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[Rayliikanen]

Lots of words ... no meaning.

[popeye1945]

Lots of words ... no meaning.

DUH!

[Lagayascienza]

Rayliihanen, what sort of OP is this? What is the question for discussion?
Dawkins is an evolutionary scientist and not a metaphysician. Is that what you are asking? Is there something about Dawkins' writing or his exposition of evolution by natural selection that you don't like?

[Lagayascienza]

Apologies, I thought that was the OP but now see it is a comment to something on the previous page which I did not see.

[Mercury]

I've written an article and submitted it to Philosophy Now; titled "Socrates Talks With a Reverse-Solipsist." It's in dialogue form, of course. Socrates concludes that the character with whom he is speaking, and who is a disciple of Dawkins, had accepted a science (really a philosophy) of reverse-solipsism. He has in his hands copies of Dawkins's "The Selfish Gene," "The God Delusion," and Susan Blackmore's "The Meme Machine," with a forward by Dawkins. Blackmore has herself come to the conviction based on Dawkins's science, that she has no 'self' to speak of. At the conclusion of her book she states we live our lives as a lie, because the genes and memes have made us do it--their aim is merely to replicate themselves, and we are as Dawkins states: their survival machines. These selfish genes 'provide the ultimate rationale for our existence.' Thus, Dawkins is not advancing science. He is advancing a philosophical/metaphysic of reverse-solipsism. What do you think? To form a proper answer I think reading the above works by Dawkins, and Blackmore will help.


What do I think about what? That you write on Philosophy Now, and advertise your work here? I wonder what attention you're going to give my answer. A dog cannot have two masters! Ha ha! I'd like to read the article - could you make it available here?
I've read Dawkins and Dennett, but not Blackmore - so you'll have to account for that ignorance in my answer. But to what question? 'What do you think?' I think it's a bit of a vague question. Almost as if the purpose is advertising, and you don't give a damn what I think.

Also, I think Dennett says as much explicitly, albeit without attributing that particular philosophical title, he claims consciousness is an illusion as a consequence of a meme centric view. Dawkins doesn't go so far as Dennett; despite describing a meme centric view in The Selfish Gene. It's been some time since I read it, and quite why, or how he escapes this conclusion is lost to me. But I know Dawkins returns us to ourselves, and cannot be thought of as advancing such a metaphysic, for this question is raised, and he specifically refutes it.
He doesn't go so far as Dennett does, to describe consciousness as a 'spandrel' - an accidentally useful feature of the architecture forged by evolution solely for the purpose of biological reproduction, and thus gene replication. I wonder if Dennett might not have been a better interlocutor for your pseudo Socratic dialogue?

Let's put that aside, and consider your concept, or rather gene centrism as a philosophical concept - reverse solipsism. Without reading your article, that's not much to go on. But let's aim for a quick definition of solipsism, as the hypothetical state Descartes reaches as a consequence of his method of radical scepticism - able to know that he exists, because he is thinking, but having doubted away the evidence of his senses, the world 'out there' and even that he has a physical body.
What is the reverse of that? A method of radical belief? Does radical belief result in the conclusion that we are meme machines? I don't think it does. I think doubt; not radical doubt, but the reasoned doubt inherent to scientific method, is required to overcome the primordial supposition that there is a maker of things - as evidenced by apparent design in nature.
A reverse solipsist would surely be a committed theist. Indeed, Descartes is only able to escape the solipsistic corner into which he paints himself by appeal to God 'who cannot be a deceiver...' dismissing doubt, reversing course on his sceptical method to return his subjective self to the world, his senses and his body.
So I'd suggest it doesn't work; that reverse solipsism is not an accurate philosophical description of even the most ardent gene centric view. And I think the problem is that you're somehow conflating epistemology and reality in that definition; for solipsism is about epistemology, about what we can know with certainty; turns out very little, and yet you're simultaneously affording your interlocutor knowledge of, and radical belief in advanced evolutionary theory. Your reverse solipsist would have to be someone 'lost in the books.'