The origin of the reflective level of neurological organization. The only reason to doubt that the reflective state of evolution is inevitable have to do with its origin, that is, how a simple and weak form of rational imagination tried out as a random variation on linguistic brains could make reflective brains powerful enough to control some new condition for which they would be natural selected.

There was, however, an original function for the reflective level of neurological organization. It comes from a uniquely demanding form of natural selection that primitive spiritual animals eventually imposed on themselves. They waged war on one another. The advent of war meant spiritual animals had to make a new kind of choice between incompatible kinds of behavior. That choice could not be made very reliably with naturalistic imagination. But it could be made much more reliably with rational imagination, even if it were not very reliable and occurred only in the leader of the group. Thus, since the capacity to use psychological sentences was a possible random variation on linguistic brains, it was tried out, and it was quickly selected for controlling an urgent new condition affecting their reproduction. That began a stage of evolution that made the members reflective subjects and eventually gave them the enormous power of reason.

The advent of war. Since the use of natural sentences originally evolved to coordinate individual behavior mainly in hunting animals, it is not surprising that primitive spiritual animals would eventually use it to control the outcome of their interactions with other groups of non-linguistic hominids. The new sources of free energy opened up by the use of natural sentences would eventually be exhausted, because there is only a finite amount of free energy they can use in any region and their reproduction would multiply the number of spiritual animals consuming it. Like all reproducing organisms, spiritual animals would eventually impose natural selection on themselves. But spiritual animals had a new way of overcoming scarcity. They could turn their hunting skills on nomadic bands of hominids, either simply killing them so that they could take over the supply of usable energy in the territory or, perhaps, even preying on them, that is, consuming them for the energy such living organisms contain.

The use of language was the origin of war, because such behavior could not evolve before the use of natural sentences.

War could not be tried out as a random variation by their biological behavior guidance systems. Membership in hominid societies was, like other animal societies, rather fluid. Some exchange of members was normal, if only as an adaptation of the instinct of young primates to mate outside the group in which they are born. When necessary, nomadic hominid bands could accept new members, combine with one other to form new groups, or redistribute members, and fights between single hominids (or between leaders of coalitions) would determine a dominance hierarchy within any animal society. Thus, when resources were scarce and nomadic bands of hominids encountered one another, there might have been fights among individuals, or even among coalitions, but no group would systematically kill off all the members of the other group. Dominance battles do not usually end in death, and since social level behavior was still instinctive, the evolution of violent behavior toward all the members of another group would require the same random variation to occur simultaneously in nearly all the members of some group. Only if they all happened to have the new desire to kill all the members of another group (or to follow their leader in doing so), this social level trait would never be tried out and, thus, never selected. Such a combination of random variations is so unlikely as to be impossible, especially if hominids had the normal inhibition about using other members of their own (or kindred) species as a source of free energy.

No such improbable random variation is required, however, to explain how spiritual animals could behave in such a violent way toward groups of non-linguistic hominids. No changes in their desires would be necessary, because the desire to submit to their leader inclined every member to do his part in the group plan pronounced by the leader. Since the use of a primitive language would enable them all to see how their joint behavior would work together in bringing about a goal they all desired, they could act with the same intention. They had practice in the use of language to coordinate violent behavior from hunting other kinds of animals. They may have felt some reluctance to take such actions against a kindred species, but it could be overcome, at least in times of scarcity, by their disposition to submit to a leader and cooperate in social level behavior, especially if they were starving and the desire for food was intense. Even if they could not bring themselves to eat hominid bodies, they would be motivated by seeing how a plan of attack that killed all the members of the other group would give them access to what food there was in the region.

The use of natural sentences, therefore, made war against groups of hominids inevitable. Though war derived from hunting, it was basically different, because members of hominid bands were disposed to protect one another. They would fight back as best they could, when they had no other option (because as we have seen, individuals on their own were still usually doomed by predatory beasts, such as lions and packs of wolves). But even with the use of tools to fight back, hominids were no match for spiritual animals. They had no defense against attack by a spiritual animal that could adapt the spatial aspects of its social level animal behavior to spatial aspects of the situation in imagination prior to acting. Hominids could be surprised and trapped by the spiritual animal’s capacity to impose a geometrical structure on the motion and interaction of objects in space. (After all, warfare is just a special case of controlling the thermo­dynamic flow of free energy toward evenly distributed heat in the region). Nomadic hominids may sometimes have chosen to run away from their attackers, but even if they survived predation by other animals, that still deprived them of access to the food available by hunting in the region.

The new behavior of spiritual animals was not merely ritualized fighting of the kind that evolves within a species to divide up limited sources of energy in a region. They killed all the members of other hominid groups in order to take over their territory. It was inevitable, when their own reproduction made resources scarce, because war was a new way of controlling this most basic condition affecting their reproduction and it was possible for them. In the end, therefore, their new means of acquiring energy meant the extinction of non-linguistic hominids.

This kind of behavior was not long reserved, however, for use against mere hominid societies. Adapting to warfare gave linguistic animals aggressive desires, like anger and hatred, that made it easy for them to kill animals like themselves. Thus, once all the non-linguistic hominid societies in their region had been wiped out, spiritual animals had enough experience with violence against other groups that, when their own continuing population growth once again made resources scarce enough, some spiritual animals, at least, would try the same means against other spiritual animals. It may eventually have involved yet further changes in the desires they felt towards other members of their own species. But it would not require all the members to try out simultaneously the same random variation, because a leader with a suitable random variation could motivate his followers. Since war again other spiritual animals was a possible means of controlling a relevant condition, reproductive causation inevitably made it actual. That is simply how reproductive cycles of spiritual animals add up in space over time.

War against other spiritual animals was not just predation, for it would usually result in death for all the members of the other group (except possibly some women who were kept alive for other purposes). That was the only safe way for spiritual animals to protect themselves from members of other spiritual animals who were accustomed to cooperating in violent behavior. But there is no reason to rule out cannibalism (if that term applies in this case), because eating the victims of their killing was a possible source of food. Predation was not, however, the original function of war even against non-linguistic hominids. War supplied much more food all at once than could be consumed, and the risks of battle made it more costly than hunting other animals. Furthermore, spiritual animals would have engaged in war, even if they did not eat their victims, since it had the effect of removing competitors for the energy available in the region.

The need for a better behavior guidance system. Though war was inevitable, it was a fateful juncture in evolution. It changed radically the world in which spiritual animals lived. The environment posed a new kind of danger for spiritual animals, and they had to make a new kind of choice between fundamentally different kinds of behavior. Every time they encountered a society of language-using animals like themselves, spiritual animals were forced to choose between war and peace. It was a crucial decision, for if they chose to be friendly toward a group that was planning to kill them, they could all die. But if they chose to war against a society that was willing to be peaceful, they would suffer the losses that such activities involve. Even if they won, the costs would be unnecessary, if resources were not scarce. They could, of course, choose to move out of the way, but that alternative would often mean going without food as others took over the territory from which they had expected to acquire energy.

It was as important for spiritual animals to be able to make this choice correctly as it was for the first animals to choose correctly between ingesting other objects or not — or for the first living organisms to choose between periods of growth and reproduction. In all three cases, choosing between the incompatible alternatives was required for the very existence of organisms of their kind. A wrong choice could mean the end of their reproductive cycles. In short, spiritual animals needed a behavior guidance system in the same sense that living organisms needed a biological behavior guidance system and heterotrophs needed an animal behavior guidance system. Spiritual animals already had a behavior guidance system for their social level animal (and biological) behavior. It was the use of a primitive language, and we have seen how it is a unique spiritual structural cause of their social level behavior. Since the animal behavior guidance system primitive spiritual animals already had was inevitably the locus of further evolution changes, it would take on the new behavior guiding function of making choices about war and peace.

What makes this possible, as we shall see, is a higher level of part-whole complexity in the linguistic representations (due to a higher level of neurological organization) that were used to coordinate the members behavior to act on other objects as a whole. That gave them the capacity for reflection, and since that is the mechanism of reason, reason might be called a new kind of behavior guidance system, with the function of making choices about war and peace.

But reason takes over the function of guiding the animal and biological behavior of spiritual animals, and thus, it is basically the same behavior guidance system that make spiritual animals possible in the first place. And since the higher level of neurological organization occurs within the spiritual animal’s behavior guidance system, the evolution of reason is more like the evolution of higher levels of neurological organization in the subjective and manipulative animal behavior guidance systems. In both cases, is a substantial increase in the power of the animal behavior guidance system. Thus, choices about war and peace will be treated as just a new kind of choice that is made by the spiritual animal’s behavior guidance system, much as it also found itself making biological choices, about growth and reproduction, for the beginning.

To be sure, it would not always have been difficult to make the right choice. There was no need to think twice about any remaining nonlinguistic hominids they may have encountered when resources became scarce. And as long as there were plenty of resources, spiritual animals could live at peace with one another — perhaps, under favorable conditions, for many generations of population growth.

Moreover, some other societies, at least, could be assumed to be friendly, for they were closely related biologically. Nomadic bands had to divide when their populations became too large to gather enough energy by wandering around, and individuals from such groups would recognize one another. Sometimes they would have strong attachments, which would lead them to treat members of other groups like members of their own group. And mating would give them a motive to maintain friendly relations with at least some other groups. They had inherited the primate instinct of mating outside the group, and it would continue to be naturally selected because of the advantages of avoiding inbreeding. However, since animal predators made it dangerous for solitary animals to travel alone, mating would take the form of exchanges of members between friendly groups that encountered one another.

There were, however, other spiritual animals around that would wage war on them. Thus, when they came upon other members of their own species, spiritual animals would inevitably make a distinction between Us and Them. It marked a fundamentally different attitude toward members of other groups, for those who were one of Us would be of the same “tribe” and would be treated in a friendly way, like other members of their own group. But members of nomadic bands from other tribes would be treated like groups that were (or might be) at war with them.

Furthermore, war was an extremely strong form of group level natural selection, which would adapt individuals more basically to membership in spiritual animals. War was dramatically different from the group level natural selection imposed on nomadic bands of hominids, for that was imposed by the habitat that primates invaded. Hominids had to travel in groups in order to protect themselves from the great predatory animals of the grasslands. Though hominid bands eventually imposed natural selection on themselves by the scarcity caused by their own population growth, group selection was not very strong, because not all their members died when times were hard. Survivors could join other groups or form new groups, as many other social animals do. With the advent of war, however, it was more common that all the members of a society would die at once. And even if some members were not killed, it would not be easy for language using subjects to move from group to group, at least, not when they used different languages.

The advent of war would, therefore, cause changes in the desires of the language using primates who adapted to it. They would evolve a pair of strong, but opposite desires, mirroring the choice forced on them by their spiritual nature. One would make them protective of members of their own group and members of others whom they recognized as one of Us, whereas the other desire would make them capable of aggression toward members of groups who were one of Them. One desire would draw them together, and the other would put them at odds with one another, making them suspicious and capable of brutality. Both desires would be strengthened by group level selection, since groups that lacked either desire would tend to be wiped out by losing in war. Thus, linguistic animals evolved desires that made them capable of both kinds of behavior involved in the choice of their spiritual nature forced to make.ⁱ

With strong desires to behave in opposite ways toward other groups, a choice between them had to be made every time one spiritual animal encountered another. Most of the time, there were at least some other groups around they recognized as members of their own tribe. And in peaceful regions, for example, where sources of energy had been divided up into territories, there was probably some warning of the arrival of bands of language-using primates who would wage war against them, so that they could be on the look out and prepared to fight. Between these extremes, however, the input for the choice they had to make was limited and unreliable.

Some distantly related spiritual animals might be given the benefit of the doubt because of their language. Language would be the main criterion for tribal membership among primitive spiritual animals, since the sounds, vocabulary, and surface grammars used by a language are conventional. And spiritual animals from the same tribe would normally be treated as one of Us.

However, spiritual animals from other tribes would be fair game — and, by the same token, quite dangerous. The more remote the relationship, the greater the danger, for it would be difficult to tell whether another group was of the same tribe. Even nomadic bands from the same tribe could be dangerous in special circumstances, such as times of extreme scarcity or when a string of easy victories made a group feel invincible.

And there would be spiritual animals about which they could not be sure. Some spiritual animals might happen on the trick of speaking the language of nomadic bands in the territory so that they would be treated as members of the same tribe and recognized it as a means to victory at war.

The behavior guidance system of spiritual animals had, therefore, to take on a new behavior guiding function. Spiritual animals had to choose between war and peace. That choice was forced on them by their own means of acquiring energy. It was a fateful decision, because choosing either war or peace in the wrong situation was a costly mistake. But in primitive spiritual animals, the choice was made in an animal-like way, by the relative strength of opposite desires, on the basis of whatever cues had evolved or been learned as triggers for those desires. Even when there was time for a leader to hear what everyone had to say, this behavior guidance system was liable to disastrous errors. They needed a more reliable way of making the basic choice entailed by their spiritual nature.

The nature of reflection. As linguistic animals, however, the need for a better way of choosing about war and peace could be met by a mechanism that enabled spiritual animals to “see into the minds” of other spiritual animals. Which kind of behavior would control the condition affecting their reproduction in the situation depended on the plans of the other spiritual animal. If the other spiritual animal was intending to wage war to control the territory and its resources, it would be necessary to fight or get out of its way. The worst mistake would be to take the other spiritual animal to be friendly when it is planning war. On the other hand, if the other spiritual animal had peaceful intentions, it would be better, considering the costs, to avoid war, although fighting might still be chosen in order to protect or gain territory from which to gather energy. In any case, to make the correct choice more reliably, it would have to be able to peer into the mind of the other spiritual animal and see the plans behind their behavior.

All any spiritual animal had to go on, however, was the observable behavior of the other spiritual animal. The animal system of representation had been shaped over eons to be maximally powerful in detecting physical aspects of objects. That would make them aware of the bodies making up the other spiritual animal, of their behavior and motion in space, but it would not always reveal what they needed to know about the other spiritual animal’s plans. To be sure, observation would sometimes make the choice obvious, for example, when they saw victims of a newly arrived group whom they recognized as belonging to their own tribe. Or when they were already under attack by the other group. But what members of the other group said, especially if said to them, would not necessarily be a trustworthy guide to the intentions causing their behavior. It might be disastrous, since the advantages of deception could be discovered by trial and error. But often they would not even be able to understand the others’ language.

It was nevertheless possible, in principle, to discover the other spiritual animal’s intentions from their behavior, for there is a regularity about social level behavior generated according to a plan of group action. What members of the other group do at one moment is part of a geometrical structure in time and space, and part of it is how they will behave in the future and how they would behave in certain situations. That is, after all, how social level animal behavior structures the thermo­dynamic flow of free energy toward increasing entropy to make things happen that would not otherwise happen.

If it were up to their naturalistic imagination by itself, the spatio-temporal geometrical structure about their behavior might be too complex or too subtle to be recognized. But this challenge could be answered. There was a way for them to recognize the pattern, because such behavior is guided by the same kind of structural cause as their own. By identifying the causes behind the other spiritual animal’s behavior, they could anticipate the parts of the spatio-temporal structure yet to come.

The mechanism responsible for this remarkable insight is basically the ability to use a language with psychological sentences, as well as natural sentences. We have seen how this higher level of neurological organization gives the linguistic brain a new form of imagination, rational imagination, by which they can think about psychological states and understand how they cause behavior (and beliefs). “Reflection” is an appropriate name for a mechanism that enables animals to use their own behavior guiding processes to simulate the behavior guiding processes going on in others.

Rational imagination can be used to explain or predict the behavior of subjects in any situation. Several psychological images may have to be predicated of the subject to represent all his relevant beliefs about the situation he is in and the various desires (or longer range intentions) that are at work in him, but they can all be held together as parts of the psychological image that is being predicated of a subject in the (perceived or imagined) local scene. They are all imposed at once as a temporary modification on one’s own worldview and goals, as if one were in the other’s situation. The changes that occur in one’s beliefs or intentions are the predictions one makes about the other subject, given those premises. The conclusions may be just inferences about what the subject would come to believe. But when it leads to new intentions, it is a prediction of the subject’s behavior.

To serve the function required by spiritual animals, however, rational imagination would have to take a somewhat different form. As suggested at the beginning, what is known is the overt behavior of the members of the other spiritual animal. Along with common background beliefs, they are assumed to have whatever additional, relevant beliefs that come from where they are located in the territory. In order to predict their future behavior, it is necessary to work backwards to their common intention by comparing possible sets of desires and beliefs and the intentions to which they would lead, for it is basically an inference to the best explanation of what is known. Thus, rational imagination would enable reflective subject to tell more reliably what they should do about war and peace.

Since being able to see into the minds of other spiritual animals would serve the urgent function of making correct decisions about war and peace more reliably, it would help control the condition that affects their reproduction so dramatically. Thus, the revolutionary change that begins the reflective stage of evolution is inevitable.