Individual and spiritual self interest. The difference between natural science and social science (including both the science of individual subjects and the science of their social world) is a dichotomy in rational culture that occurs within theoretical reason. But there a also dichotomy between theoretical and practical reason, and within the arguments of practical reason, there is another dichotomy. It arises, because reason must guide the behavior of both the spiritual animal as a whole and its individual members. This dichotomy mirrors the difference between the two parts of social science described above (the science of subjects and the science of the social world), but it is not reducible to them, because it is concerned with what is good for them, not merely explaining their behavior.

The good is what contributes to natural perfection, which is the direction of evolutionary change, and thus, at each stage of evolution, there is a new way in which things can be good or bad. But at the rational spiritual stage, there are three different ways in which things can be good or bad, because there are three different forms of natural perfection to which things can contribute. I will call these ways in which things can be good or bad “interests,” because they can all be goals of behavior guided by reason.

Rational interest. We have already seen that reason itself has an interest, because the evolution of arguments by rational selection is change in the direction of the natural perfection of culture. Culture is naturally perfect when its arguments discover the true, the good and the beautiful (or come as close as possible for arguments at its stage). That is how reason contributes to the power of rational beings. Thus, things are good or bad for culture or reason. For example, what contributes to cultural evolution, such as institutions or individual behavior that foster the exchange of arguments and promotes their rational selection, is good because it contributes to the natural perfection of culture. What is good in this way is in the interest of reason itself.

Spiritual interest. Culture evolves, however, within rational spiritual animals, and spiritual animals themselves evolve by reproductive causation in the direction of natural perfection for organisms of their kind. As we have seen, spiritual animals impose natural selection on themselves by their own reproduction in the harsh form of warfare, and as a result, they gradually change in the direction of natural perfection for them. Cultural evolution is a trait that evolves within them because it enhances their power as rational beings to control the conditions that affect their reproduction at the social level. Since there is a natural perfection for rational spiritual animals, things can be good or bad depending on whether they contribute to it or they detract from it. Thus, spiritual animals have an interest, which I will call the spiritual interest.

Individual interest. There is, however, a distinct natural perfection about the individual members of spiritual animals, because the evolution of spiritual animals by reproductive causation involves the simultaneous evolution of its members by reproductive causation. This has no precedent, as we have seen, in the history of biological evolution. Though evolution on two levels at once played a role in the evolution of prokaryotic life and eukaryotic life, it stopped with the evolution of the biological behavior guidance system that made them a form of life (though eukaryotes compensated for this by the evolution of sexual reproduction). Multicellular animals are not parts of spiritual animals in the same way as cells in multicellular animals, because the members of spiritual animals continue to impose natural selection on themselves by their own sexual reproduction within spiritual animals, even as their spiritual animal evolves in a parallel way on the social level. Whereas in spiritual animals, reproductive causation is at work on both levels, in multicellular animals, reproductive causation is at work on only one level of biological organization, the multicellular level. (Multicellular animals reproduce by constructing an entire new multicellular animal from a single fertilized egg cell, and since individual cells reproduce only as part of that process of embryological development, they do not impose natural selection on themselves at the cellular level — though as eukaryotes, sexual reproduction serves a similar function.) The simultaneous evolution of organisms by reproductive causation on two levels of biological organization implies that evolutionary change is in the direction natural perfection at two levels of biological organization at once.

Since reflective subjects impose natural selection on themselves within spiritual animals by their own reproduction, they evolve in the direction of natural perfection for the multicellular animals who are parts of spiritual animals. It is as if membership in spiritual animals were their ecological niche and they were adapting to it. But since that means individuals change is in the direction of a kind of natural perfection, there is a way in which things are good or bad for the individuals. What contributes to the natural perfection of rational subjects is good for them, and the bad is what detracts for their natural perfection. Thus, individuals have an interest as individuals, and that is what I mean by individual interest.

A difference between the interest of the individual and the interest of the spiritual animal is entailed, therefore, by our ontological derivation of reproductive global regularities, because spiritual animals are an inevitable stage of evolution. In addition to pursuing the interests of reason itself, reflective subjects use reason to pursue both the interest of their spiritual animal and their individual interest. This is evident on reflection from the point of view of the subject, but the nature of reason at the rational spiritual stage does not provide any adequate way of explaining the relationship between the individual and spiritual interest. Though cultures normally assume that spiritual interest has priority over individual interest, the only explanations that can be given of it at the rational spiritual stage are religious, thereby sewing their worldview together by appeal to magic and mystery.

In order to see what is good and bad for reflective subjects, let us consider what ontological philosophy implies about how the reflective subject is related to each of these interests that evolve at the rational spiritual stage. That is, in what sense are they aspects of self interest?

Rational self interest. Reflective subjects have an interest in reason insofar as they are producers of culture, participating in the process of discovering the true, the good and the beautiful. Those goals are inherent in reason itself, because the natural perfection of culture is the direction of the evolution of arguments by rational selection. And what is exchanged in the process of pursuing those goals includes not only theoretical and practical arguments, but also what Aristotle would call arguments of “productive reason” (a kind of practical reason having to do with the goodness of products rather than the goodness of the actions themselves).

Though reflective subjects have a rational interest because they participate in cultural evolution, that is merely an interest in knowing, and it does not guide their behavior except as participants in cultural evolution. What is in the interest of reason is good for them only insofar as they are the producers of cultural evolution, that is, as individuals considering alternative arguments and rationally selecting the most coherent argument. That is a merely cognitive interest.

However, reflective subjects can also have an interest in reason that affects their behavior in other ways, because they are also consumers of culture. Reflective subjects draw on the arguments accumulated as culture to judge what is good in the particular situations they face and, thus, attain their goals through rational action.

The capacity to use reason to guide behavior is not, however, merely a means to goals that individual’s already have. It changes their nature, as we shall see. It gives reflective subjects new goals in addition to those that come from being participants in cultural evolution, because it increases their power to pursue goals generally. Thus, the maximum holistic power of rational subjects is greater than that of subjects who use reason merely to pursue the goals of their animal behavior. The power of reason transforms the reflective subject into a rational being, that is, a reflective subject whose behavior is guided by reason not merely in the selection of means, but also in the selection of goals. And individuals can pursue goals beyond what controls the conditions that affect their reproduction. Thus, what is good or bad for the individual depends on what contributes to their natural perfection as rational beings, and that includes both an individual interest and a spiritual interest (and, in both cases, both necessary and optional goals). That is, as we shall see, their self interest as rational beings.

What transforms reflective subjects into rational beings is submitting to reason. Reflection enables the linguistic animal to represent the causes of his own behavior as causes of his behavior in the process of guiding behavior. But as I suggested earlier, reason is not merely the capacity to monitor the causes of one’s behavior during the behavior guiding process, because reflection on the causes of behavior eventually changes how behavior is caused. Rational imagination enables subjects to see the actual causes of behavior against the background of what is possible, and reasoning about what to do discovers new and better goals of behavior. Assuming that the subject can do what reason discovers to be good, this is a new way of causing behavior. Reasons are causes of behavior that are represented as causes of behavior as an essential part of the process by which they cause the kind of behavior they do, and this change in the causes of behavior can change the kind of behavior caused.

Reason becomes a behavior guidance system by taking over the control of behavior from animal desires. Since animals act on their strongest desire at the moment, what enables reason to take control is a desire to be rational. It is no mystery where this desire comes from, for we have been tracing its evolution from its origin in the dominance hierarchy established among social animals by their biological behavior guidance system.

In social animals, as we have seen, conflicts are resolved by a dominance hierarchy in which a confrontation of some kind among members determines a ranking, or “pecking order.” Desires provided by the biological behavior guidance system motivate losers in that confrontation to submit to more dominant members, even though it may mean not acting on other strong animal desires, such as the desire to eat or to mate.

This desire to submit became the source of the leader’s power to generate social level behavior in primitive spiritual animals, but since the leader coordinates their behavior by using language to assign members special tasks in his plan, it becomes the desire to conform one’s behavior to a linguistic representation of it. The linguistic system of representation is located in the left hemisphere, and the dominance of the left hemisphere made it possible for linguistic representations of behavior to determine motor output to the body. But which linguistic representations would control behavior was determined by the leader, because the members were motivated to do what the leader told them to do, even when they had strong animal desires to the contrary, such as fear, fatigue, lust and anger. The desires to submit to the leader was inevitably connected to linguistic representations, because those spiritual animals in which the use of language was not a reliable was of generating social level behavior would be vanquished by spiritual animals in which it was.

With the evolution of psychological sentences at the rational spiritual stage, naturalistic imagination evolved into rational imagination, and the linguistic interaction that guided behavior was no longer merely the distribution of a plan by the leader, but rather arguing about what they should do in the situation. The exchange of arguments enabled them to see which intention made their world views most coherent, and thus, it led them to agree about which alternative to choose. Thus, the desire to submit to the instructions of a leader evolved into the desire to submit to reason. This transformation in the nature of reflective subjects was assumed in the foregoing explanation of institutions as regular social level behavior generated by the mutual acceptance of arguments about how to behave in various situations.

The two stages by which rational spiritual animals evolve from nomadic bands of hominids is a case of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny, for there is a similar two-step process by which individual subjects come to submit to the authority of reason.

Individuals enter spiritual animals as babies, mere bodies that must be handled by other members until locomotor and manipulative schema can develop into a spatial imagination. They can see themselves as bodies in a world of objects in space with the capacity to manipulate other objects, and they have a desire to submit to their parents in ways that do not depend on the use of language.

As their sensory-motor skills are developing, their brains are also internalizing a natural language, and that makes it possible for them to submit to the parent’s linguistic instructions. At first, the child can use only natural sentences, but some time between the ages of 3 and 5 they acquire the use of psychological sentences, thereby learning to distinguish how the world appears to a subject from what it really is. But even after the child acquires a faculty of rational imagination and the capacity to reflect on her own psychological states, her status in the family is like that of a member of a primitive spiritual animal, because the desire to submit to a leader is a desire that is normally attached to her parents or guardian. Parents are responsible for devising the plan, and the child looks to the parent for guidance. Children are not quite like members of primitive spiritual animals, for they are also acquiring additional brain structures by which they can use rational imagination to understand the arguments and judge arguments by their coherence.

Adolescence recapitulates the change in the desire to submit to a leader that occurred when reason evolved. Just as the authority of the leader passed to the arguments they mutually acknowledged, so the authority of the parent passes during adolescence to the arguments acquired from the culture. Thus, the child becomes a rational being. It is a transformation that in which the child matures physiologically and acquires an interest in sex, and not surprisingly, it is marked by a rebellion against the authority of parents, a concern with her peer group, and a sudden interest in her own identity.

Autonomy of reason. As the desire to submit to reason develops, the child become autonomous or has free will, because its behavior comes under the control of reason. Reason discovers the good by a process of arguing about what to do, and the desire to submit to reason enables the subject to do what is good because it is good, that is, simply because she believes that it is good. Thus, reason takes control of behavior. “Will” is the traditional name for the intentions formed by practical reason.

This change in the animal behavior guidance system is aptly called “free will” or “autonomy,” because it enables the subject to act contrary to strong animal desires. When the subject has reason to believe that some course of action is good, she can act accordingly even when she has strong immediate desires to do what she considers bad, because the desire to submit to reason is normally the strongest desire. Thus, the rational subject has self control and can be responsible for doing what is good.

It may not seem that what puts reason in the driver’s seat is a desire, because it is normally felt only when it is not satisfied, much like the desire to breathe. When a subject fails to do what she has chosen to do because she believes it is what is good, she typically feels shame (or guilt as well, if it is a failure to do what is morally good). That is what it feels like to fail to satisfy the desire to submit to reason, and reflecting on the cause of that feeling tends to strengthen the desire to be rational. The fact that one has only a feeling of power and well being when it is being satisfied does not mean that it is not a desire at all. In animals whose behavior is guided by desire, such a modification of the affective system is the most efficient way of bringing behavior under the control of reason. But the desire to be rational is not just another desire, for it is the foundation of reason as the behavior guidance system of the subject.

One is not always able to do what she believes to be good, for example, when she is tempted to eat too much by the availability of delicious food. Incontinence, or weakness of will, as it is called, can be caused by a weakness in the desire to submit to reason, for example, when one is tired, depressed or demoralized. One is responsible for such incontinent behavior, because the desire to submit to reason is normally strong enough to resist animal desires, at least, it is when one understands the means that are necessary to attain the goal one is pursuing.

Individual self interest. There are basically two ways that the autonomy makes the rational subject more powerful as an individual than other multicellular animals. One is the ability to act in the interest of his individual Self, or what is traditionally called “self interest.” The other is the capacity to pursue goals beyond those that control conditions affecting her own reproduction., or necessary goals and optional goals, respectively.

Necessary goals of individual self interest. The reflective subject has a Self, as we have seen, because her faculty of rational imagination (specifically reflective understanding) enables her to tell a story about her self by which she recognizes her identity over time. This is the result of accepting the arguments of the science of subjects that have accumulated as culture. But with the desire to submit to reason, it gives the subject far more power to attain her goals.

By recognizing that the subject will have desires in the future that are not currently strong, reason puts her in a position to devise a plan for what to choose in a whole series of situations that enables her to satisfy them more completely than simply acting on the strongest desire at each moment. The ability to act at each moment in a way that will maximize the satisfaction of her desire over her whole life makes her far more powerful than other animals, because non-rational animals are locked in the immediate present and have only their affective system to choose which goal to pursue in each situation. In selecting how to behave in any situation, animals must rely on the priorities among goals set by the biological behavior guidance system as a result of biological evolution. Though that maximizes the holistic power for animals of their kind, there is a way to increase the power to control relevant conditions. With the faculty of reason and a desire to submit to its conclusions about how to behave, she can act with foresight and pursue long term goals, or goals that can be attained only by how actions work together over a long period of time.

This power is often what is meant by “self interest,” and that is appropriate, because it is the capacity to act in the present moment for the interest of one’s Self. The Self includes the whole reproductive cycle, and thus, by taking responsibility for doing what is in its interest, the rational subject is constructing a spatio-temporal structure, or a four dimensional object.

If we think of the natural perfection of the individual life as the beauty of the Self, the rational subject may be likened to an artist painting a portrait of herself. Her paints are behavior directed by desire at certain goals, and her canvas is space and time, including all the particular situations she encounters and what others contribute. She paints her portrait in a world of objects in space, except that it is also laid out in time. Her painting is skewed in the direc­tion of the future, since, at any point in the process, the past is done and cannot be undone. And the future can be seen only incompletely and vaguely through the telescope of causal connections believed to hold in the world, since some features are painted in by unexpected events in the natural and social world. It is as if the canvas of space and time required one to complete the painting from left to right. The rational subject is unable to go back and change the paints already applied on the left, but must always apply paints on the right side of what has already been painted, and do it so that, when one has worked one’s way to the right edge of the canvas, everything will fit together as the portrait of one’s Self. The main tool in constructing such a work of art is a life plan. That is, the way to make the brush strokes one applies add up to the portrait of a beautiful Self in the end is to use one’s under­standing of the world and how it works to fig­ure out how to behave now in order to fulfill as many of the goals set by desires is as harmonious a ways as a single body can in a world of objects in space over time.

This is the effect of having a Self as seen from our ontological perspective, but it may not be how self interest is ordinarily understood. The temporal structure of the Self is obvious enough in the subject’s recognition of the inevitability of death, but the condition of actually existing only at the present gives one a different perspective. Indeed, one has already lived part of that temporal whole by the time one becomes fully reflective, and although the story one can tell about oneself extends back even beyond what can be remembered to the stories that parents tell about the earliest years, the future is largely open, like a clean canvas. It is not easy to predict all the situations one will face in the distant future, and that makes it difficult to develop a plan that will cover a whole life, even though that is what self interest involves at its most coherent. Thus, the way to take responsibility for that future seems to be to follow certain principles of prudence and to think of one’s interest as having a certain kind of Self, where the Self is something that one has and carries along. That makes it seem that the pursuit of self interest, or the good life, is a matter of observing certain principles and priorities in situations as they arise and filling in the details as the time comes to act on them.ⁱ Instead of acting for the sake of one’s life as a whole, one tries to live up to a self-image, that is, have an identity of a certain kind. Thus, it is not always clear that serving one’s self interest is the job of constructing a Self as a whole life. But toward the end, it becomes clearer that the Self one has is the life that one has led, and then one sees the portrait one has painted and knows who one really is.

Optional goals of individual self interest. The capacity to act in the interest of her Self in the sense of maximizing the satisfaction of desires over a whole lifetime is, however, only one aspect of the autonomy that comes from being a rational subject. We have been assuming that the goals of individual behavior are determined by desires, because if we set aside the goals that are justified by religion, that is how it appears from the point of view of the reflective subject. But from our ontological vantage, we have a deeper explanation of what makes the goals of animal behavior good, and taking it into consideration, we can see another way in which rational subjects are more powerful than other animals.

Desires set goals for subjective animals that guide their behavior to control the conditions that affect their reproduction, and as they approach natural perfection for animals of their kind, the relative strengths of their desires in the various situations determines a priority among them that makes them as powerful as possible for them over their whole reproductive cycle. What makes the goals good is that they control relevant conditions, because that is how their animal behavior contributes to their natural perfection.

Rational subjects are more powerful than other animals, because, as we have seen, instead of relying on the priorities among goals set by the strength of desires, they can choose goals in the present situation that will work together with behavior in other situations to satisfy the entire range of their desires over a period of time more reliably and completely. But that is to assume that the desires of rational subjects also direct them to goals that control conditions that affect their individual reproduction, and that is not necessarily true. One reason it is not true is that rational subjects are parts of spiritual animals, and they have desires that adapt them to that ecological niche and control conditions that affect the reproduction of the spiritual animal as a whole. But our concern here is another reason it is not true. Reason itself gives the subject the capacity to make goals part of their individual self interest, that is, good for them, even though they do not contribute their reproduction on either level of biological organization.

Arguments evolve within spiritual animals by rational selection, that is, when they result in a more coherent worldview. This is basically an aesthetic judgment, for it depends on rational imagination and the capacity to compare the beliefs or intentions proposed by arguments against the background of established beliefs and intentions. It seeks an optimum that can be recognized only by comparison with other possibilities, and thus, it is ultimately a judgment about how to do the most with the least, the basic criterion of natural perfection. Rational imagination includes, however, an understanding of causes in both the natural and the social world, and thus, it is possible to recognize the natural perfection of other organisms, ecologies, cultures, or spiritual animals that have evolved by reproductive causation. Thus, it is also possible to see what is good for them, because they can see what contributes to their natural perfection. In short, rational beings can discover things that are good even when they do not contribute to their own natural perfection.

The autonomy that comes from reason enables the reflective subject to do what is good because it is good, that is, simply because she believes that it is good, whether or not she already desires it. Thus, when rational subjects recognize that something they can control would be good by seeing how it would contribute to natural perfection in some way, they can choose to pursue it as a goal. To choose it as a goal of one’s own behavior is to make it good for one self, that is, as part of one’s individual self interest. Thus, the individual can pursue goals that are good for them, even though they do not control conditions that affect their own individual reproduction.

This explanation of the nature of reason entails internalism. “Internalism” is the view that the motive for pursing the good does not require a desire for the goal, but rather comes from simply recognizing that the goal is good. When reason is in the driver’s seat, that is how behavior is caused. It is the belief that the goal is good that motivates the subject to pursue it. Though he would not have this motive without having a desire to submit to reason, that does not make this an externalist theory about value judgments, for the desire to submit to reason does not come from a desire for the goal being pursued. On the contrary, a desire for the goal comes from the desire to submit to reason. The desire to submit to reason is neutral among goals, for it gives the subject a motive to pursue whatever goal reason judges to be good, regardless what she may feel about the goal otherwise.

This does not mean that a rational subject can make any goal good for himself by choosing it as a goal. The goal must already be good in some way for something, or else it would not be rational to choose it. Choosing to pursue the goal merely makes it good for the rational subject, that is, a part of his individual self interest. However, what is good objectively must be understood to include not just what contributes to the natural perfection that comes to exist by reproductive causation, but also to artificial forms of natural perfection, such as craftsmanship and works of fine art.

As one commits oneself to the goal, one comes to have a desire to pursue it, but in this case, the desire may come only from the desire to submit to reason and its inherent interest in the beautiful. Thus, these goals are already included in one’s individual self interest as explained above, that is, as maximizing the satisfaction of desire. But from our ontological perspective, it is important to distinguish them from the goals that are good because they control conditions that affect one’s individual reproduction, including most of the goals set by animal desires.

Let us call the goals that are good for the rational subject because they control conditions affecting his own reproduction “necessary goals”, or goals of “narrow individual self interest,” and the goals that are good for him because he chooses to pursue them “optional goals,” or goals of “broad self interest.” What contributes to the natural perfection of a rational subject includes, therefore, both necessary and optional goals (both what is in his broad self interest as well as what is in his narrow self interest), though in cases of conflict, necessary goals take priority over optional goals.

Reason makes the individual more powerful than other animals, therefore, in two way—in the first instance, by making them better able to control conditions that affect their individual reproduction, but beyond that, by enabling them to pursue other goals that are good because of contributing to other forms of natural perfection or to artificial perfection, such as works of art (and to pursue those goals as efficiently as possible).

Spiritual self interest. The other half of the dichotomy about arguments of practical reason has to do with the interest of the spiritual animal, as opposed to the individual subjects who make it up. Things are good or bad for the spiritual animal in a way that parallels how things are good or bad for individuals, because with evolution by reproductive causation working on both levels of biological organization at once, organisms on both levels change gradually in the direction of natural perfection for organisms of their kind. And since both are rational beings, both have both necessary and optional goals.

The relationship between these two biological levels, as we have seen, has no precedent in biological evolution. Though spiritual animals are made up, like multicellular organisms, of simpler organisms, the parallel between these two part-whole relations is not complete.

In multicellular animals, natural selection works only at the higher biological level, because all the member cells of a multicellular organism derive from a single, fertilized egg cell. Though sexual reproduction makes it possible, as we have seen, to focus natural selection so that lower level structures are what evolves, traits are selected in cells only when they are good for the multicellular organism.

In the evolution of spiritual animals, however, natural selection works on two levels of biological organization at once. At the same time spiritual animals are imposing group-level natural selection on themselves by their reproduction (division into smaller groups), individual members are imposing natural selection on themselves by their sexual reproduction within spiritual animals, selecting some traits, perhaps, that are not good for the spiritual animal.

With reproductive causation shaping both the spiritual animal and its multicellular members to be powerful as possible over their reproductive cycles, individuals evolve toward a natural perfection of organisms that is subject to the constraint of being parts of spiritual animals, and spiritual animals evolve toward a natural perfection of organisms that is subject to the constraint of being made up of autonomous individuals.

Spiritual interest. There are, therefore, two kinds of interests. In addition to the interest of each individual (or what I am calling “individual self interest”), there is the interest of the spiritual animal as a whole. I will call it the “spiritual interest.”

Spiritual animals evolve toward natural perfection for organisms of their kind because their multicellular members (and their behavior) are bundled together as parts of a spiritual structure that goes through reproductive cycles as a whole and, thus, they impose natural selection on themselves at the group level by their reproduction. War makes group level selection very efficient, and as we have seen, reason evolves as a way of controlling relevant conditions having to do with choosing how to behave toward other spiritual animals. Since they have, or come to have, the optimal part-whole relation by which natural perfection is defined, things are good for spiritual animals because they contribute to that kind of natural perfection. There is, therefore, a spiritual interest, the interest of the spiritual animal.

Since human society is a spiritual animal, it has, like all animals, behavior as a whole directed at goals which control conditions affecting its reproduction. Plans for group behavior arise by rational selection from arguments being exchanged about what the group should do, though the choice of what to do is normally structured by a government, because spiritual animals act mainly through social institutions. The good pursued by spiritual animals includes, as we have seen, the usual animal goals. Some group-level behavior acts on nature to acquire usable energy from nature and to protect itself from danger, such as predators and natural disasters. But some behavior directed at other objects in space has no parallel with multicellular animals, such as crucial decisions about war and peace in relation to other spiritual animals. Other behavior acts on parts of its own body in order to provide for the reproduction of its members (kinship system), to educate them so that they can take advantage of the culture, and to protect its health by punishing wrongdoing.

These are necessary goals, because they are conditions that social level behavior must normally control in order for the spiritual animal to reproduce as a whole, if the occasion ever arises. They are how the non-reproductive work get done. But since spiritual animals are guided by reason, the autonomy of reason also makes it possible for them to pursue goals simply because they are good, even if they are not good for the spiritual animal. The can, for example, act in the interest of other spiritual animals, other animals, or the ecology. By choosing to pursue such goals, they become good for the spiritual animal. But there are optional goals, because they do not control conditions that affect their social level reproduction.

Spiritual interest as self interest. The interest of the spiritual animal is not, however, just an interest of the spiritual animal as a whole. It is an interest of each rational subject who is a member of it. That is what I mean by calling it “spiritual self interest.” Since the interest of the spiritual animal is as much an interest of the rational subject as his individual interest, he would have both a spiritual self interest and an individual self interest. The parity of these two interests for the rational subject follows from the nature of reason itself. Reason is a unique kind of behavior guidance system, because it is responsible for animal behavior on two levels of biological organization at once. And yet the ultimate agent for both functions is the individual.

The original function of reason was, as we have seen, to guide the spiritual animal’s behavior in making choices about war and peace; reason was naturally selected at the group level by success in war. But since reason works by individuals using psychological sentences to operate their own imaginations, they can simulate the reasoning of other subjective animals, and individuals inevitably came to use reason to see into one another’s minds, as well as to reflect on their own. Thus, reason took over the function of guiding behavior at the individual level, as well as the group level. Moreover, in order to serve its behavior guiding function on both levels, reason must not only discover what is good, but also do it.

In both cases, the power of reason to discover what is good is a result of cultural evolution, or the effect of a new, contained form of reproductive causation that necessarily involves both levels. Cultural evolution depends on the spiritual animal as a whole, because the exchange of arguments is how arguments reproduce, forcing a natural selection to be made. And it depends on the individual, since reproductive success for arguments is determined by rational selection, that is, by the individual’s judgment of what is most coherent.

When it comes to doing what it good, each individual subject can, on his own, use the arguments that have evolved to discover what is in his own self-interest (because the crucial power of reason is seated in the parts of the spiritual animal), and he can act in his self-interest independently of others (for he has control over his individual, physical body). But in order for reason to guide behavior in pursuit of the good of the spiritual animal, agreement among the members is required, in principle, for both the judgment about what is good and doing what is good, since only through their cooperation with one another is the spiritual animal able to act at all.

In other words, not only does the spiritual animal not have a body of its own, apart from the bodies of its members, neither does it have a mind of its own, apart from the minds of its members.

The rational subject is, therefore, the ultimate agent behind behavior on both levels of biological organization. He is responsible not only for pursing his own good as an individual, but also for pursuing the good of his spiritual animal. The rational subject thinks of himself as his Self, and thus, we can describe this twofold responsibility by saying that he has a spiritual self interest as well as an individual self interest. It comes from his nature as a rational subject, because membership in a spiritual animal is part of the essential nature of the rational subject. As such, he shares responsibility, in principle, for choosing which social-level goals the spiritual animal will pursue, and he has certain tasks to perform in acting on those decisions.

The balance between individual and spiritual self interests. Though the rational subject has both interests and must pursue goals on both levels of biological organization as part of the Self he constructs during his lifetime, individual and spiritual self interests are different ways in which things are good or bad, because they contribute to two different kinds of natural perfection. Thus, they may be in conflict with one another. And that raises the question of which takes priority, that is, which goal it is good for the rational subject to choose.

Even in multicellular organisms, the interest of part is not identical to that of the whole. Things can be good for the cell, because cells have the natural perfection of organisms. And what is good for the cell is good for the multicellular organism as a whole, because cells are the lower level organisms whose behavior is coordinated in constituting the multicellular organism. Thus, what contributes to the natural perfection of the cell necessarily contributes, by way of the cell, to the natural perfection of the multicellular organism. But the relationship is not reciprocal. What is good for the whole is not necessarily good for the part. Normally, what is good for the multicellular organism is good for its cells, since the whole provides the environment in which the cells can exist and their traits can control conditions affecting their own reproduction. But the good of the whole takes priority over the good of the cell. There are situations in which multicellular animals sacrifice their own parts, for example, in sloughing off skin cells and cells dying in the process of embryological development. Thus, the part has an interest that can conflict with the interest of the whole even in multicellular animals.

The interests of part and whole diverge even further, however, in spiritual animals, and that may make it seem impossible to reconcile these two interests of the rational subject. In the spiritual animal, as in multicellular organisms, what is good for the whole is not necessarily good for the part. Though the spiritual animal does provide energy and protection for the individual, its interest is not always good for the individual. The spiritual animal may also sacrifice its parts for social-level goals, for example, requiring members to fight in wars where many will die and more will be injured. Or in natural disasters, it may have to sacrifice some for the spiritual animal itself to survive. But in spiritual animals, not only is the interest of the whole sometimes not good for the part, the interest of the part is also sometimes not good for the whole. That is possible in spiritual animals, even though it is not possible in multicellular organisms, because reproductive causation is at work on both individual and social levels at the same time. Traits of individuals are naturally selected by the individual’s success in sexual reproduction, and what controls conditions affecting individual reproduction may not control any condition affecting the whole’s reproduction. Though rational subjects evolve toward the natural perfection for organisms of their kind subject to the condition of being members of spiritual animals, what is in the individual’s self interest may conflict with the interest of the spiritual animal.

For example, it may be in one’s individual self interest to commit treason to receive a bribe, but it is clearly not in his spiritual self interest. More generally, the pursuit of individual self interest can impair the capacity of the spiritual animal to pursue its social level goals by leading to conflicts among its members that make them unable to cooperate.

Morality. That is why morality evolves in spiritual animals. The spiritual animal needs cooperative relations among its members to pursue its own goals, and thus, its natural perfection requires that limits be placed on the pursuit of individual self interest. The function of morality is to limit the pursuit of individual self interest so that the spiritual animal is able to pursue its goals, that is, for the sake of spiritual self interest.

The arguments that evolve in spiritual animals about what individuals should do in relation to one another and in relation to the institutions and laws promulgated by the government restrict that what they can do in pursuit of goals of individual self interest. More will be said about the content of these rules in discussing necessary truths about what ought to be, but for now, let mention a few basic aspects of these rules.

Some moral rules have the function of avoiding conflicts among members that would make them unable to cooperate. The pursuit of goals of individual self interest could lead rational subjects to act in ways that harm other members, such as lying about them, deceiving them, stealing from them, and even killing them. Such harm to other members would quickly escalate into warfare, because rational subjects are quite able to harm others in return, since they have desires that have evolved to enable them to fight wars. Thus, in arguing about what individuals should do, the members of spiritual animals will come to mutually recognize certain limits on the pursuit of self interest.

These moral limits will tend to treat members equally, because they are parts of the evolution of culture by rational selection. Moral rules must be acceptable to everyone, because those that favor some members over others will not be rationally selected by the latter. Equality of treatment mirrors the symmetry among rational subjects in the spiritual animal. (There may be institutions and social structures in which moral rules do not treat members equally, but since the functions responsible for them are not recognized, the inequalities may be justified inadequately by appeal to religion.)

Furthermore, these moral limits will tend to leave members with the maximum freedom to pursue goals of individual self interest compatible with the same freedom for others, because as culture evolves, individual will not accept arguments that limit their behavior more than necessary. (But limits on the maximum possible freedom may be imposed by the religion of the spiritual animal in order to ensure the general acceptance of the culture by public expressions of submission.)

There are also moral rules requiring members to play their roles in generating social level behavior, that is, requiring them to obey the laws promulgated by the government and to participate fairly in its institutions. But since the rules governing duties to the spiritual animal are products of cultural evolution, they will also tend to treat members equally and impose the minimum burdens on them.

Justice. Morality is only part of the balance between the individual and spiritual interests, the part that affects the behavior of members generally. But the spiritual animal can also act as a whole on its own members, and since the rules governing the behavior of the spiritual animal as a whole are also products of cultural evolution, there are comparable limits on its pursuit of goals of spiritual interest.

The spiritual animal acts on nature as a whole through economic institutions, but since each member needs part of the product of that activity to control the conditions that affect his own reproduction as an individual, the arguments that evolve by rational selection will tend to require that every member that puts forth a reasonable effort to cooperate in generating social level behavior receive a sufficient portion to pursue the goals of his narrow individual self interest. That is the requirement that the spiritual animal provide for distributive justice: the spiritual animal must make it possible for each member, with a reasonable effort, to be able to attain the necessary goals of individual self interest.

Punishment is the most directly harmful way that the spiritual animal acts on its members, but rules providing for the punishment of wrongdoers will inevitably evolve, because it protects members against the harm caused by violations of moral limits. But since the members are potential objects of such behavior, judicial institutions will tend to follow procedures that ensure that only the guilty are punished. That is the requirement that the spiritual animal provide for retributive justice.

The generation of social level behavior can also harm individuals, for example, by requiring them to risk their lives in war or in responding to natural disasters. Rules permitting such harm to individuals will be accepted as culture evolves, because those conditions must be controlled or the spiritual animal will not survive and be in a position to reproduce. Since such harm is the necessary means to the attainment of necessary goals of spiritual interest, they are in one’s spiritual self interest, and even though it may mean that the individual dies, it does not conflict with the attainment of necessary goals of individual self interest, because that risk is inherent in the ecological niche in which the individual pursues goals that control conditions affecting individual reproduction.

But rules will not evolve that allow the government to inflict such harm on individuals for optional goals of spiritual interest, for example, because of the greater good the harm does for other individuals, because such arguments will not be accepted by those who recognize that their individual self interest might be sacrificed for the good of others. That is the requirement that the spiritual animal recognize inviolable rights of individuals.

Thus, just as rules of morality that rational subjects must observe limit the pursuit of their individual self interest because of their spiritual self interest, so rules of justice that the spiritual animal must observe limit the pursuit of spiritual self interest because of the individual self interest.

Content of rules of morality and justice. There is a necessary content to the rules of morality and justice, because they are basic to the part-whole relation whose optimum is the natural perfection of the spiritual animal. Mutual acknowledgment of rules of morality and justice is as necessary to way in which individual behavior is coordinated in social level action as the right messenger molecules are to the relationship by which cells are bundled together in multicellular animals. That is, just as the physical body’s behavior depends on its cells having normal relationships, so the use of language to generate social level behavior in a spiritual animal depends on its members having normal relationships in which they mutually acknowledge rules that require cooperation, limit the pursuit of self-interest to protect other individuals, and respect the rights of individual members.

The publicly recognized symmetry among members does not mean that social rules permit no differences in benefits and burdens. It means only that differences in treatment must be justified by differences among the members. It would be obvious that there are relevant differences between males and females, between adults and children, and between young and old, and so the kinship systems would tend to reflect these differences in assigning rights and duties. Likewise, political institution give the leader and other officials powers that others lack. Such differences are how institutions coordinate social level behavior. But since they are generated ultimately by the exchange of arguments, they are reformed when abuses are recognized, and institutions continue to be modified until they prescribe differences in treatment only when they are justified in terms of recognized functions of the institutions.

Still, such rules of morality and justice are tendencies of cultural evolution. Culture evolves by a rational selection that depends on all the members of the spiritual animal, and rational subjects prefer arguments that maximize the coherence of their world views. As noted above, there are countervailing factors that may divert moral rules from this natural perfection of culture, and there may be spiritual animals in which cultural evolution itself is so inhibited that it fails to discover the good. But discovery of these rules of morality and justice is the tendencies of cultural evolution, because they make the arguments of maximally powerful as a whole, and that is the natural perfection of spiritual animals at the rational stage.

Why be moral? Even before culture and the spiritual animal are naturally perfect, however, morality must take priority over the pursuit of individual self interest, for if it didn’t, spiritual animals could not pursue their good, the good of the group as whole. And there would be no rational subjects.

There is, however, a problem about why the individual should be moral, because he can often serve his individual self interest better by violating the limits of morality, and since his individual violation will not destroy the spiritual animal and may not even deprive him of the benefits of being a normal member (if he is not caught), he can individually enjoy the benefits of wrong doing. Why is it not rational to be immoral under such conditions?

From the point of view of individual self interest, the spiritual animal is only a means to attaining individual goals. It is like having a spiritual body, in addition to his physical body, because he can enlist the cooperation of other in goals that are good for him individually. And if he can avoid punishment, the wrong doing will not impair the spiritual animal’s ability to act sufficiently to affect the individual.

It may not seem adequate to answer that morality is in the spiritual self interest of the rational being, because this is a case where his individual self interest and his spiritual self interest conflict. To insist on being moral would seem to be simply to prefer spiritual self interest over individual self interest. But these two interests should be equal, because both are interests of the rational subject in the same way. As a rational subject, he is just as responsible for guiding behavior toward goals that are good on both levels. And in the case of conflict, he should be just as justified in preferring individual self interest over spiritual self interest.

The answer given by this ontological explanation of the nature of morality is that rational subjects do not face a serious choice between their individual self interest and their spiritual self interest. There is no ultimate conflict between these interests, at least, not in spiritual animals with distributive justice.

There are, as we have seen, two kinds of goals of narrow self interest, necessary and optional, and there are two kinds of goals of spiritual self interest, necessary and optional. Necessary goals of individual self interest includes all the goals that must be attained in order to control conditions that affect individual reproduction. These include not only the physical needs to lead a normal, healthy life, but also sufficient resources for normal social relations. (But it does not include reproducing itself, since that is not a condition that affects reproduction.) Optional goals of individual self interest includes all the goals that are good for the rational subject because he chooses to pursue them. This is possible, as we have seen, because reason enables the subject to recognize how things are good in virtue of contributing to natural perfection of various kinds, not merely his own, and it enables rational subjects to do what they believe is good.

Likewise for the goals pursued by the spiritual animal. But the observance of moral rules among its members is a necessary goal of spiritual animals, not an optional goal, because that is a condition that must be controlled in order to act as a whole.

In a spiritual animal with minimal distributive justice, moreover, morality does not conflict with the pursuit of necessary goals of individual self interest, because with a reasonable effort, any member may attain those goals. All that morality limits, therefore, is the pursuit of optional goals of individual self interest, that is, optional goals, which are good for the subject only because he chooses to pursue them. Thus, the choice would be clear to rational subjects who understood the real nature of the choice. Though spiritual and individual interests are equal, it is a choice between a necessary goal of one’s spiritual self interest and an optional goal of one’s individual self interest, and thus, the choice is clear.

Likewise, rational subjects acting as agents of the spiritual animal cannot justify sacrificing the lives of members unless it is a necessary means in pursuit of a necessary goal, such as winning at war, because it would be to prefer an optional goal of spiritual self interest over a necessary goal of individual self interest.

This is not, of course, how reflective subjects see morality at the rational spiritual stage. If their goals of individual self interest have a non-religious explanation at all, they are explained as satisfying desires, and thus, the fundamental difference between necessary and optional goals of individual self interest is not recognized. And since they do not see their society as a spiritual animal, they do not understand how they have a spiritual interest.

However, arguments do accumulate at the rational spiritual stage that convince rational subjects to be moral. Nor is it hard to see why arguments for being moral evolve in every culture, since that is the only conclusion that draws individuals into cooperation and enables the spiritual animal to act on the social level. But without an understanding of the nature of goodness or the nature of the spiritual animal, the reasons for being moral are seen through a glass darkly. It is, as we have seen, the function of religion, to provide the ultimate justification for the practical arguments accumulated as culture. Religion is a way of thinking about the good of spiritual animal and their own spiritual nature. This is what Durkheim argued a century ago. He saw God (or the sacred, as opposed to the profane) as a symbol for the group itself, and since religion represents the group as superior to the individual, he sees it as giving rational beings a motive for being moral. By acknowledging and publicly celebrating the good of the whole as something higher than individual self interest, religious institutions point to their spiritual nature, and that answers doubts about why they should be moral and generates institutions that enjoin them to be moral.

When the standard of rational coherence by which arguments are judged is no more demanding than at the rational spiritual stage, morality can be justified by confused and misleading talk about gods, supernatural powers, or nonphysical beings. Since reflective subjects have evolved as parts of spiritual animals, the desires to submit to reason is a presumption in favor of the arguments accumulated as their culture, and that attitude is simply reinforced by religious institutions. Priests of some kind have the roles of speaking for their spiritual nature, and since it is not enough simply to say that the good of the whole is good for the individual, they invoke the authority of ancestors, threaten punishment by spirits, or warn of the consequences for immortal souls in an afterlife. This is the justification of the principles on which all their practical arguments are based.

When religion fails to convince members of its practical arguments, their conformity can usually be ensured by an evolutionary elaboration on the basic mechanism by which individuals submit to reason in the first place. Punishment is functional in two ways. First, as already suggested, it helps keep civil war from breaking out. Victims of violations of moral rules are roused to anger and inclined to respond to wrongdoers with war-like behavior, but these desires can be satisfied peacefully by the spiritual animal as a whole stepping in to restore the moral balance. Second, punishment is not just revenge. Nor is it just a penalty, as if it were a price that must be paid for misbehavior. Punishment tends to restore the moral balance in another way, because it is a formalized reenactment of the violent confrontation by which a dominance hierarchy is established even among non-linguistic social animals. Punishment tends to restore the motivation in the individual to be submit to the arguments accumulated as culture, because by being forced to submit to representatives of the spiritual animal, it arouses the same social desires to ward them that made individuals submit to the leader. This remedy works most effectively in the case of young offenders, who have not had a proper moral training, for in their case the offense is usually impulsive and punishment tends to strengthen the desire that inhibits acting on impulse.ⁱⁱ

Whatever of the source of the belief that it is good to be moral, the belief itself gives rational subjects a desire to be moral, because they have the desire to submit to reason. Even when being moral is contrary to individual self interest, the rational subject is able to be moral, because he are able to do what is good because he believes that it is good. What is added by ontological philosophy is an explanation of how those faulty and not wholly convincing practical arguments of traditional culture are pointing at the truth about what is good, namely, that each rational subject has a spiritual interest in being moral.

The capacity to be moral is a third way in which reason makes the subject autonomous. We have seen how the autonomy of reason enables the reflective subject to act contrary to the strongest desire at the moment. And we have seen how it enables rational subjects to pursue goals that do not control conditions that affect individual reproduction. But by recognizing that individuals have a spiritual interest, even if it is through a glass darkly, reason also makes the individual autonomous in the sense that he can act contrary to their individual self interests. When they recognize that it is good to accept the limits of morality, rational subjects can do what is morally good, because they recognize that it is good.

The desire to submit to reason is, however, felt mainly when it is not satisfied, and it feels different when one fails to live up to moral rules than when one fails to live up to one’s individual self interest. As we have seen, failure to follow the plan one has recognized to be in the interest of one’s Self arouses a special self-correcting desire, namely, shame. Shame appears as a fear of being deprived of approval or being abandoned as worthless, and thinking about its source motivates one to try harder in the future to live up to one’s life plan, though it can be intensified by public recognition of the failure, that is, as humiliation. Shame may also be aroused by the failure to live up to moral rules, but in the case of immoral actions, the failure to satisfy the desire to submit to reason also arouses guilt. Guilt appears as the fear of being forced by violence to submit, and reflecting on its cause motivates one to do what is required to be readmitted to membership in the spiritual animal.

The inevitable incoherence of rational culture. Culture is the accumulation of arguments in rational spiritual animals, and though they evolve by rational selection in the direction of natural perfection for arguments of culture, even at the end of the rational spiritual stage, the content of culture is divided by three insurmountable dichotomies. In addition to the basic difference between theoretical and practical arguments, there is the difference within theoretical reason between arguments of natural science and arguments of social science (both the science of subjects and the science of the social world) and the difference within practical reason between arguments about what is in one’s individual self interest and what is in one’s spiritual self interest.

These dichotomies are obviously surmountable, for they have been derived from spatiomaterialism as an inevitable part of culture at the rational spiritual stage. They mirror aspects of the nature of reason itself. The difference between practical and theoretical reason mirrors the two functions of input to animal behavior guidance system, representing the world so that the right kind of behavior is chosen and representing the world so that that kind of behavior can be adapted to the current situation, that is, between causing behavior and causing beliefs. The difference between natural science and the reflective sciences (psychology and social science) mirrors the difference between the understanding of efficient causes in the world of objects in space and the understanding of rational causes in the world of subjects in social roles. And the difference between individual and spiritual self interest mirrors a difference in the role of reason in guiding individual behavior and its role in guiding the behavior of the spiritual animal.

The ontological explanation of these dichotomies by the nature of reason is so obvious at this point that what is likely to be obscure is how the difference can fail to be understood. But the incoherence caused by these dichotomies runs deep, for bridging them would require an explanation of how the good depends on the true, how mind and body are related, and why individuals should be moral. These are all issues that remain unresolved even today, nearly two and one half millennia after the beginning of philosophical culture.

Without an adequate answer to these questions, culture is not fully coherent, because there is no way of integrating adequately everything that reason can know about the world as a single worldview. The incoherence of culture may not be obvious, because without a more coherent way of explaining the world, the coherence of the prevailing arguments is basically the standard by which the coherence of arguments judged. And at the rational spiritual stage, the evolution of arguments by rational selection cannot be any more coherent, because the level of organization of the arguments that are possible at in rational level culture leaves arguments, at best, clustered into the four groups entailed by the three dichotomies (that is, natural and social science and individual and spiritual interest). Appeal to a more basic principle is the only way of integrating and unifying arguments at the rational stage, and there is no principle that can adequately bridge the gaps between these clusters of arguments. Indeed, in most cultures, even arguments in each of these four clusters are far from being integrated under a single principle, for even that level of natural perfection is probably beyond the limits of cultural evolution at the rational spiritual stage.

What rational culture can do is paper over the differences among them by religion. Religion is the attempt to explain both the natural and the social world and, with the latter, the relationship between the individual and the society by appeal to gods or other entities beyond the natural world. These entities are ultimately subjects, that is, beings whose behavior is explained by reasons, and thus, it is an attempt to reduce all the arguments accumulated by culture to an argument about the behavior of a special kind of subject. Such arguments are obvious appealing. They resonate with the ancient desire to submit to a leader in the dominance hierarchy (and the child’s desire to submit to a parent or guardian). But without an adequate argument, traditional religion persists only because of the failure of culture to discover adequate answers to these basic questions.