evolution of spirit 6: from consciousness to reason

Environmental pressures driving the evolution of biology as well as social and cognitive structures, have generated additional environments in each context which power new kinds of evolutionary changes. These same processes continue to push adaptations in consciousness.

Massive environmental changes in the physical world can trigger dormant or incipient genetic traits, leading to significant changes in biological populations. Catastrophic changes in the physical environment can also provoke great changes in social and cognitive environments as well. Upheavals in social environments themselves will initiate an avalanche of changes in cognitive adaptations which then impact cognitive environments. Consciousness, at the far end of this ripple effect engages in intensive changes in response to the instability in the other three environments upon which it is based.

Instability and change are the driving forces behind evolutionary transformation. As humans we have become not only conscious of self, as have a number of other sentient animals, but conscious of our consciousness. We engage in deliberate intensive thinking about thinking. We’ve developed multiple levels of abstraction and theory which extend the environments of consciousness we inhabit with our minds.

Long before the times of those whose names have come down to us as the ancient philosophers and sages, there were many others who began thinking, imagining, and creating abstract categories of thought. They began generating environments of pure thought in which ideas come and go, evolve and devolve. It was in the context of these environments of thought that, over time, the conceptual environmental pressures acting on evolutionary adaptations brought us the great philosophers of the past.

As conscious beings, living in and through environments of consciousness, and aware of our capacity for consciousness, we engage in multiple levels of abstractions and theories. We have knowingly extrapolated pattern recognition to abstractions of time. We distinguish between numerous varieties and permutations of “truth” and “untruth”, of “pure” and “impure”, of “beauty” and “non-beauty”, of “meaning” and “non-meaning.” All of this has nothing to do with evolutionary benefits for the biological or the social environments. It doesn’t even provide much help in the purely cognitive environment. But it sure as hell gives a huge kick in the butt in the multiple interactive environments of consciousness.

We don’t just live in the material world, we manipulate it for our own benefit, tastes and comfort. We don’t merely observe, know and understand the world, we engineer it. We don’t just live in societies, we construct them, shape, form, and analyze them. And in the environments of thought we have developed skill in directing, maneuvering, wielding, and knowingly using consciousness.

Reason is a skill of thinking which came out from all the massively diverse worlds of thought interacting in environments of consciousness. Rational thought was the evolutionary result of thinking about thinking.

Reason is kind of the Tyrannosaurus Rex of the universe of mind. But there are other beasties in this environment of consciousness which are strong participants in our ongoing evolution.

Let’s go exploring!