human sexual selection

Wrong. Sexual selection does not mean that the opposite sex lets you live; it means it lets you mate with them.

I must say it a thousand times: evolution is about the survival of genes (codes), not the survival of organisms.

It may or may not confer survival advantages; it may even confer survival disadvantages. As long as its reproductive advantages are greater than the reproductive disadvantages springing from such survival disadvantages, however, it’s still evolutionarily advantageous.

I repeat: check out The Mating Mind (if this seriously interests you).

Newsflash, Sauwelios … if organisms don’t survive, they don’t reproduce.

Which means that survival advantage is evolutionary advantage, not that evolutionary advantage is necessarily survival advantage. In evolution, the survival of organisms is only of value as a means to the survival of gene-codes.

Well, as “The gene is the basic unit of replication and selection in evolution” doesn’t in any way mean that genes are “selfish”, yes it would seem that it does in fact repudiate what you said… unless you can demonstrate how/why a gene is “selfish”.

Or why we can pick it out of the evolutionary organic process as a whole and call it the “basic” component. As I mentioned, and as you chose to ignore and not respond to, focusing on the gene as the basic or primary unit of selective evolution misses the process as a whole. There would be no gene selection without a larger environment, or without the higher organic forms of which genes are a part. Genes are not where selection begins, they are not where selection ends, they do not initiate nor complete the evolutionary process nor does that process hinge any more so on genes themselves than it does on the many complex and deep cellular and higher organic processes of which genes themselves are a part. We could just as easily call protein coding the basic component of evolution, as we could the “genes” themselves.

Calling genes the basic unit of evolution is akin to saying that blueprints are the basic unit of construction, rather than the brick and mortar… or not even, it is rather like calling the paper on which the blueprint is written the basic unit of construction…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene#.22Selfish.22_genes

The bold part is wrong. It’s not a matter of indifference.

If construction were analogous with evolution, it would be rather be like the former. It’s about the genetic code, not the material in which it manifests.

You seem to be parroting something you read without doing your own thinking. Gene-codes cannot survive unless organisms first survive long enough to reproduce.

Sauw-

You are incorrect. You cannot reduce the essence of the evolutionary process nor the mechanism of selection to one element of that process. The idea of evolution is incomplete without the likewise idea of that which evolves. Just like the idea of construction is incomplete without the notion of the constructed. Is a machine only its most basic parts? Or is it more, is it all of the parts which are necessary for its functioning? Does its essence not also rest in its higher comprehensive form and the rules of the game that determine its existence, even its coming into existence?

Bottom line, evolution is the notion of consecutive change over time, a continuity of forms. Evolution means that no one form can be fully separated from the lineage of its predecessors. Selection is the notion of the relationship between the organism and its environment, contingent upon the fact that organisms survive to reproduce only when they (sufficiently) successfully navigate the rules of this environment. Genes are part of the process that creates and sustains these organisms. They are not where this process originates, they are not where it terminates, they are not the ‘end’ of this process, nor even a end.

Have you been reading Dawkins? It does seem that perhaps Dawkins has gotten you confused, you wouldn’t be the first…

Indeed.

Evolution is not some ontological category or Object or prior existent… it is just a word we use to grasp the notion of continuous change. That change, that innumerably complex and intricate process has many mutually dependent parts. It is irrational to (attempt to) reduce the entire process to a single element of that process…

“the survival of organisms is only of value as a means to the survival of gene-codes” ← this reveals flawed thinking, and one reason why I suspect you have been getting drunk on too much Dawkins. There are no “ends” or “value” inherent in the process itself. It is purely natural, impersonal, mechanism…

I agree. I like your point that evolution works in a nexus.

To Sauwelios: please don’t let your head explode just because others have ideas and pov’s that differ from the ones you parrot from your favorite cracked, neonazi, or rightwing authors.

No, you just don’t understand. What follows are three (3) different statements:

  • “Evolutionary advantage is survival advantage.”
  • “Survival advantage is evolutionary advantage.”
  • “Evolutionary advantage = survival advantage.”
  • “Survival advantage = evolutionary advantage.”

And yes, I know that they are four statements…

What I mean is that, though the “blueprints” must be written on “paper”, it does not matter which particular “piece of paper”.

Evolution is the evolution of populations. This implies that a population is regarded as a unified whole that persists through time. However, what we’re really doing is not looking at the “evolution” of a “population”, but looking at which genes (“blueprints”) are carried by the “population” at any particular time and then comparing different times in the life of that “population” (really as many populations as there are such different times). Then we see that some genes survive past a certain point whereas others die out at that point.

There are “ends” and “value”, though no ends or value. Note the quotation marks. The “selfishness” of genes is a metaphor, as I’ve been trying to make clear from the start.

Even as a metaphor, it doesn’t work. As for personification, that would be another story.

And none of them are different, now, are they?

It does.

A personification is a metaphor.

Wrong. They are, as I said, three different statements.

  • “An animal is a cow.”
  • “A cow is an animal.”
  • “An animal = a cow.”
  • “A cow = an animal.”

No it doesn’t. You would have to consider a gene to be selfish in the light of a figurative comparison which has nothing to do with the gene itself.

Since when? Since you just decided it was just because . . . . You need to look up these terms.

It doesn’t matter anyway. If that’s what you want to think, knock yourself out.

Doesn’t that go for all metaphors?..

[size=95]attribution of personal qualities; especially : representation of a thing or abstraction as a person or by the human form
[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/personification][/size]

This is the sense of “personification” that we’re talking about here.

Now a meta-phor is a carrying-over of certain qualities from one concept onto some other concept. A personification, then, is a meta-phor of personal qualities from the concept “person” to another concept—for instance, the concept “gene”…