224 Catherine Wilson
Before going on to consider the possible bearing of such evolutionary explana-
tions of the origins of certain traits on moral prescriptions, some points relating
to the explanatory claims of evolutionary theory should be clarified.
First, the doctrine of the selfish gene does not imply that persons are selfish and
are determined to be so by their genes. “Vernacular” competition is salient in some
species and in some contexts, but, according to 3. above, it is not to be confused
with the purely metaphorical strivings of genes to be present in future generations.
An organism’s genetically influenced selfishness is a function of the contribution of
selfish behaviour under the control of any gene to its own replication. If “selfish”
genes for selfish behaviour thrive in a given environment, organisms will be selfish;
if “selfish” genes for unselfish behaviour thrive in a given social environment, then
individual organisms will be unselfish. Second, while, to the layman, the shell of a
snail is a morphological feature produced by its genes, and different from the nest
of the bird, Dawkins’s concept of the extended phenotype [Dawkins, 1982] implies
that genes can act at a distance from the organism in which they reside, exerting
their effects over the environment and even over other organisms. Potentially, nu-
merous constructions of organisms that are directed by a gene and favourable to
its replication count as phenotypic components ofsomeorganism. Insofar as much
of human life is dedicated to the making of a physical and cultural environment,
the concept of the extended phenotype may be consequential and deserves further
philosophical exploration. While it is possible and important in some contexts to
make a distinction between innate and learned features, or natural predispositions
and cultural acquisitions, the boundaries between these concepts are not sharp:
the ability to learn, certain dispositions to learn, and what can be learned are
innately determined, and the formation of cultures with particular typical char-
acteristics is, for humans, natural. Third, not all characteristics of the phenotype
are adaptive. This is so not only because some may be accidental side effects of
genuinely adaptive traits, but on account of the ubiquity of parasitism, a phe-
nomenon which, as Dawkins points out, implies the falsity of the claim that “it
is useful to expect individual organisms to behave in such a way as to maximize
their own inclusive fitness, or in other words to maximize the survival of copies
of the genes inside them.” [ibid., 55] Certain morphological, physiological, and
behavioural characteristics that appear typical in a species need not aid them in
their competition to survive and reproduce. Instead, they may be elicited by para-
sites possessed of heritable powers to invade and influence. Dawkins suggests that
“animals exert strong power over other animals, and...frequently an animal’s
actions are most usefully interpreted as working in the interests of another ani-
mal’s inclusive fitness, rather than its own” [ibid., 68]. The cuckoo, for example,
has discovered how to look and act in such a way as to produce an “addiction”
to feeding it in its helpless foster parents. Accordingly, while stereotypical be-
haviour in a species, or in some of its members, may signal that it is a product
of evolution, we are not entitled to assume that it favours the survival and repro-
duction of the animal in which it is observed. A fourth concept of importance is
obsolescence. “The animal we are looking at”, says Dawkins, “is probably out of