Kenosis and Nature
With living things, questions of level mingle with questions of identity, which mingle with questions of persisting and perishing.
-
-
Possibility Space in Evolution
What possibility spaces are needed to get from beginnings to where we have now arrived, in Earth history?
-
Skyhooks and Cranes
It is not that there is no “watchmaker”; there is no “watch.” Looking for one frames the problem the wrong way.
-
Genes and the Adapted Mind
The system of inheritance of ideas is independent of the system of inheritance of genes. All this is pointing steadily to a difference in being human, to a complex mind indeed adapted for culture, that is, to a distinctive human genius.
-
The Good Samaritan and His Genes
The fundamental claim is that selfish people out reproduce unselfish ones, but superimposed on that is the claim that (really) selfish people who are self-deceived into thinking they are unselfish out reproduce selfish people who know their own selfishness.
-
Distributed and Shared Genetic Value
Since genes are not moral agents, they cannot be selfish, and, equally, they cannot be altruistic. But genes can transmit information.
-
Selfish Genes and Inclusive Values
Each organism is in pursuit of—that is, values—its own proper life, which is all that the (nonhuman) individual organism either can or ought to pursue. It turns out, however, that values can be held intrinsically only as they are inclusively distributed.