In natural predator-prey relationships if a predator is so strong a hunter it proliferates and the prey population declines, their group gets equally wiped out. — kudos

He's saying that altruism and selfishness are not emotional states at any scale — Kenosha Kid

It doesn't require explaining — Kenosha Kid

should not have apologized for it. — StreetlightX

Apology is due, not only for the delay but for the impatient tone of my article. One should not lose one’s temper, and doing so always makes for confused argument. My basic objections remain. But I certainly ought to have expressed them more clearly and temperately. — Mary Midgley

It is incredibly muddled, and it obfuscates far more than it illuminates. — StreetlightX

He's not talking about genes in that quote, — Kenosha Kid

When biologists talk about 'selfishness' or
'altruism' we are emphatically not talking about emotional nature, whether of human beings, other animals, or genes.

The point that you couldn't possibly have an "altruistic" gene is one I made quite a while ago. It doesn't make any sense. A selfish gene -- one that adapts to prolong itself -- is both viable and accurate. — Kenosha Kid

When biologists talk about 'selfishness' or
'altruism' we are emphatically not talking about emotional nature, whether of human beings, other animals, or genes. We do not even mean the words in
a metaphorical sense. We define altruism and selfishness in purely behaviouristic ways: 'An entity . . . 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.

Why are you wasting your time arguing with people online about it? — Saphsin

If you dislike the metaphor so much, fine. As I mentioned earlier, Dawkins did too and preferred the term Immortal Gene. You can google it. My problems with the book is that it's outdated science, don't waste your time going around in circles because the terminological usage offends you so much. — Saphsin

The title of the book is The Selfish Gene, not The Selfishness Gene; — Srap Tasmaner

genes are antinatalists. — unenlightened

And because genes are not literally selfish, we are not born selfish. — unenlightened

When we describe this behaviour as "selfish" metaphorically, it does not make sense to ask where this selfishness came from as if it were a literal thing. Do you understand? — Kenosha Kid

Thus metaphorically genes are adapting to propagate themselves. ... This is a useful metaphor. — Kenosha Kid

I recall no such instruction from Dawkins' book to cease taking genetic selfishness metaphorically, do you? — Kenosha Kid

that it misrepresents the scientific knowledge about ethology and evolution — Olivier5

No. That's treating the metaphor as being literal. You do understand what a metaphor is, right? — Kenosha Kid

It does not, for instance, eradicate the view that humans themselves are intrinsically altruistic. — Kenosha Kid

So, apparently, if we want to study (say) dances, we should stop asking what dances do for people and should ask only what they do for themselves. We shall no longer ask to what particular human tastes and needs they appeal, how people use them, how they are related to the other satisfactions of life, what feelings they express or what needs cause people to change
them. Instead, presumably, we shall ask why dances, if they wanted a host, decided to parasitize people rather then elephants or octopuses.

Well it is a useful metaphor, insofar as it has pedagogical power — Kenosha Kid

Also, that was not her point. Her point rests on pretending that the metaphor is not a metaphor, such that she can construct the straw man that the selfish gene idea is some kind of social Darwinism and attack that straw man.

The dislike for the idea of a gene behaving as if it were selfish, even though that is a useful metaphor for the actual behaviour, — Kenosha Kid

an altruistic gene would be a gene that sacrificed itself for the sake of another gene. — Kenosha Kid

genes are not moral patients, people are. — Pfhorrest

As for Midgley's tone — Banno

To understand how Midgley became a fierce philosophical rebel, we have to go back to Oxford in the Second World War.

Midgley argued that philosophy is like plumbing, something that nobody notices until it goes wrong.

Ach, it fitted the tone of the times, along with Milton Friedman and all that garbage about self interest. — Banno

It must be, so the myth would have us believe, because partnering with a male with a big tail somehow helps the female's genes to survive. — Banno

The question is how to knit together the blind, mechanical reproduction of genetic material with the layered, complex behavior of the creatures carrying that material. — Srap Tasmaner