On the Evolution of Reality—Some Biological Prerequisites and Evolutionary Stages

Abstract

The discussion of the evolutionary origins of consciousness has largely been concentrated to the human mind, and it is only in recent years that a comparative ethological view has come into play. Even here, a tendency has been to look mainly at the primates. There is a vast literature that discusses the differences between human consciousness and cognition, compared with that of the other primates, but much less attention has been given to the fact that evolutionary gaps—fulgurations, emergences, new systems—have occurred at many stages in the evolution of cognition. More especially, the complexity of rather simple cognitive systems in lower animals has been underestimated, as well as the necessary prerequisites for a cognition worthy of the name to exist. Of particular interest in the discussion has been the views from evolutionary epistemology and radical constructivism, since they support the ethologically founded view that mind representations do not depict reality, but are adaptations for a successful way ofbehavingin the physical world, that reality in this sense is in the mind, that there are many realities, varying for different species—rich or poor in complexity—but all of them basically of the same nature. Even such human achievements as mathematics or logic thus may be seen as specific cognitive adaptions in our species, not as independent aspects of the physical world.