On 26 Sept, Brian King wrote that the meaning of life is to increase fitness
and that the human gene pool is the basic unit of life, not the individual.
Francis replied that we should take a "multilevel view of natural selection".
A few days of thinking over this question have brought me to the conclusion
that there is something contradictory in this. If the meaning of BIOLOGICAL
life is to increase the fitness of the gene pool, what do we do with
cognitive interaction, exchange of symbols among cognitive carriers able to
interpret them ? In our times, the "fitness" of a human being is defined
much more in terms of his ability to interpret social symbols and behave
accordingly, rather than his biological fitness to resist diseases and find
food. Life has evolved beyond biological survival and has entered a phase of
"semiotic survival", for which humans may be ill-fit compared to computers.
If the Post-Human manifesto guys are right, the human gene pool will become
useless for survival and life will pass on to what we call "artificial"
forms. This fits into Francis' view of multilevel selection, but goes
clearly beyond the narrow biological view that focuses on genetic selection.
Denett, in his latest book on "Darwin and the meaning of life", also refers
to this evolution in the views on evolution.
On the other hand, if the evolution process has indeed switched to "semiotic
fitness" criteria, rather than (biological) genetic criteria, we may be in
the process of breeding semiotically fit but biologically unfit humans, bound
to disappear because of the latter unfitness.
Keeping in mind that contradictions are the only truths, I think it's worth
exploring this a bit further. Are there any biologists on the PRNCYB-L who
could react to this ?
__________________________________________
Bertin Martens
bertin.martens@dg2.cec.be