1. Darwin's dangerous idea

Comment #137536 by DeLan on March 3, 2008 at 5:22 am

"begs the question" - No, it raises the question.

As BigJohn says "Please"! "Begs the question" is the name of a logical fallacy.

2. Richard Dawkins Replies to David Sloan Wilson

Comment #55766 by DeLan on July 12, 2007 at 7:18 am

In my earlier comment on the Wilson/Dawkins exchange I was thinking of the slight tendency towards arrogance exhibited by scientists when they enter into areas outside of their expertise. I realize that this forum is primarily a fan club and that any criticism of Dawkins is not welcome, but nevertheless,

In The Selfish Gene RD writes:

. . .it was Darwin who first put together a coherent and tenable account of why we exist. Darwin made it possible to give a sensible answer to the curious child whose question heads this chapter [Why are people?] 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.'

Even if we accept Dawkins's scientific argument as a very persuasive account of the random mechanical processes at work in our biological history, we might argue that he has not come close to what is really worth knowing in the "Why" of human existence. We might assert, with Socrates, that if all you are going to tell me is the mechanical process by which I got here, you haven't addressed anything about those things I most want to know. You have told me about how the house came to be built, but you offer me nothing at all by way of insight into how I ought to live in the house or why I ought to live here rather than somewhere else. In fact, Dawkins' method makes clear that his explanation cannot, by its very nature, even begin to address such questions.

3. Richard Dawkins Replies to David Sloan Wilson

Comment #55603 by DeLan on July 11, 2007 at 4:40 pm

I agree with Eric Blair - Sloan Wilson's article is worth reading. RD writes, "Why would Wilson 'naturally assume' any such thing?" and then immediately answers his own question by saying that it would be reasonable to assume just what Wilson assumes.
I don't quite understand why RD thinks he must be always on the attack. Matter of style, I naturally assume.