I agree, Robert, that we don't naturally evolve, at least not at a rate that we would be able to notice, but we do 'evolve' in a more general sense, that is culturally. I think Dawkins also believes that our rationality or consciousness has set us on a different track from the other animals. He attributes to culture, and not to natural forces, our ideas that that enable us to be to an extent independent from nature. I think the void that is left for him prompted him to fill it with a quasi-naturalistic theory of memes. I'm not with him on this, though, feeling that it adds nothing to our ability to understand the hows and whys of culture change.
I think you might be right about instinct being passe. I don't know why this is. On the rationality of animals, one of the philosophers in the de Waal book we read termed animals as 'wantons,' meaning that they are more or less at the mercy of their genetic programming as we view them in action. This does seem very close to instinct, doesn't it? At least one of the other philosophers agreed with this idea of wantonness. I can see some truth in this view as I consider the dog I've been living with for the past ten years. No offense, Hazel.
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