Tim Tyler  wrote:

....
> Sophisticated, reflective self-consciousness /does/ seem like
> an invention with dramatic consequences that stick it up there
> in terms of biological significance with things like the evolution
> of sex and multi-cellularity.
> 
> It's as though the universe has grown an eye that has been turned
> back to view itself.  The resulting feedback loop is in the process
> of throwing off all kinds of novel complex system - of types never
> before seen.
> 
> The effect allows evolution to take advantage of intelligent design,
> lamarckian inheritance, and directed mutations.
> 
> The first ramifications of it are unfolding all around us as I write.

In my role as idiosyncratic deviant, I must reject this claim.
Intelligent design, so-called "lamarckian" inheritance, and directed
mutations are all the end result of lower-level darwinian processes.
Intelligence relies on the inheritance of prior trial and error. There
is nothing magical about it, and it cannot anticipate outcomes except on
the basis of learned regularities. Even then, the best engineer or
artist has to solve problems in the traditional, "darwinian" way.

[Coy]I have a paper on this[/Coy]. I argue that all supposed
non-darwinian processes must be darwinian at that or a subordinate
level. I call this Dawkins' Conjecture. But I do not think all cultural
inheritance must be the result of selection; so perhaps it is not
Dawkins' idea at all...
-- 
Dr John S. Wilkins, www.wilkins.id.au
"I never meet anyone who is not perplexed what to do with their
 children" --Charles Darwin to Syms Covington, February 22, 1857
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