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Replacing a thing with something else that performs the same function by other means does not demonstrate that the first thing was doing nothing.
by mannykannot 5y ago
Replacing a thing with something else that performs the same function by other means does not demonstrate that the first thing was doing nothing.
- ptr2voidStar 5y agoI was just about to make that comment. Faulty reasoning on the part of the commenter.
- Barrin92 5y agoI wasn't saying that genes do nothing. If they did nothing, they probably wouldn't exist. I said they're a store of information, but not a driver of behavior. They don't exercise any control in the way that is commonly associated with gene-centric views is my argument. If culture or technology at some point completely replaces genetics in a literal sense, I don't think it's even necessarily required to reproduce any of the current functions of genes at all.
- mannykannot 5y ago> If culture or technology at some point completely replaces genetics in a literal sense, I don't think it's even necessarily required to reproduce any of the current functions of genes at all. Now that you have clarified that genes are a store of information, this passage seems to imply that genes could be replaced in a way that makes no use of a store of the sort of information genes store. I can't prove it, but I very much doubt that is possible, unless you mean specifically that whatever information store this replacement needs is not precisely identical with that in a genome - but that is trivially true, given that no two genomes are identical in all respects. Identity arguments are the hobgoblin of the philosophy of the mind, IMHO, keeping one of its feet chained to its vitalist past through tendentious modal arguments about concievability - but I digress.