The Gricean Gene (Was: Grice Kelly)

---- By J. L. S.


A quote from Popper, by courtesy of Popper expert Donal McEvoy:

"To this [old] ideology", Popper writes, belongs,

"the myth of the selfish gene (for genes

can only function and survive by co-operating),

and the revived social Darwinism that is

currently being presented as a brand-new

and naively deterministic 'sociobiology'".

---

I have discussed elsewhere Grice's evolutionary leanings. Indeed, he had a high opinion of Dawkins. In an unused (vomit) airplane bag that is now safely deposited in "The Papers (sic) of H. P. Grice", The Grice Collection, Berkeley, we find:

"read Selfish Gene"

-- we don't think he did!

JLS