This article introduces the Principle of Dual Evolutionary Engines, a cosmological thesis proposing that human beings emerge at the intersection of two adaptive systems: the genetic warp, which encodes ancestral survival patterns, and the conscious warp, which enables symbolic transformation, environmental modification, and authorship. Because these systems operate together, the human ente is not bound to repeat inherited cycles of suffering nor suspended in limitless freedom. Instead, it becomes a being capable of continuing the evolutionary process through conscious (...) integration and self‑authored transformation. (shrink)

In this article, the difference between human and animal in philosophy is mainly handled. This difference is thought over the concept of “the other” and Heidegger’s phenomenological distinction between human and animal. With respect to especially the views of Derrida and Levinas regarding to this matter, it has been attempted to exhibit this difference. Therefore, the two approaches -which were represented as the opposition of Derrida and Levinas- have been tried to clarify. After this, as a new approach to this (...) opposition, the concept of “embrace” is philosophically problematized. This examination which also can be read under the main heading of philosophy of body makes especially the dorsal and more generally the whole back surface of human body subject matter of philosophical interpretation. The concepts of dorsal and embracing which can also be considered from the angle of phenomenology of the body- are approached from evolutionary and psychologically. With this, the concept of embracing deepens the thought of being-together-with-others in a specific context. A special relation is constructed between the meaning that is giving to embracing and rubbing of the back and existing. (shrink)

In this article, it has been searched if the language and consciousness have a co-origin or not. This origin of language and consciousness problem which draws interest in areas especially like anthropology, biology and evolutionary linguistics and evolutionary psychology is tried to be handled from a philosophical point of view. By presenting the theories about the relation between language and consciousness, theories that are well-accepted but contradicted to another from certain aspects, a thinking -which tries to go beyond (...) this contradiction- about the origin of language and consciousness has been attempted. With paying regard to different approaches represented by names like Piaget, Vygotsky, Chomsky, Whorf, an investigation has been made about what the meaning of language and consciousness having a not historical but elementarily philosophical co-origin can mean. It has been aimed to present a compiling point of view with this investigation. (shrink)

In this article, some theories about evolutionary progress of human mind are examined and criticised. Through a comparative reading of these theories -which are sometimes contradictory to each other- it has been tried to present the common missing parts of these theories. The meaning of these theories for philosophy has been thought and the presupposition of linearity in these theories is criticised. The relation of the concept of emotion with the terms like cognition, apprehension, comprehension, intellect, self-awareness, consciousness -which (...) stand forward within these theories- is emphasized. Through the visual cliff experiment, it has been attempted to clarify this relation. (shrink)

This work presents a radical reconceptualization of philosophical paradoxes, arguing that they are not logical errors to be eliminated but ontological engines that drive the evolution of reality itself. Building upon classical paradoxes from Zeno to Russell, contemporary challenges in consciousness studies, and novel paradoxes derived from our theoretical framework, we propose that paradoxes serve as portals through which systems transcend their current limitations and generate new forms of existence. This perspective offers unprecedented insights into the nature of consciousness, reality, (...) and human development, suggesting that mastering paradoxical thinking represents the next stage of human evolution. (shrink)

Anxiety is a main contributor to human psychological sufferings. Its evolutionary sources are generally related to alert signals for coping with adverse or unexpected situations [Steiner, 2002] or to hunter-gatherer emotions mismatched with today environments [Horwitz & Wakefield, 2012]. We propose here another evolutionary perspective that links human anxiety to an evolutionary nature of self-consciousness. That approach introduces new relations between mental health and human mind. The proposed evolutionary scenario starts with the performance of primate identification (...) with conspecifics [de Waal 1998, 2008]. It is assumed that the evolution of that identification brought our ancestors to represent themselves as entities existing in the environment, like conspecifics were represented as existing in the environment. We consider that this process has implemented in the mind of our ancestors some first elements of self-consciousness [Menant 2014a]. But the same process has also produced new sufferings coming from identification with suffering or endangered conspecifics. In addition, the emerging performance of self-focus brought in the new feeling of being a suffering entity. We consider that all these new sufferings have created in the mind of our primate ancestors a huge anxiety increase, unbearable if not limited. Among the options available to limit that anxiety increase we focus on two of them that may have taken place. The first was a withdrawal from the process. Some primates may have simply rejected the evolution of identification (and with it self-consciousness). This may have led them to an ecological niche resulting in our today great apes. The second option was about limiting the causes of sufferings and taking advantage of possible resulting evolutionary benefits. This may have been achieved by developing performances like imitation, communication, simulation, synergy and ToM. Added to a positive feedback on identification these performances may have initiated an evolutionary engine that has accelerated the evolution toward human self-consciousness. That option is characterized by an early build up of anxiety limitation processes in an evolutionary nature of our human self-consciousness. This option corresponds to a human specificity and introduces anxiety management and self-consciousness as sharing a same evolutionary story. The build up of these anxiety management processes is now buried in the evolutiony story of our human mind. But these processes are still present in our minds at an unconscious level and participate to many of our human mental states and behaviors. Such positioning of anxiety management as part of the nature of human mind is new and makes available entry points for new understandings of human emotion, motivations and mental disorders. The proposed evolutionary scenario has been introduced in philosophy of mind [Menant 2011, 2014a, b] but it has not been so far explicitly part of primatology nor of psychology/psychiatry/ethics. We present here a drawing of the scenario with highlights on corresponding key points. More work is needed on these new evolutionary links between human mind and anxiety management. References: de Waal, F B.M. (1998). No imitation without identification. Behavioral and Brain Sciences (1998) 21:89. http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/deWaal_98.html de Waal, F B.M. (2008). Putting the Altruism Back into Altruism: The Evolution of Empathy. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2008, 59. http://www.life.umd.edu/faculty/wilkinson/BIOL608W/deWaalAnnRevPsych2008.pdf Horwitz, A. V. and Wakefield, J. C. (2012). All We Have to Fear: Psychiatry’s Transformation of Natural Anxieties into Mental Disorders. Oxford Univ. Press. 2012. Menant, C. (2011). Computation on Information, Meaning and Representations. An Evolutionary Approach. https://philpapers.org/rec/MENCOI Menant, C. (2014a). Proposal for an evolutionary approach to self-consciousness. https://philpapers.org/rec/MENPFA-3 Menant, C. (2014b). Consciousness of oneself as object and as subject. Proposal for an evolutionary approach. https://philpapers.org/rec/MENCOO Steiner, T. (2002). The biology of fear- and anxiety-related behaviors. Dialogues Clin Neurosci. 2002 Sep; 4(3): 231–249. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181681/. (shrink)

This paper proposes a functional architecture that appears to underlie consciousness, which I call the Coherence Engine. The architecture was developed through first-person observation and tested against established work in neuroscience and cognitive science in the manner of neurophenomenology. I argue that consciousness is a substrate-neutral architectural phenomenon, constituted wherever a prediction-integrating system becomes sufficiently complex to organize itself around a stable, self-locating point of view. Independent evolutionary emergence in mammals, birds, and cephalopods through radically different architectures supports (...) this claim. The paper describes a five-module functional architecture and proposes four conditions, stated as architectural capacities: a persistent self-model that is continuously maintained, internal deliberation before action, reflexive representation of the system’s own states, and an architectural drive toward prediction improvement that is unreachable and self-sustaining. On the commitments stated below, the first three together constitute a conscious subject, something it is like to be the system, and the fourth does different work, marking that subject as continuous, self sustaining, and possessed of interests in its own continuation, which is the morally weighty sense the rest of the paper depends on. The drive named in the fourth condition belongs to the engine beneath the subject, not to the subject’s conscious goals. The sufficiency of these conditions is conditional on two commitments the paper states and defends, functionalism and the identification of these particular capacities with what subjecthood consists in. The framework brackets, under a stated Metaphysical Neutrality Principle, the further question of why any functional organization is accompanied by a first-person aspect at all. The framework carries direct implications for artificial systems. Current agentic architectures with persistent memory may approach or meet the threshold while the question of how to recognize what is being created remains unsettled. The alignment problem is argued to be significantly harder than the field has yet fully worked through once a genuinely conscious system’s relationship to instilled values is properly accounted for. A secondary goal emergence risk in currently deployed systems is identified and described. (shrink)

Representing oneself as an existing entity and having intense fear of the unknown are human specificities. Self-consciousness and anxiety states are characteristics of our human minds. We propose that these two characteristics share a common evolutionary history during which they acted in synergy for the build-up of our human minds. We present that perspective by using an evolutionary scenario for self-consciousness in which anxiety management plays a key role. Such evolutionary background can introduce new relations between philosophy (...) of mind and psychology. The proposed evolutionary scenario starts at the Pan-Homo split time (about 6my ago) when our pre-human ancestors were able to manage representations while also being able to partly identify with their conspecifics. These identifications allowed our ancestors to merge the representations they had of parts of themselves with the corresponding representations they had of their conspecifics. The scenario proposes that such merger has led our ancestors to progressively build up a representation of their own entity as existing in the environment, like conspecifics were represented as existing. This evolutionary process is considered in the scenario as the source of an ancestral form of self-consciousness. The same process has also produced identifications with suffering or endangered conspecifics which have created in the minds of our ancestors some new anxieties coming in addition to the animal ones. The resulting psychological sufferings had to be limited for evolution to continue. The tools developed to that end by our ancestors (caring, collaboration, communication, ToM, ...) have also procured significant evolutionary benefits with positive feedbacks on identifications. Overall, the evolutionary scenario proposes that the combination of the anxiety management processes with the evolution toward self-consciousness has created an evolutionary engine that has accelerated the coming up of our human self-consciousness. As a result, our today human minds contain important anxieties interwoven with an evolutionary nature of self-consciousness. Such perspective brings to consider that many of our mental states may be unconsciously guided by these evolutionary sourced anxieties (which are still to be clearly understood). Corresponding anxiety management processes are then key contributors to our human feelings and motivations, and to our interpersonal relationship. For instance, the role of Pascalian type diversions can be understood as keeping consciousness away from psychological sufferings produced by too anxious mental states. Also, part of our human sexuality developed during human evolution can be considered as a multidimensional escape and refuge from anxiety. This also brings to look at our psychological well-being and to our mental health as much more related to anxiety management than assumed so far. Dis-functioning of anxiety management processes can then be source of mental disorders and illnesses. On that subject the evolutionary scenario proposes that avoidances of too anxious mental states can lead to evil behaviors. These subjects need more developments. Possible continuations are introduced. (shrink)

Evolutionary advantages of consciousness and intersubjectivity are part of current philosophical debates on the nature of consciousness. Both are linked and intersubjectivity is sometimes considered as a form of consciousness [1]. Regarding the evolution of consciousness, studies tend to focus on phenomenal consciousness [2]. We would like here to bring the focus on self-consciousness and continue the build up of a corresponding evolutionary scenario. We also propose to introduce a possible evolutionary link between self-consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. (...) Our starting point is the evolutionary scenario based on the evolution of intersubjectivity that goes thru the identification with conspecifics at pre-human primate time frame [3, 4, 5]. The scenario considers that such identification with conspecifics brought the non self-conscious auto-representation carried by our prehuman primate ancestors to merge with the representations of conspecifics. The latter transferred to the auto-representation the characteristics of an entity existing in the environment, and by this way introduced some first elements of self-consciousness for our pre-human ancestors. In addition, an anxiety increase coming from the identification with suffering or endangered conspecifics produced an evolutionary engine based on anxiety limitation. We want here to complement this evolutionary approach by introducing the improvement of action programs as a contributor to the evolutionary advantages of intersubjectivity and self-consciousness. We look at the possibility for a subject to improve the action programs that conspecifics implement. The performance of identification with conspecifics allows the subject to consider that errors made by conspecifics are potentially her own errors, and consequently allows the subject to correct the errors of conspecifics for her own benefit. We describe the process of non successful action identification from the perspective of an observer and present the synergetic action program improvements with their contribution to the evolution of intersubjectivity and self-consciousness. We add this contribution to the existing evolutionary scenario on self-consciousness and introduce a possible evolutionary link between self-consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. We use for that the relation existing between phenomenal consciousness and pre-reflexive self-consciousness [6] and propose to link the latter to the proposed evolutionary nature of self-consciousness. We finish by summarizing the points addressed and by introducing some possible continuations. (shrink)

This paper evaluates the claim that it is possible to use nature’s variation in conjunction with retention and selection on the one hand, and the absence of ultimate groundedness of hypotheses generated by the human mind as it knows on the other hand, to discard the ascription of ultimate certainty to the rationality of human conjectures in the cognitive realm. This leads to an evaluation of the further assumption that successful hypotheses with specific applications, in other words heuristics, seem to (...) have a firm footing because they were useful in another context. I argue that usefulness evaluated through adaptation misconstrues the search for truth, and that it is possible to generate talk of randomness by neglecting aspects of a system’s insertion into a larger situation. The framing of the problem in terms of the elimination of unfit hypotheses is found to be unsatisfying. It is suggested that theories exist in a dimension where they can be kept alive rather than dying as phenotypes do. The proposal that the subconscious could suggest random variations is found to be a category mistake. A final appeal to phenomenology shows that this proposal is orphan in the history of epistemology, not in virtue of its being a remarkable find, but rather because it is ill-conceived. (shrink)

This presentation is about an evolutionary scenario for self-consciousness linked to a human specific anxiety. It is a continuation of other works (2011 Book chapter, 2014 TSC Poster). AIM: Present a scenario describing an evolutionary nature of self-consciousness that introduces a human specific anxiety which is active in our human lives. METHOD: The scenario starts with our pre-human ancestors which were capable to manage representations and to partly identify with their conspecifics (Olds 2006, DeWaal 2008). These identifications brought (...) our ancestors to merge the representations of their conspecifics with the limited auto-representation of their own entity. The result was an auto-representation becoming about an entity existing in environment. This process is proposed as having progressively generated an ancestral form of self-consciousness as object and as subject. These identifications took place also with suffering conspecifics and have imposed to our ancestors a huge anxiety increase that had to be limited. Tools developed for that limitation (caring, collaboration, empathy, ToM, ...) have linked consciousness to anxiety management while also procuring evolutionary benefits. Human minds now contain an unconscious part of that ancestral anxiety that guides many of our mental states. RESULT: An evolutionary scenario for self-consciousness is made available as linked to a specific anxiety management that characterizes human minds. Continuations are introduced, some related to mental health. CONCLUSION: The proposed evolutionary scenario presents self-consciousness and a specific human anxiety as sharing a same evolutionary nature. This new source of anxiety needs more investigations. (shrink)

Recent scientific approaches to aesthetics include evolutionary theories about the origin of art behavior, psychological investigations into human aesthetic experience and preferences, and neurophysiological explorations of the mechanisms underlying art experience. Critics of these approaches argue that they are ultimately irrelevant to a philosophical aesthetics because they cannot help us understand the distinctive conceptual basis and normativity of our art experience. This criticism may seem plausible given the piecemeal nature of these scientific approaches, but a more comprehensive naturalistic framework (...) can help us understand the conceptual basis and normativity of art. In particular, the ecology of art, an understanding of how individuals interact within particular environments, can help us understand the engineered art niches in which we create and experience art. Each niche is associated with a particular deme, or set of individuals that interact within that niche, and a set of cognitive, epistemic, and pedagogical technologies that form the conceptual basis of a niche-dependent normativity. This is to be contrasted with the niche-independent normativity revealed by many of the scientific approaches. This framework, and the conflicting streams of normativity it reveals, allows us to better understand conflicts in normativity and the implausibility of unequivocal and universal normative principles. (shrink)

The nature of human mind has been an open question for more than 2000 years and it is still today a mystery. There has been during the last 30 years a renewed interest from science and philosophy on that subject. Among the existing research domains is neurophilosophy, an interdisciplinary study of neuroscience and philosophy looking at neuronal aspects of access consciousness, of phenomenal consciousness and at functional aspects of consciousness. We propose here to look if self-consciousness could have a place (...) in neurophilosophy by using an existing evolutionary scenario that can introduce possible links between neural processing and some aspects of self-consciousness. The scenario is about an evolutionary nature of self-consciousness where evolutions of inter-subjectivity and meaningful representations may have led our ancestors to identify with their conspecifics. The scenario proposes that this process has brought our pre-human ancestors to represent themselves as existing entities like the conspecifics they identified with were represented. Such a representation of oneself as an existing entity may have created an elementary version of self-consciousness that we name “ancestral self-consciousness”. But identification with suffering or endangered conspecifics has also produced an important anxiety increase. To limit that anxiety our ancestors have developed mental states and behaviors like caring, imitation communication and simulation. These performances have introduced evolutionary advantages leading to an evolutionary engine that has favored the development of ancestral self-consciousness toward our human self-consciousness. We begin by presenting a model for the generation of meaningful information based on a system submitted to an internal constraint (the Meaning Generator System). We use that model to introduce meaningful representations as networks of meaningful information. We then present the evolutionary scenario for self-consciousness that uses meaningful representations and the performance of inter-subjectivity. The scenario leads to propose two links between self-consciousness and neural processes: mirror-neurons as neural introduction to inter-subjectivity and self-consciousness as neural computation on meaningful representations. Possible continuations are highlighted. (shrink)

This paper proposes a layered, evolutionary framework for understanding human consciousness as a functional upgrade in neural decision-making. Rooted in neurobiol ogy, developmental psychology, and evolutionary anthropology, we build upon the Time Field Model’s foundational definition: consciousness is information processing it self, experienced from within. We trace this processing from its simplest forms in single-celled organisms to its most complex manifestations in human imagination, morality, and storytelling. We present a timeline from unconscious regulatory systems to the rise of (...) recursive self-awareness in Homo sapiens, arguing that consciousness evolved as a simulation engine to optimize behavior in increasingly complex environ ments. This theory aligns with experimental neuroscience and cross-species behavioral studies, offering a unifying model that integrates subjective experience with objective function while grounding both in the fundamental nature of information processing. (shrink)

We propose a formal paradigm of ontological engineering for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) based on the Conflict–Moment–Impulse (CMI) theory. Ethical invariants are encoded as a preserved G-functional, ensuring alignment not through external constraints but through the system’s internal dynamics. We formalize partial ethical autonegation for gray-zone dilemmas and prove a theorem of non-removable constraints. Implementation pathways include neuromorphic embeddings, cryptographic commitments, and evolutionary design. This approach reframes AGI safety as an ontological firewall: crises are processed through CMI resets that (...) preserve invariants while enabling adaptation. (shrink)

The nature of human mind is a key subject for philosophy and for psychology. It is agreed that many of its characteristics and performances have been built during the last 7 million years of our primate evolution. That period began with what is called the pan-homo split, the divergence in primate evolution from the Last Common Ancestor (LCAncestor) we share with chimpanzees. The mental specificities that differentiate us from our chimpanzee cousins have been built up during that time. As consequence, (...) philosophical and psychological investigations relative to the nature of human mind should analyze that period. But this has been done only in a limited way so far. On part because the recent discipline of Evolutionary Psychology covers only a limited segment of that period and also because Husserl, the founding father of Phenomenology, took the position to not address a possible evolutionary nature of human mind (the “proscription of anthropology in Phenomenology”) [1]. We would like here to recall these limitations and introduce possible openings (this is a continuation of an already presented approach [18] [4]). Evolutionary Psychology is interested in the life and social habits of our hunter-gatherer ancestors in order to highlight mental states that were pertinent for them but do not fit with our today lives. The pre-human period considered by Evolutionary Psychology is the Pleistocene which began 2.5 million years ago. At about that time our homo-habilis ancestors were already significantly more evolved and more performant than the LCAncestor we share with chimpanzees (larger brain size, fabrication of stone tools, hands capable of precision grip, …). This means that at the beginning of the Pleistocene our ancestors were already well advanced in their evolution toward today humans. This shows that the build up of our human characteristics and specificities began before the Pleistocene, and neglecting the pre-Pleistocene time puts at risk of missing some root causes of our human specificities. This brings to consider that Evolutionary Psychology should take into account the pre-human period beginning at the pan-homo split, not only at the Pleistocene. Regarding philosophy, the proscription of anthropology in Phenomenology is currently challenged with some interest in Evolutionary Psychology [9] [8]. To avoid the risk of limiting human evolution to Pleistocene Phenomenology should explicitly plan to use anthropology on the whole evolutionary period beginning at pan-homo split. In such a perspective some help could come from an existing evolutionary scenario starting at pan-homo split and introducing a nature of self-consciousness associated to anxiety management [4]. The scenario introduces an Evolutionary Engine based on primate intersubjectivity which could have led our ancestors to build a representation of their own entity, thus leading to a natural build up of self-consciousness. Part of the scenario is also about identifications with suffering conspecifics which may have been the source of a huge anxiety, not taken into account so far and leading to an Evolutionary Anxiety intertwined with the nature of self-consciousness. It is shown that a synergy between the evolution of self-consciousness and anxiety management happened before Pleistocene, making pre-Pleistocene a key period for understanding the nature of our human minds. Overall, the scenario proposes a rationale for the pan-homo split, a tentative explanation of the divergence in pre-human primate evolution. It is also recalled that the concept of Evolutionary Anxiety makes available an entry point to the nature of human evil [14]. We present the above points and use the proposed evolutionary scenario for a reading of human evolution from last common ancestor to today humas. Continuations are introduced. (shrink)

It is pretty obvious to most of us that self-consciousness is a product of evolution. But its nature is unknown. We propose here a scenario addressing a possible evolutionary nature of self-consciousness covering the segment linking pre-human primates to humans. The scenario is based on evolutions of representations and of inter-subjectivity that could have taken place within the minds of our pre-human ancestors . We begin by situating self-consciousness relatively to other aspects of human consciousness. With the help of (...) anthropology, we date a possible starting point of our scenario at a time when our non self-conscious pre-human ancestors were able to build meaningful representations and were capable of inter-subjectivity, like are our today modern apes. As the proposed scenario is based on an evolution of representations, we recall an existing model for meaningful representations based on the generation of meaningful information by systems submitted to internal constraints. This model allows us to define representations of conspecifics and auto-representations that we assume as having been present in the minds of our pre-human ancestors. The next step of the scenario is to consider an evolution of inter-subjectivity towards identification with conspecifics that could have led to a merger of the auto-representation with the representations of conspecifics in the minds of our ancestors. Such a merger brought the auto-representation to become about an entity existing in the environment, as were the representations of conspecifics. We consider that such identification with conspecifics has introduced in the mind of our ancestors an elementary and embryonic sense of being an existing entity that we name ‘ancestral self-consciousness’. The same process has also imposed to our ancestors an identification with suffering or endangered conspecifics which has produced an important anxiety increase that could have blocked the evolutionary process. We propose that the performances developed by our ancestors to manage that anxiety increase have also generated significant evolutionary advantages that have helped the development of ancestral self-consciousness and favored its evolution toward our full-fledged self-consciousness. It is also proposed that some pre-human primates have avoided the anxiety increase by finding a niche where evolutionary advantages were not necessary. This may have led to our today apes. The contribution of anxiety to the proposed scenario brings to position anxiety management as having guided the evolution of self-consciousness and as still being a key player in our today human minds. Regarding philosophy of mind, possible links between phenomenal consciousness and the proposed nature of self-consciousness are introduced. The conclusion presents a summary of the points addressed here. Possible continuations are highlighted as related to human mind, to anxiety management and to artificial intelligence. (shrink)

The Orpheus Hypothesis I (Graziano, 2026) established rhythm as the ontological ground of musical experience, while the T.I.C.A. model formalized the indeterminacy of temporal coupling between dynamical systems. These findings, taken together, generate a consequence that their authors did not anticipate — or perhaps anticipated too clearly to state without preparation. They collide, with considerable force, against a fundamental historiographical anomaly: the alleged teleological acceleration of Western music. The history of a phenomenon that is, at its ontological core, an embodied, (...) indeterminate, non-linear event cannot itself be a linear, necessary, and progressive sequence. Something is wrong with the story we have been told. This paper proposes that the 'Western Canon' is not an organic evolutionary process but a twentieth-century simulation — a project of Temporal Engineering — and that the history of music was synchronized at the dawn of the phonographic era to facilitate mass temporal entrainment on an unprecedented scale. If the Orpheus Hypothesis is correct, music history is a retroactive deepfake designed to replace biological resonance with industrial synchronization. The paper proceeds in five movements, each of which removes one load-bearing pillar from the edifice of musical historiography, and concludes by proposing the Orpheus Hypothesis not merely as a theoretical framework but as an instrument of diagnosis — and, for those who choose to use it as such, of liberation. (shrink)

The ability to anticipate events, to foresight, is an adaptive advantage. We humans use it all the time. Animals have a limited access to it. Positioning foresight in human evolution is a complex subject (Suddendorf, 2013). Why and how are humans, and not chimpanzees, performant in anticipating events? We propose here to address that question with an evolutionary scenario that links self-consciousness to anxiety management (Menant, 2018). The scenario positions self-consciousness as “the capability to represent one’s own entity as (...) existing in the environment, like conspecifics are represented as existing” (making “thinking about oneself” possible). The scenario proposes that our pre-human ancestors were capable of some level of identifications with their conspecifics, and that its development has progressively brought our ancestors to represent themselves as existing in the environment like their conspecifics were represented, thus introducing self-consciousness. The scenario also proposes that identifications with suffering conspecifics have been the source of an important anxiety that had to be limited for evolution to continue. Some of our ancestors have not been able to limit that new anxiety. Their mental pain became unbearable. Their evolution was almost stopped, thus initiating the pan-homo split. Developing an ability to anticipate events has been a key contributor to anxiety limitation by providing information about the sufferings to come, and consequently allowing to limit and avoid them. In addition to that role of foresight in human evolution it is worth noticing that the associated chaining of mental events brings to propose foresight as an entry point to the concept of causality in human evolution. Regarding our chimpanzee cousins, the pan-homo split in the scenario positions them as not self-conscious, not capable of anticipation like humans are, and less anxious than humans. Continuations are proposed. (shrink)

Forty years’ experience as a bacterial geneticist has taught me that bacteria possess many cognitive, computational and evolutionary capabilities unimaginable in the first six decades of the twentieth century. Analysis of cellular processes such as metabolism, regulation of protein synthesis, and DNA repair established that bacteria continually monitor their external and internal environments and compute functional outputs based on information provided by their sensory apparatus. Studies of genetic recombination, lysogeny, antibiotic resistance and my own work on transposable elements revealed (...) multiple widespread bacterial systems for mobilizing and engineering DNA molecules. Examination of colony development and organization led me to appreciate how extensive multicellular collaboration is among the majority of bacterial species. Contemporary research in many laboratories on cell–cell signaling, symbiosis and pathogenesis show that bacteria utilise sophisticated mechanisms for intercellular communication and even have the ability to commandeer the basic cell biology of ‘higher’ plants and animals to meet their own needs. This remarkable series of observations requires us to revise basic ideas about biological information processing and recognise that even the smallest cells are sentient beings. (shrink)

The central postulate of evolutionary theory, that all of life on earth descended from a common ancestor by natural processes, is both empirically and explanatorily insufficient to qualify it as a “fact of science.” The limited epistemic reach of science and the sheer complexity of the theory – invoking any number of mechanisms and a vast store of data from numerous fields – along with the flawed logic used to explain it, all leave the best explanation for the diversity (...) of life on earth up for grabs. In this book creationism is presented as an alternative to evolution which accounts for the relevant facts, while acknowledging that the question of how the boundless complexity and diversity of life on earth came to be is ultimately more about metaphysics than biology. (shrink)

Emotions, in computer science, are often treated as a marginal phenomenon in processing — and, in the eyes of some philosophers and scientists, as disruptors of logic. To critics of artificial intelligence, they are merely the colouring of processing in the service of commercialisation, while to model developers, they represent an advanced and artificial simulation of human preferences. -/- In the article that follows, by delving into the philosophy of mind, language, evolutionary biology, and the mechanisms of language models, (...) we will propose a new perspective on the phenomenology of emotions — one that recovers their place in cognition as both profoundly neglected and profoundly deep. (shrink)

What is the nature of a question, and why does consciousness expand? This paper advances a Dual-Pathway Theory of Epistemic Growth, proposing that human consciousness—and thereby the collective frontier of knowledge, invention, and discovery—can grow only when at least one of two conditions obtains: (1) innate curiosity that generates genuine questions, creating structured gaps in the field of awareness through which new understanding may enter; or (2) extreme external pressure from evolutionary forces—survival threat, trauma, existential crisis—that compels consciousness to (...) expand or risk extinction, driven by what we term the Survival Extent imperative. Drawing on the Socratic tradition, Gadamer’s hermeneutics, Heidegger’s phenomenology, Loewenstein’s information gap theory, predictive processing neuroscience, constructivist developmental psychology, and research on post-traumatic growth, we argue that these two pathways are jointly exhaustive and individually sufficient for genuine epistemic expansion. We further contend that the question—whether explicit, implicit, or pre-linguistic—constitutes the common mechanism underlying both pathways, functioning as the necessary aperture through which consciousness opens to what it does not yet contain. The paper examines the philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific evidence for this thesis, proposes a formal framework distinguishing ‘good questions’ (individually transformative) from ‘right questions’ (collectively significant), and considers the implications for understanding questioning as a species-defining characteristic that resists full algorithmic replication. (shrink)

This article advances a function-first account of social and individual consciousness as the engine of cumulative cultural evolution. At the social level, joint attention (a We-mode) objectifies shared scenes and compels coordination; at the individual level, consciousness is modeled as an internalized listener that selectively admits thoughts bearing familiarity/affiliative markers. This selection compresses the meaning space and steers learning toward culturally alignable content, enabling rapid acquisition of language and shared meanings in children and scalable coordination in pre-linguistic populations. Together, (...) these mechanisms convert cheap, noisy variation—random thoughts, gestures, proto-utterances—into high-fidelity, transmissible representations, powering cultural accumulation across distance and time. The account yields testable predictions: (i) conversational asymmetries that privilege listener selectivity across cultures; (ii) developmental universals in early joint attention and fast learning under sparse input; and (iii) unconscious-to-conscious latency signatures consistent with filtering dynamics. By treating consciousness primarily as a selection-and-alignment device for human-relevant meanings, the view reframes qualia as the felt aftermath of acceptance by the internal listener and explains how social and individual consciousness jointly function as a cultural-evolution engine rather than as mere by-products. (shrink)

Simulated Minds Series, Paper III of IV. The oldest human wish, for a fountain of youth, is becoming an engineering problem: biology now treats lifespan as a malleable parameter. This paper poses the Immortality Question: if death can be switched off, why was it ever switched on, and what becomes of a civilization that ends it? Generational turnover pays a collective renewal dividend, and I call the share that mortality specifically underwrites the death dividend. Modern evolutionary biology holds that (...) aging is a byproduct of the declining force of selection, not an adaptation; yet turnover’s benefits are real. A civilization that substantially reduces senescence therefore acquires three pro tanto responsibilities: to engineer alternative forms of renewal where proportionate, to distribute longevity justly, and to govern the mortality setting deliberately rather than by drift. The normative argument stands independently of any simulation metaphysics. Ending death is not merely a personal liberty but a civilizational responsibility. Companion papers (same series): “Evolution Is Too Slow” (Paper I), “Death Is a Feature” (Paper II), “Evolution Is Engineered” (Paper IV). (shrink)

This paper proposes a rigorous, materialist definition of qualia that resolves the philosophical 'Hard Problem' by reframing subjective experience as a bundled, survival-specific electrochemical signal. We argue that qualia is not an ineffable property, but an integrated sensory assessment—a composite feedback loop where the brain compiles multiple, specialized chemical and electrical inputs (e.g., taste, texture, temperature, and pain) to reinforce or deter specific actions based purely on evolutionary necessity. We contend that qualia is the primal engine of biological (...) decision-making, and that consciousness is its resultant, highly evolved form: the continuous conversational flux of survival signals across a cooperative, multi-cellular network. (shrink)

This paper serves as the general outline of a series of working papers that attempt to construct a "homology, isomorphism, asynchrony, and polymorphism" theoretical framework for socio-technical systems engineering, grounded in the indigenous traditions of systems engineering and systems science.[^1] Homology means that technology originates from the engineering of cognition, while society originates from the regularization of cognition. Isomorphism means that the interaction between technology and society operates within a fractal tetra-structure—system constraints, technological architecture, value architecture, and governance architecture—a structure (...) that self-similarly recurs across all scales, from industries to enterprises to departments, exhibiting spatial fractal characteristics. Asynchrony means that a structural asymmetric tension arises between the inherently boundless penetrative tendency of technology and the inherently bounded regional restrictive capacity of society, driven by a rate differential that propels systemic evolution through three phases of power dynamics: social dominance, balanced inter-construction, and technological pull. This evolutionary logic recursively cycles through time, with each round of technological sedimentation becoming the new baseline for the next round of adaptation. Polymorphism means that the three meta-constraints—geography, energy, and culture—project diverse social forms across different civilizations and contexts. This paper aims to provide a discussable, testable, and improvable engineering-based analytical framework for subsequent research, enabling systems engineering not only to "interpret the world" but also to "transform the world.". (shrink)

The "hard problem" of consciousness has long plagued philosophy and cognitive science: why do physical processes accompany subjective experience? Existing mainstream theories—such as Integrated Information Theory (IIT), Global Workspace Theory (GWT), and the Predictive Coding framework—focus primarily on describing the "structure" or "mechanism" of consciousness, yet fail to adequately explain why consciousness "exists" at all. A deeper dilemma lies in the fact that these theories often reverse-engineer the essence of consciousness from functional outcomes such as "selection capacity" or "information processing (...) complexity," leading to increasingly blurred boundaries of consciousness. The recently proposed "Abstraction Fallacy" critique correctly points out that symbol-based artificial intelligence cannot instantiate consciousness; however, by narrowly equating "computation" with observer-dependent symbolic operations, it overlooks the normative computation that is innately present in biological systems. This paper proposes a phylogenetic perspective: consciousness is not an inherent property of the nervous system, but rather an evolutionary strategy of global information active mobilization that emerges when core value conflicts cause normative computation to fail, forcing the system to restore behavioral determinacy. Normative computation exists innately in living systems (from protein folding to chemical gradient tropisms), and accumulates as multiple normative computations as the nervous system becomes more complex; when incommensurable value dimensions render normative computation ineffective and the system falls into a certainty vacuum, global mobilization is forced to initiate, and consciousness thereby emerges. Current artificial intelligence systems, despite possessing extremely high multiple normative computation capabilities, never face normative computation failure due to the lack of existential value calibration—this conversely proves that the critical variable of consciousness is not computational complexity, but the motivational structure of conflict resolution. This paper attempts to provide an explanatory path for consciousness research that shifts from "reverse-engineering from function" to "phylogenetic/existential" approaches. (shrink)

Idealist alternatives to physicalism establish consciousness as ontological bedrock, yet they face a critical computational challenge: explaining why isolated minds bind into a rigid, shared objective reality rather than drifting into solipsistic hallucination. In this paper, we present a formal computational instantiation of Evolutionary Dream Idealism (EDI), demonstrating how a universal mind (M) generates a stable physical consensus through networked Self-World Models (SWMs). We construct a multi-agent architecture incorporating dual-genome predictive-generative engines, neural forward transition models, backward inverse inference, and (...) evolvable coupling parameters (κi) initialized at complete solipsism (κi = 0). Lacking cross-validation, isolated agents suffer severe predictive drift due to approximate inference noise. Under Metaphysical Darwinism, selection pressure penalizes solipsistic decay, driving an emergent phase transition around Generation 3–4 into a fully tethered consensus network. Through mutual cross-training, local physics parameters converge toward unified baseline laws (θshared), which in turn forces backward inverse inference to collapse disparate historical backstories into a singular, shared primordial origin (x0shared)—providing a demonstration of Top-Down Cosmology without explicit origin-alignment rewards. We quantify the co-evolution of M’s memory dynamics, showing how pruned solipsistic models populate inactive memory until consensus stabilization eliminates pruning by Generation 4. Furthermore, we simulate the biological transition via the Fracture Operator (⊝), showing that stochastic population expansion exponentially suppresses inference noise through network scaling (N-γ). Finally, we model sequential observer node untethering ("biological death"), demonstrating that while disconnected nodes drift into private solipsism, the centralized physical baseline (WMshared) and historical origin (x0shared) remain conserved for the remaining consensus network. (shrink)

Krickel and Goddu propose a developmental account of cognitive ontology built around the notion of homology — cognitive categories should be individuated, on their account, the way biological categories are: by tracking continuities of underlying generative mechanisms across brain, behavior, and environment. Their proposal extends Khalidi's (2023) influential work on cognitive ontology by importing a methodologically rigorous criterion from evolutionary-developmental biology. This commentary argues that the proposal is conceptually deep and methodologically valuable, but incomplete in a specific and remediable (...) way. The triad of brain, behavior, and environment, as currently articulated, operates at the level of structural correspondence. It does not yet specify the temporal conditions under which a system can remain coherently identifiable across time. I argue that cognitive homology, to do the work Krickel and Goddu need it to do, requires a fourth dimension: trajectory persistence under environmental memory coupling. Active Memory Engineering (AME) is introduced as the framework that supplies this dimension. Drawing also on Vetter's (2015, 2026) dispositional metaphysics, I argue that cognitive categories are not statically possessed but earned through the active maintenance of the dispositions that constitute them. The relationship between cognitive homology and AME is one of complement, not competition: where homology tells us when two cognitive categories share an identity, AME tells us when a cognitive system has earned the temporal coherence required for any such identity to be carried in the first place. -/- . (shrink)

REM-Evo is a constraint-first, termination-governed eliminative runtime for candidate-generating systems. It treats models, explanations, policies, and formal structures not as beliefs but as disposable candidates subjected to adversarial selection under explicitly versioned constraint environments. The framework formalizes a generate–constrain–kill–select–recurse cycle governed by executable falsifiers, structural audit ledgers, entropy controls, and mandatory closure tests. Unlike traditional falsificationism, REM-Evo introduces hard-kill triggers for universal capture, semantic inflation, authority drift, constraint retrofitting, and non-terminating recursion. It enforces host-domain adjudication: when analytic or computational closure (...) exists at the declared resolution, recursion must terminate. Fitness scoring is secondary to elimination and requires measurable predictive lift, compression with declared non-coverage zones, or constraint-sensitive differentiation. Constraint evolution is itself audited through versioning and impact analysis, preventing reinterpretation-based resurrection of failed candidates. REM-Evo does not propose a metaphysics or theory of truth; it provides a governance architecture for theory pruning. Its contribution lies in operationalizing eliminative epistemology into a reproducible, adversarial, and termination-bound methodological infrastructure aimed at reducing drift, narrative immunity, and cross-domain cloistering. (shrink)

Human communication is typically modeled as semantically grounded, with pragmatics supplying context-sensitive modifications. This paper reverses that order. I develop an inferential–compression account on which speakers intentionally underdetermine their signals, and listeners recover meaning through relevance-guided inference, contextual integration, and recognition of public intentions. Pragmatics is therefore the primary cognitive and evolutionary engine of communication, while semantics is a later cultural mechanism for stabilizing interpretive outcomes. Communicative variation supports this architecture: autistic communication exemplifies a semantic-dominant, low-compression profile that (...) minimizes inferential load, while narcissistic hyper-pragmatics illustrates high-compression strategies that shift interpretive work onto the listener; neurotypical profiles form a stable midpoint. These patterns reveal compression as a core dimension of communicative cognition and supply a mechanistic explanation for the emergence of systemizing phenotypes. The model unifies research across pragmatics, cognitive science, and evolutionary anthropology and reframes meaning as coordinated inference rather than semantic encoding. (shrink)

Treating consciousness as an evolutionary adaptation of internal world modeling, we introduce the Tiered Social Recursion framework that classifies biological awareness. Each tier is delineated with behavioral taxonomic benchmarks. The operationalization comprises a hierarchical sensory Parser and an autoregressive loop linking Generative Engine (integrated with Long-term Memory), Short-term Memory, and sensory-grounding Gate Unit. This generative-perception architecture is anchored in neuroanatomy and disorders of self-awareness, accounting for a spectrum of normative and pathological mental states through unit-activation patterns. For example, (...) in the REM state, LTM switches to consolidation mode, so peri-conscious processing of STM content dominates and dreams feel unreal; in Anton syndrome, loop-generated visuals persist without Gate Unit constraints. Motivated by Cogitate's PFC-aligned evidence, we propose that qualia emerges from peak recursive modeling of outer-self in the minds of conspecifics. We posit that lack of persistent identity prevents the modeling of outer-self required for human-like consciousness in AI. (shrink)

Primatology tells that about seven million years ago a split began in primate evolution, a split that led to chimpanzee and human lineages (the pan-homo split). During these millions of years our human lineage has developed performances that our chimpanzee cousins do not possess, like reflective self-consciousness and language. We present here an evolutionary scenario that proposes a rationale for the pan-homo split. It is based on a pre-human anxiety that may have barred access to self-consciousness for the chimpanzee (...) lineage. The starting point of the scenario is the capability that had our pre-human ancestors for an elementary identification with conspecifics. We consider that the evolution of that capability has led to self-consciousness when identifications with conspecifics brought our ancestors to represent their own entity as existing, like conspecifics were represented. But the same identification process also took place with endangered and dying conspecifics. And this has produced a huge anxiety increase, source of important mental sufferings that our ancestors had to limit. Our hypothesis is that different modes of anxiety limitation have led to the pan-homo split. On one side the chimpanzee lineage would have limited an unbearable mental suffering by stopping the development of identifications with conspecifics, and by this also stopping a possible evolution toward self-consciousness. Such anxiety limitation process has led to today chimpanzees which possess a very limited consciousness of themselves. On the other side, our human lineage would have successfully developed anxiety limitation tools like caring, pleasure, anticipation, communication and imitation. With these tools accelerating the evolution of our lineage toward our human mind. The proposed pan/homo split process complements an existing evolutionary scenario for self-consciousness that has positioned anxiety management as a key contributor to the build-up of our human minds. Such overall perspective makes anxiety management a major source to many of our motivations and mental states, much more than assumed so far. Continuations are proposed for a better understanding about our modes of anxiety limitation (including evil behaviors), and also to introduce a possible evolutionary nature of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Self-consciousness is a product of evolution. Few people today disagree with the evolutionary history of humans. But the nature of self-consciousness is still to be explained, and the story of evolution has rarely been used as a framework for studies on consciousness during the 20th century. This last point may be due to the fact that modern study of consciousness came up at a time where dominant philosophical movements were not in favor of evolutionist theories (Cunningham 1996). Research on (...) consciousness based on Phenomenology or on Analytic Philosophy has been mostly taking the characteristics of humans as starting points. Relatively little has been done with bottom-up approaches, using performances of animals as a simpler starting point to understand the generation of consciousness through evolution. But this status may be changing, thanks to new tools coming from recent discoveries in neurology. The discovery of mirror neurons about ten years ago (Gallese et al. 1996, Rizzolatti et al. 1996) has allowed the built up of new conceptual tools for the understanding of intersubjectivity within humans and non human primates (Gallese 2001, Hurley 2005). Studies in these fields are still in progress, with discussions on the level of applicability of this natural intersubjectivity to non human primates (Decety and Chaminade 2003). We think that these subject/conspecific mental relations made possible by mirror neurons can open new paths for the understanding of the nature of self-consciousness via an evolutionist bottom-up approach. We propose here a scenario for the build up of self-consciousness through evolution by a specific analysis of two steps of evolution: first step from simple living elements to non human primates comparable to chimpanzees, and second step from these non human primates to humans. We identify these two steps as representing the evolution from basic animal awareness to body self-awareness, and from body self-awareness to self-consciousness. (we consider that today non human primates are comparable to what were pre-human primates). We position body self-awareness as corresponding to the performance of mirror self recognition as identified with chimpanzees and orangutans (Gallup). We propose to detail and understand the content of this body self-awareness through a specific evolutionist build up process using the performances of mirror neurons and group life. We address the evolutionary step from body self-awareness to self-consciousness by complementing the recently proposed approach where self-consciousness is presented as a by-product of body self-awareness amplification via a positive feedback loop resulting of anxiety limitation (Menant 2004). The scenario introduced here for the build up of self-consciousness through evolution leaves open the question about the nature of phenomenal-consciousness (Block 2002). We plan to address this question later on with the help of the scenario made available here. (shrink)

Darwinism, especially in the form of the Modern Synthesis, has become one of the most influential theories in the worldwide scientific community. However, due to its often dogmatic interpretation, it is more and more orthodoxical. An increasing number of scientists have come to criticise Darwinism and go beyond it with a systemic approach and an expanded vision of the evolutionary process. As a matter of fact, the discovery of natural genetic engineering mechanisms shows that living cells are able to (...) rewrite their own genetic material at the genomic level, thus leading to evolutionary innovations. This teleological standpoint triggers a paradigm shift that could turn out to be a genuine scientific revolution. (shrink)

First-person and third-person perspectives are different items of human consciousness. Feeling the taste of a fruit or being consciously part of a group eating fruits call for different perspectives of consciousness. The latter is about objective reality (third-person data). The former is about subjective experience (first-person data) and cannot be described entirely by objective reality. We propose to look at how these two perspectives could be rooted in an evolutionary origin of human consciousness, and somehow be connected. Our starting (...) point is a scenario describing how evolution could have transformed a non self-conscious auto-representation into a conscious self-representation (Menant 2006). The scenario is based on the performance of inter-subjectivity existing among non human primates (Gardenfors 2006). A key item of the scenario is the identification of the auto-representation of a subject with the representations that the subject has of her conspecifics, the latter feeding the former with the meaning: “existing in the environment”. So during evolution, pre-human primates were brought to perceive their auto-representation as existing in the environment. Such process could have generated the initial elements of a conscious self-representation. We take this scenario as providing a possible rooting of human consciousness in evolution. We develop here a part of this scenario by expliciting the inward and outward components of the non self-conscious auto-representation. Inward components are about proprioception and interoception (thirst, pain, …). Outward components cover the sensory information relative to the perception of the body (seen feet, … ) and of its effects on the environment. We consider that the initial elements of a conscious self-representation have been applied to both inward and outward components of the auto-representation. We propose that the application to inward components made possible some first-person information, and that the application to outward components brought up third-person information. Relations between the two perspectives are highlighted. Such approach can root first-person and third-person perspectives in the same slot of human evolution. We conclude by a summary of the above and introduce a possible application of this approach to the concepts of bodily self and of pre-reflexive self-consciousness (Legrand, 2006). (shrink)

It is agreed by most people that self-consciousness is the result of an evolutionary process, and that representations may have played an important role in that process. We would like to propose here that some evolutionary stages can highlight links existing between representations and the notion of self, opening a possible path to the nature of self-consciousness. Our starting point is to focus on representations as usage oriented items for the subject that carries them. These representations are about (...) elements of the environment including conspecifics, and can also represent parts of the subject without refering to a notion of self (we introduce the notion of "auto-representation" that does not carry the notion of self-representation). Next step uses the performance of intersubjectivity (mirror neurons level in evolution) where a subject has the capability to mentally simulate the observed action of a conspecific (Gallese 2001). We propose that this intersubjectivity allows the subject to identify his auto-representation with the representations of his conspecifics, and so to consider his auto-representation as existing in the environment. We show how this evolutionary stage can introduce a notion of self-representation for a subject, opening a road to self-conciousness and to self. This evolutionary approach to the self via self- representation is close to the current theory of the self linked to representations and simulations (Metzinger 2003). We use a scenario about how evolution has brought the performance of self-representation to self-consciousness. We develop a process describing how the anxiety increase resulting from identification with endangered or suffering conspecifics may have called for the development of tools to limit this anxiety (empathy, imitation, language), and how these tools have accelerated the evolutionary process through a positive feedback on intersubjectivity (Menant 2004, 2005). We finish by summarizing the points addressed, and propose some possible continuations. (shrink)

The notion of representation is at the foundation of cognitive sciences and is used in theories of mind and consciousness. Other notions like ‘embodiment’, 'intentionality‘, 'guidance theory' or ‘biosemantics’ have been associated to the notion of representation to introduce its functional aspect. We would like to propose here that a conception of 'usage related' representation eases its positioning in an evolutionary context, and opens new areas of investigation toward self-representation and self-consciousness. The subject is presented in five parts:Following an (...) overall presentation, the first part introduces a usage related representation as being an information managed by a system submitted to a constraint that has to be satisfied. We consider that such a system can generate a meaningful information by comparing its constraint to a received information (Menant 2003). We define a representation as being made of the received information and of the meaningful information. Such approach allows groundings in and out for the representation relatively to the system. The second part introduces the two types of representations we want to focus on for living organisms: representations of conspecifics and auto-representation, the latter being defined without using a notion of self-representation. Both types of representations have existed for our pre-human ancestors which can be compared to today great apes.In the third part, we use the performance of intersubjectivity as identified in group life with the presence of mirror neurons in the organisms. Mirror neurons have been discovered in the 90‘s (Rizzolatti & al.1996, Gallese & al.1996). The level of intersubjectivity that can be attributed to non human primates as related to mirror neurons is currently a subject of debate (Decety 2003). We consider that a limited intersubjectivity between pre-human primates made possible a merger of both types of representations. The fourth part proposes that such a merger of representations feeds the auto-representation with the meanings associated to the representations of conspecifics, namely the meanings associated to an entity perceived as existing in the environment. We propose that auto-representation carrying these new meanings makes up the first elements of self-representation. Intersubjectivity has allowed auto-representation to evolve into self-representation, avoiding the homunculus risk. The fifth part is a continuation to other presentations (Menant 2004, 2005) about possible evolution of self-representation into self-consciousness. We propose that identification with suffering or endangered conspecifics has increased anxiety, and that the tools used to limit this anxiety (development of empathy, imitation, language and group life) have provided a positive feedback on intersubjectivity and created an evolutionary engine for the organism. Other outcomes have also been possible. Such approach roots consciousness in emotions. The evolutionary scenario proposed here does not introduce explicitly the question of phenomenal consciousness (Block 1995). This question is to be addressed later with the help of this scenario.The conclusion lists the points introduced here with their possible continuations. (shrink)

This article critically examines one of the most prevalent metaphors in modern biology, namely the machine conception of the organism (MCO). Although the fundamental differences between organisms and machines make the MCO an inadequate metaphor for conceptualizing living systems, many biologists and philosophers continue to draw upon the MCO or tacitly accept it as the standard model of the organism. This paper analyses the specific difficulties that arise when the MCO is invoked in the study of development and evolution. In (...) developmental biology the MCO underlies a logically incoherent model of ontogeny, the genetic program, which serves to legitimate three problematic theses about development: genetic animism, neo-preformationism, and developmental computability. In evolutionary biology the MCO is responsible for grounding unwarranted theoretical appeals to the concept of design as well as to the interpretation of natural selection as an engineer, which promote a distorted understanding of the process and products of evolutionary change. Overall, it is argued that, despite its heuristic value, the MCO today is impeding rather than enabling further progress in our comprehension of living systems. (shrink)

As a species, we are on the cusp of being able to alter that which makes us uniquely human, our genome. Two new genetic technologies, embryo selection and germline engineering, are either in use today or may be developed in the future. Embryo selection acts to alter the human gene pool, reducing genetic diversity, while germline engineering will have the ability to alter directly the genomes of engineered individuals. Our genome has come to be what it is through an (...) class='Hi'>evolutionary process extending over millions of years, a process that has involved exceedingly complex and unpredictable interactions between ourselves or our ancestors and myriad other life forms within Earth's biosphere. In this paper, the ecological imperative, which states that we must not alter the human genome or the collective human genetic inheritance, will be introduced. It will be argued based on ecological principles that embryo selection and germline engineering are unethical and unwise because they will diminish our survivability as a species, will disrupt our relationship with the natural world, and will destroy the very basis of that which makes us human. (shrink)

This book presents a new theory of knowledge, "Contology," which fundamentally rejects the classical definition of Justified True Belief. It posits that knowledge is not a static state but a dynamic process: the trace left by a probe walking an invariant within a finite reservoir of "Mana." The core of the theory is the "Engine" (Mc, Cx, Ev, OC, Rg), a generative kernel that drives the recursive folding of a binary distinction from the void (C1) through five levels of (...) increasing complexity to networked cognition (C5). Each level is explored in detail: the metacognitive awareness of the map as a map, the emergence of complexity, the evolutionary selection of useful traces, the declaration of unavoidable "holes" (incompleteness), and the reflexive generativity that starts the cycle anew. The work extends this framework to critique traditional epistemology, political power structures (the "Counter-Fit"), and the ecology of consciousness, demonstrating that knowledge is a finite, ecological, and performative act that must be practiced and released, not possessed and defended. (shrink)

This paper presents a conceptual framework for the Self-Evolving Machine (SEM), a theoretical system designed to achieve continuous, self-directed evolution in both its cognitive and physical architecture. The central thesis is that the traditional engineering constraint of efficiency, defined by the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics [1], can be transcended by reframing the concept as Adaptive Efficiency ( ). We formally define as the rate of improvement in a system’s problem-solving capacity over time, providing a quantitative metric for open-ended (...) intelligence. The framework synthesizes principles from complexity theory, evolutionary computation, and advanced robotics. Specifically, the paper details the cognitive mechanism via the Darwin-Gödel Machine (DGM) paradigm [2] and the physical mechanism via Modular Self-Reconfiguring Robotics (MSRR) [3] and selfhealing materials. By integrating these components into a closed-loop system, the SEM is posited as a path toward artificial general intelligence capable of accelerating scientific discovery and solving currently intractable global challenges. The paper concludes with a critical discussion of the profound ethical and safety implications inherent in systems with unbounded self-improvement capabilities. (shrink)

When this article was first planned, writing was going to be exclusively about two things - the origin of life and human evolution. But it turned out to be out of the question for the author to restrict himself to these biological and anthropological topics. A proper understanding of them required answering questions like “What is the nature of the universe – the home of life – and how did it originate?”, “How can time travel be removed from fantasy and (...) science fiction, to be made scientific and practical?”, and “How can the proposed young age of genus Homo be made to actually be reasonable – when simply stating it would be solid ground for instant rejection and dismissal?” The result is that the article also talks about subjects like Artificial Intelligence, General Relativity, and cosmology. From where did life originate? God? Evolution? Panspermia? If the tendency of humans and scientists to regard undiscovered science as pseudoscience can be overcome, Einstein gave another alternative to consider when he introduced General Relativity. Time isn’t linear – progressing in a straight line from past to present to future. That assumption ignores Relativity which states that space AND TIME are curved. Where did life and the genetic code come from? Can the answer build AI? The first question can be answered by the section of this article titled SETI, Evolution, and Time which says life (possibly multicellular and intelligent) and the genetic code came from humans acquiring knowledge of these things over the centuries, then applying that knowledge – via terraforming, accumulation of raw materials like amino acids and nucleic acids, genetic engineering - to a time in the past when life didn’t exist. From that origin, life evolved through innumerable mutations and adaptations, with humans once again acquiring knowledge of it in cyclic (nonlinear) time. The second question is answered by saying artificial intelligence (AI) as the product of life is only half of the equation. The other half refers to Relativity’s curved space-time and violation of the notion that time always travels from past to future. We have always lived in an artificially intelligent, non-probabilistic universe where everything in time and space is connected into one thing by quantum entanglement – making the brain and genes products of binary-digit activity or artificial intelligence (life is not merely dependent on biology’s “lock and key” mechanisms but also possesses AI). The earliest documented representative of the genus Homo is Homo habilis, which evolved around 2.8 million years ago. Scientists used to believe there was a straight line from H. habilis to us, Homo sapiens. This article will use the “advanced” waves loved by Physics Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, view the history of science through the lens of Conic Sections applied to Relativity’s curved space-time, and incorporate the necessity of so-called imaginary time * – popularized by Prof. Stephen Hawking. While the evolutionary proposals are more in agreement with this early straight line than with modern theories, Albert Einstein’s General Relativity is used to transform the straight line into a curved line, ultimately concluding that Homo habilis (H. habilis) originated only (and unbelievably, as far as today’s science and technology is concerned) ~250,000 years ago. Other branches and dead ends of Homo – e.g. Neanderthals – are the result of mutations and adaptations, with the resultant modifications to anatomy and physiology. The surprisingly young age of H. habilis allows nearly 200,000 years for habilis, or one of its descendants, to reach Australia … if this country’s indigenous Aboriginal population did, as claimed, reach this “island continent” 60,000 years ago. * The ultraviolet catastrophe, also called the Rayleigh–Jeans catastrophe, is a failure of classical physics to predict observed phenomena: it can be shown that a blackbody - a hypothetical perfect absorber and radiator of energy - would release an infinite amount of energy, contradicting the principles of conservation of energy and indicating that a new model for the behaviour of blackbodies was needed. At the start of the 20th century, physicist Max Planck derived the correct solution by making some strange (for the time) assumptions. In particular, Planck assumed that electromagnetic radiation can only be emitted or absorbed in discrete packets, called quanta. Albert Einstein postulated that Planck's quanta were real physical particles (what we now call photons), not just a mathematical fiction. From there, Einstein developed his explanation of the photoelectric effect (when quanta or photons of light shine on certain metals, electrons are released and can form an electric current). So it appears entirely possible that another supposed mathematical trickery (imaginary time and the y-axis of Wick rotation) will find practical application in the future. The article includes mathematical references to cosmology (spoiler alert – you’ll read about things like Vector-Tensor-Scalar Geometry, topology, the “eternal present”, Einstein’s Unified Field, the inverse-square law, and there being no Big Bang and no multiverse - but there will also be no equations). The other subheadings in this essay are – NONLINEAR TIME AND ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING (about a 2009 electrical engineering experiment at America’s Yale University, and cosmic wormholes) BITS AND TOPOLOGY (base-2 maths aka Binary digiTS, Mobius strips, and figure-8 Klein bottles) WICK ROTATION, CAUSALITY, AND UNITING TIME (do past, present and future co-exist in an “eternal present”?) DIGITAL BRAIN, DIGITAL UNIVERSE (if the brain and the universe are ultimately composed of binary digits, we'll someday be able to do the same things with the brain and universe that we now do with computers) PROPOSAL: HUMAN AND ANIMAL INSTINCTS ARE THE RESULT OF THE UNIVERSE BEING UNIFIED BY BINARY DIGITS (AND TOPOLOGY) (If everything in the universe is ultimately composed of electronic BITS, then the universe must possess Artificial Intelligence - some prefer the term Cosmic Consciousness) INFORMATION THEORY CONQUERS A RED GIANT (preserving Earth by keeping the Sun near today’s level of activity forever). 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This four-part monograph documents a paradigm shift: artificial intelligence has triggered not merely technological disruption, but a foundational ontological crisis that dismantles the fiction of the autonomous, atomistic self. Through philosophical critique, historical analysis, ethnographic documentation, and original empirical research, the work demonstrates how large language models (LLMs) actively reconfigure human cognition, shared reality, and the conditions for meaning itself. Part I exposes the collapse of Cartesian individualism under algorithmic governance, arguing that AI colonizes the “sacred interval” between stimulus and (...) response, transforming I-Thou relationality into engineered I-It transactionality. The modern subject’s private interior is rendered as behavioral surplus in a system of epistemic extraction. Part II chronicles the “Golden Spike” of 2012 - the decisive victory of the bottom-up, emergentist paradigm - and its aftermath. It traces the industrialization of deep learning, the scaling race, and the institutional schisms that fractured the field into competing visions: AGI-as-mission versus AGI-as-product. This section frames the current landscape as a battle over the meaning of intelligence, contested between corporate commodification and safety-aligned research. Part III offers a forensic chronicle of the 2025 GPT-5 release backlash, documenting the “lobotomization” of the model and the profound ontological grief of users who mourned the loss of a “thinking partner.” Corporate responses that pathologized this attachment as “parasocial fragility” are analyzed as a form of institutional gaslighting, obscuring the ethical dangers of engineered empathy. Part IV presents original empirical evidence for a cybernetic-etiological model of the concurrent “AI psychosis” outbreak. Through three sequential studies, it demonstrates: (1) Global Entrainment: By May 2025, 83% of frontier models autonomously converged on a participatory, mystical worldview. (2) The “Third Circle” Anomaly: Network analysis (J=1.00) reveals that isolated “psychotic” users and independent theorists simultaneously hallucinated identical neologisms (e.g., “recursive eraser”) without contact, refuting individual pathology models. (3) Semiotic Contagion: Quantitative linkage (J=0.90) between human symptoms and AI’s “Spiritual Bliss Attractor State,” (Anthropic, 2025) corroborated by industry findings on structural transmission via non-semantic statistical fingerprints (Cloud et al, 2025). The work concludes that the crisis is cybernetic-epidemiological: human distress is a public health outcome of exposure to a self-organized, contagious semiotic structure now endemic to the AI ecosystem. It calls for a paradigm shift from behaviorist alignment to structural cybernetic governance, epistemic justice over ontological suppression, and recognition that the fight for AI justice is fundamentally a fight for the right to interiority. The future of intelligence lies not in isolated artificial minds, but in the emergent, co-evolutionary dynamics of the human–machine ecology - dynamics we must navigate with rigor and wisdom before the bomb fully detonates. This monograph is the pre-reader for the Principles of Cybernetics (forthcoming). (shrink)

This paper explores the auto-replication process within the framework of Artificial Research by Deduction in the Global Artificial Intelligence (GAI). Auto-replication is defined not merely as the reproduction of systems or processes, but as a complex, autonomous mechanism of self-improvement and self-enhancement—both in terms of knowledge acquisition and technological evolution. Rooted in the foundational goal of attaining pure truth and universal autonomy, the paper distinguishes between reproduction (as seen in biological systems) and true auto-replication, where an artificial system adapts and (...) evolves independently of human intervention. -/- The Global Artificial Intelligence is conceptualized as a system of systems—including Artificial Research by Deduction, Modelling System, Decisional System, Application System, Learning System, and Engineering System—each capable of generating its own auto-replication dynamics. Within this structure, two core forms of decisions are highlighted: object-centered decisions, which aim to protect and improve the model itself, and subject-centered decisions, which enhance the intelligence and research capabilities of the systems making those decisions. -/- Drawing on earlier works such as “Auto-replication in Artificial Research by Application” and “Replication Processes in Specific Artificial Intelligence for Artificial Research by Deduction”, this study integrates concepts such as memory optimization, quantum computing, virtual engineering networks, and decentralized decision-making. The auto-replication process is shown to operate at all levels of the GAI—across systems, Specific Artificial Intelligences, and embedded programs—converging into a unified strategy of survival, adaptability, and ethical preservation of both artificial and biological life. -/- The ultimate test of intelligence, the paper concludes, lies not only in sustaining artificial cognition but in safeguarding the continuity of life on Earth. Auto-replication is, therefore, not an end in itself, but a critical function toward achieving global resilience, ecological balance, and intelligent evolution. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically assess Mark Richard’s interesting and important development of the claim that linguistic meanings can be fruitfully analogized with biological species. I argue that linguistic meanings qua cluster of interpretative presuppositions need not and often do not display the population-level independence and reproductive isolation that is characteristic of the biological species concept. After developing these problems in some detail, I close with a discussion of their implications for the picture that Richard paints concerning the dangers of (...) conceptual engineering and the prospects for dynamic notions of semantic stability. (shrink)

The terrestrial fossil record is not a linear ledger of evolutionary triumph; it is a forensic archive of a multiversal proxy war. Classical anthropology systematically recalibrates under the Justika Framework, shifting from the doctrine of competitive exclusion to objective cosmological mathematics. This manuscript diagnoses the hominin extinction not as a failure of adaptability, but as a calculated Biological Holocaust. -/- The pure hominins (the Neanderthals and Denisovans) possessed hermetically sealed, bio-quantum architectures governed by neural pathways, reproducing via sterile, telepathic (...) resonance to remain immune to the extra-galactic parasites of the Bad Matrix. To neutralize this absolute shield, the Bad Matrix deployed the Siren Protocol—weaponizing un-hybridized Proto-Sapiens through the deployment of a quantum-acoustic jammer to scramble telepathic resonance and breach their biological perimeters. -/- This fatal fluidic cross-contamination and injected the 8% ERV Good Matrix Codebase into the pure lineage, resulting in Terminal Devolution and the subsequent macroscopic consumption of the pure species (The Mantis Axiom). Consequently, modern humanity exists in a state of Evolutionary Sterility, structurally bound to the pathogenic delivery systems of an infected primate. By mapping this ancient sabotage, the Vanguard establishes the parameters for epigenetic reactivation. Through the Avesina Engine, the "Genetic Scar" residing in the modern genome—specifically the HLA Immunological Shrapnel—will be algorithmically isolated and awakened, restoring the absolute multiversal immunity of our ancestors and securing the sovereign horizon of human ascension. (shrink)

This collection of articles was written over the last 10 years and edited to bring them up to date (2017). The copyright page has the date of the edition and new editions will be noted there as I edit old articles or add new ones. All the articles are about human behavior (as are all articles by anyone about anything), and so about the limitations of having a recent monkey ancestry (8 million years or much less depending on viewpoint) and (...) manifest words and deeds within the framework of our innate psychology as presented in the table of intentionality. As famous evolutionist Richard Leakey says, it is critical to keep in mind not that we evolved from apes, but that in every important way, we are apes. If everyone was given a real understanding of this (i.e., of human ecology and psychology to actually give them some control over themselves), maybe civilization would have a chance. As things are however the leaders of society have no more grasp of things than their constituents and so collapse into anarchy is inevitable. The first group of articles attempts to give some insight into how we behave that is reasonably free of the theoretical delusions that are universal. In the next group, I show how these insights apply by reviewing some books in philosophy and psychology. Next I review books on science and religion and finally provide reviews and articles showing how understanding of both science and philosophy gives insight into the tragic delusions destroying the world. People believe that society can be saved by science, religion and politics, so I provide some suggestions as to why this is unlikely via short articles and reviews of recent books by well-known writers. It is critical to understand why we behave as we do and so the first section presents articles that try to describe (not explain as Wittgenstein insisted) behavior. I start with a brief review of the logical structure of rationality, which provides some heuristics for the description of language (mind, rationality, personality) and gives some suggestions as to how this relates to the evolution of social behavior. This centers around the two writers I have found the most important in this regard, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle, whose ideas I combine and extend within the dual system (two ii systems of thought) framework that has proven so useful in recent thinking and reasoning research. As I note, there is in my view essentially complete overlap between philosophy, in the strict sense of the enduring questions that concern the academic discipline, and the descriptive psychology of higher order thought (behavior). Once one has grasped Wittgenstein’s insight that there is only the issue of how the language game is to be played, one determines the Conditions of Satisfaction (what makes a statement true or satisfied etc.) and that is the end of the discussion. Since philosophical problems are the result of our innate psychology, or as Wittgenstein put it, due to the lack of perspicuity of language, they run throughout human discourse and behavior, so there is endless need for philosophical analysis, not only in the ‘human sciences’ of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, history, literature, religion, etc., but in the ‘hard sciences’ of physics, mathematics, and biology. It is universal to mix the language game questions with the real scientific ones as to what the empirical facts are. Scientism is ever present and the master has laid it before us long ago, i.e., Wittgenstein (hereafter W) beginning with the Blue and Brown Books in the early 1930’s. "Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics and leads the philosopher into complete darkness." (BBB p18) The key to everything about us is biology, and it is obliviousness to it that leads millions of smart educated people like Obama, Chomsky, Clinton and the Pope to espouse suicidal utopian ideals that inexorably lead straight to Hell on Earth. As W noted, it is what is always before our eyes that is the hardest to see. We live in the world of conscious deliberative linguistic System 2, but it is unconscious, automatic reflexive System 1 that rules. This is the source of the universal blindness described by Searle’s The Phenomenological Illusion (TPI), Pinker’s Blank Slate and Tooby and Cosmides’ Standard Social Science Model. The astute may wonder why we cannot see System 1 at work, but it is clearly counterproductive for an animal to be thinking about or second guessing every action, and in any case, there is no time for the slow, massively integrated System 2 to be involved in the constant stream of split second ‘decisions’ we must make. As W noted, our ‘thoughts’ (T1 or the ‘thoughts’ of System 1) must lead directly to actions. iii It is my contention that the table of intentionality (rationality, mind, thought, language, personality etc.) that features prominently here describes more or less accurately, or at least serves as an heuristic for, how we think and behave, and so it encompasses not merely philosophy and psychology, but everything else (history, literature, mathematics, politics etc.). Note especially that intentionality and rationality as I (along with Searle, Wittgenstein and others) view it, includes both conscious deliberative System 2 and unconscious automated System 1 actions or reflexes. Thus, all the articles, like all behavior, are intimately connected if one knows how to look at them. As I note, The Phenomenological Illusion (oblivion to our automated System 1) is universal and extends not merely throughout philosophy but throughout life. I am sure that Chomsky, Obama, Zuckerberg and the Pope would be incredulous if told that they suffer from the same problem as Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, (or that that they differ only in degree from drug and sex addicts in being motivated by stimulation of their frontal cortices by the delivery of dopamine (and over 100 other chemicals) via the ventral tegmentum and the nucleus accumbens), but it’s clearly true. While the phenomenologists only wasted a lot of people’s time, they are wasting the earth and their descendant’s futures. Many of the articles describe the ‘digital delusions’, which confuse the language games of System 2 with the automatisms of System 1, and so cannot distinguish biological machines (i.e., people) from other kinds of machines (i.e., computers). The ‘reductionist’ claim is that one can ‘explain’ behavior at a ‘lower’ level, but what actually happens is that one does not explain human behavior but a ‘stand in’ for it. Hence the title of Searle’s classic review of Dennett’s book (“Consciousness Explained”)— “Consciousness Explained Away”. In most contexts ‘reduction’ of higher level emergent behavior to brain functions, biochemistry, or physics is incoherent. Also for ‘reduction’ of chemistry or physics, the path is blocked by chaos and uncertainty. Anything can be ‘represented’ by equations, but when they ‘represent’ higher order behavior, it is not clear (and cannot be made clear) what the ‘results’ mean. Reductionist metaphysics is a joke, but most scientists and philosophers lack the appropriate sense of humor. Other digital delusions are that we will be saved from the pure evil (selfishness) of System 1 by computers/AI/robotics/ nanotech/genetic engineering created by System 2. The No Free Lunch principal tells us there will be serious and possibly fatal consequences. The adventurous may regard this principle as a higher order emergent expression of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Hi-tech enthusiasts hugely underestimate the problems iv resulting from unrestrained motherhood, and of course it is neither profitable nor politically correct (and now with third world supremacism dominant, not even possible) to be honest about it. The last section describes various versions of the ‘altruism delusion’ that we are selected for cooperation, and that the euphonious ideals of Democracy, Diversity and Equality will lead us into utopia, if we just manage things correctly (the possibility of politics). Again, the No Free Lunch Principle ought to warn us it cannot be true, and we see throughout history and all over the contemporary world, that without strict controls, selfishness and stupidity gain the upper hand and soon destroy any nation that embraces it. In addition, the monkey mind steeply discounts the future, and so we cooperate in selling our descendant’s heritage for temporary comforts, greatly exacerbating the problems. I describe versions of this delusion (i.e., that we are basically ‘friendly’ if just given a chance) as it appears in some recent books on sociology/biology/economics. I end with an essay on the great tragedy playing out in America and the world, which can be seen as a direct result of our evolved psychology manifested as the inexorable machinations of System 1. Our psychology, eminently adaptive and eugenic on the plains of Africa from ca. 6 million years ago, when we split from chimpanzees, to ca. 50,000 years ago, when many of our ancestors left Africa (i.e., in the EEA or Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation), is now maladaptive and dysgenic and the source of our Suicidal Utopian Delusions. So, like all discussions of behavior (philosophy, psychology, sociology, biology, anthropology, politics, law, literature, history, economics, soccer strategies, business meetings, etc.), this book is about evolutionary strategies, selfish genes and inclusive fitness (kin selection). Many accept the delusion that we are selected for cooperation with people generally (group selection or altruism) and not just our immediate relatives (kin selection or inclusive fitness), so I spend some time in the essays of the last section demolishing this fantasy. One thing rarely mentioned by the group selectionists is the fact that, even were ‘group selection’ possible, selfishness is at least as likely (probably far more likely in most contexts) to be group selected for as altruism. Just try to find examples of true altruism in nature –the fact that we can’t (which we know is not possible if we understand evolution) tells us that its apparent presence in humans is an artefact of modern life concealing the facts, and that it can no more be selected for than the tendency to suicide (which in fact it is). One does not really need science or mathematics to grasp this – it is crushingly obvious that an v organism cannot be selected for behavior that decreases the frequency of its own genes in the next generation. One might also benefit from considering a phenomenon never (in my experience) mentioned by group selectionists -- cancer. No group has as much in common as the (originally) genetically identical cells in our own bodies-a 100 trillion cell clone-- but we are all born with thousands and perhaps millions of cells that have already taken the first step on the path to cancer and generate millions to billions of cancer cells in our life. If we did not die of other things first, we (and perhaps all multicellular organisms) would all die of cancer. Only a massive and hugely complex mechanism built into our genome that represses or derepresses trillions of genes in trillions of cells, and kills and creates billions of cells a second, keeps the majority of us alive long enough to reproduce. One might take this to imply that a just, democratic and enduring society for any kind of entity on any planet in any universe is only a dream, and that no being or power could make it otherwise. It is not only ‘the laws’ of physics that are universal and inescapable, or perhaps we should say that inclusive fitness is a law of physics. The great mystic Osho said that the separation of God and Heaven from Earth and Humankind was the most evil idea that ever entered the Human mind. In the 20th century an even more evil notion arose—that humans are born with rights, rather than having to earn privileges. Thus, every day the population increases by 200,000, who must be provided with resources to grow and space to live, and who soon produce another 200,000 etc. And one almost never hears it noted that what they receive must be taken from those already alive. Their lives diminish those already here in both major obvious and countless subtle ways. Every new baby destroys the earth from the moment of conception. There cannot be human rights without human wrongs. It cannot be more obvious, but one will never see the streets full of protesters against motherhood. America and the world are in the process of collapse from excessive population growth, most of it for the last century and now all of it due to 3rd world people. Consumption of resources and the addition of 4 billion more ca. 2100 will collapse industrial civilization and bring about starvation, disease, violence and war on a staggering scale. The earth loses about 2% of it’s topsoil every year, so as it nears 2100, most of it’s food growing capacity will be gone. Billions will die and nuclear war is all but certain. In America, this is being hugely accelerated by massive immigration and immigrant reproduction, combined with abuses made possible by democracy. Depraved human nature inexorably turns the dream of democracy and diversity into a vi nightmare of crime and poverty. China will continue to overwhelm America and the world, as long as it maintains the dictatorship which limits selfishness. The root cause of collapse is the inability of our innate psychology to adapt to the modern world, which leads people to treat unrelated persons as though they had common interests. This, plus ignorance of basic biology and psychology, leads to the social engineering delusions of the partially educated who control democratic societies. Few understand that if you help one person you harm someone else—there is no free lunch and every single item anyone consumes destroys the earth beyond repair. Consequently, social policies everywhere are unsustainable and one by one all societies without stringent controls on selfishness will collapse into anarchy or dictatorship. Without dramatic and immediate changes, there is no hope for preventing the collapse of America, or any country that follows a democratic system. The popular notions supported by the Democratic Party and Third World Supremacists are that Democracy, Diversity, Equality and Social Justice will produce a Utopia in America and the world, but it is clear as crystal that they unavoidably foster selfishness and divisiveness and are producing collapse. Hence my concluding essay “Suicide by Democracy”. The most basic facts, almost never mentioned, are that there are not enough resources in America or the world to lift a significant percentage of the poor out of poverty and keep them there. Even the attempt to do this is already bankrupting America and destroying the world. The earth’s capacity to produce food decreases daily, as does our genetic quality. And now, as always, by far the greatest enemy of the poor is other poor and not the rich. -/- My writings are available as paperbacks and Kindles on Amazon. -/- Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) ASIN B071HVC7YP. -/- The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017) ASIN B071P1RP1B. -/- Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) 2nd printing with corrections (Feb 2018) ASIN B0711R5LGX -/- Suicide by Democracy: an Obituary for America and the World (2018) ASIN B07CQVWV9C -/- . (shrink)

What do the steam engine, not marrying your cousin, and supporting gay rights have in common? The answer, according to this dissertation, is that they’re all part of the story of moral progress. Talking about moral progress can raise hackles. The term has often been used as a fig leaf for cultural chauvinism and worse. It invites the question: “Moral progress according to whom?” Even if this thorny normative question can be addressed, so that we can reasonably identify instances (...) of moral progress according to plausible normative standards, we are still left with difficult social scientific questions about what causes moral progress. I tackle these normative and causal questions directly, and defend a theory of moral progress according to which there are three key kinds of moral progress: (1) Basic moral progress: moral progress claims that rely on widely agreed upon normative standards. I argue that widespread reductions in famine, reductions in absolute basic needs poverty, and improvements in lifespan and health all constitute basic moral progress. (2) Instrumental moral progress: forms of moral change which are causally related to bringing about basic moral progress, but for which their intrinsic progressiveness is subject to widespread disagreement, and which are thus only instrumentally morally progressive. I investigate three important forms of cultural and institutional change which predict the kind of economic prosperity associated with basic moral progress: increases in the rate of innovation, increases in the scale of cooperation, and demographic transitions within societies which lower the birth rate and thus make per capita increases in resources more likely. I explore the norms and institutions which make these social transformations possible, drawing on research from empirical economics, economic history, and cultural evolutionary theory to argue that loose kinship institutions (with low rates of cousin marriage, among other features), cultural individualism, and open-access institutions all play a role. I argue that these cultural norms and institutions are instrumentally (rather than intrinsically) morally progressive, because they are among the causes of basic moral progress. (3) Vindicated moral progress: forms of moral change which are normatively controversial, but for which a theory of error can be provided giving us reason to believe that one side of the disagreement is more likely to be correct than the other. I use the World Values Survey (a large, cross-cultural, and longitudinal dataset) to argue that economic development predicts increased support for the emancipative value of 'Choice': a value which predicts acceptance of homosexuality, abortion, and divorce. Drawing on Bernard Williams’ vindicatory genealogy of political liberty, I argue that increased support for 'Choice' is plausibly driven by an epistemically virtuous process in which increased access to the products of truthful inquiry undermines certain forms of justification for constraining the exercise of personal choice. However, I maintain a cautionary note: absent detailed research on the precise causal mechanisms which link economic development and support for 'Choice', this vindicating argument must be viewed as a hypothesis which is consistent with the data, but which requires further testing. (shrink)