My point however is this: that what we are familiar with is somehow embedded in a complex intertwining of genes and memes awash in a sea of variables that may well be all but impossible to really pin down – to either know or to control.
But that some have evolved a frame of mind able to imagine this as something that they have pinned down. And that others are obligated to share this frame of mind [about evolution and many other things] if they wish to be thought of as rational…or as virtuous.
That, in a Hegelian, sense the “synthesis” stops with them.
“I” then sinks down into this frame of mind and is able to nestle psychologically in the comfort and the consolation of imagining that, whether you call it a soul or the “real me”, there is a part of them that is in touch with one or another teleological component of existence. Something that ascribes “meaning” to their life; and thus enabling them further to make that crucial distinction between those of us who do and those of us who don’t.
It’s just that the mystery becomes all that much more problematic when you factor in such things as God and religion and moral obligation and autonomy on this side, and the prospect of oblivion on the other side of it.
So to speak of natural selection as being dead here just begs the question: How on earth could someone possibly know that?
What does “I” entail here?
And, in particular, from my vantage point, how do we go about discussing it beyond merely exchanging “general descriptions”.