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17 Aug 08
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one of the oldest and most widely used rhetorical tropes regarding genes, and latterly DNA, is that it/they are instructions. They cause the body to be built according to a program. Other metaphors include recipes, blueprints, code, and so on, but they all rely on this basic notion of instruction: DNA is a process of imparting information to be used in the construction of the organism.
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information, which we all think we have a handle on, is what the instructions comprise
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every use of the term information in respect of genes can either be replaced with the notion of causality, or can be ignored as adding nothing to the debate, or worse, as confusing and unhelpful.
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hylomorphism, or form-substance dualism, requires that the properties of things are at least partly not due to the stuff of which it is made. Atomism requires that the properties of the parts fix all the properties of the wholes.
In modern debate terms, this is very much like - but not identical with - the reductionism/holism, or more recently, the reductionism/emergence dichotomy.
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we are intentional actors, and so we conceive of the world in those terms.
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the biological world, is not composed of formless gunk that gets its properties only when information is pressed into it. The parts of the system give the system its properties. Genes cause processes to occur, and not alone - they are one causal element of the entire process of being alive. They do not instruct us how to live and grow. They do not impart information. They cause developmental properties to occur
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