrong. Explorers used to write "here be dragons" on maps whenever they ran into a thunderstorm, and they weren't stupid either - they heard the dragons roaring and saw the fire that they breathed. That isn't part of a religion, but it works in the same way - it's an attempt at a scientific explanation that has gone wrong due to a bad assumption. A lot of religious beliefs are based on feelings, such as love and awe. These feelings may or may not be real, so exploring beliefs based on feelings really doesn't address the issue of consciousness itself - it is merely a diversion. What matters to us in this discussion is whether the feelings are real or not, and we can explore that best by looking at the most stark of qualia, pain. Pain drives behaviour more strongly than any other quale, although it only does so if pain isn't a fiction. We need to see a full cause-and-effect model of the process by which pain can drive something in order to see it as more than a fiction, and if someone can do that we will then be able to build similar models for all other qualia and explain the whole lot, but there's no point in trying to understand the whole mess in one go until we can explain the clearest case.

How can even science itself ,or any other form of human knowledge  for that matter , to mention just that , how can they ever rise from those evolutionary  exclusively mechanical processes of ours ?

Evolution appears to have built the first information systems in the form of DNA. A second kind of information has then evolved in the form of brains, and one species has ended up with a universal computer which can turn itself to any task. Some of the programming of that computer has evolved to do what it does, but it has reached the point where the rest of the programming can be done through learning. Science comes out of the programming of this computer to try to model the world around it. None of that requires consciousness, but if consciousness is useful as part of the mechanism for some reason, there is no reason why evolution shouldn't have taken a pathway that includes it. We just don't know what its role is because it appears to be superfluous.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

At the very end of that book of his ,and after proving the "fact " that the apparent altruistic behavior is just selfishness in disguise ,even at the level of humans ,   Dawkins went on concluding that :
true altruism has never existed neither in nature nor in the history of the world .
But , we , as humans , are the only species that can revolt against the selfish tyranny of our genes, and against the "fact " that we were born as selfish creatures , by being able to deliberately and consciously modify our selfish behavior  by becoming truely altruistic , by teaching altruism, generosity ...blablabla ...

How , on earth, are we supposed to do just the latter , if we are just machines then ?

How, on earth, did we get to possess such unique property or quality to behave independently from our mechanical systems then ?
How, on earth, did those properties or qualities rise from our mechanical systems then , in the first place to begin with ?