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<title>Spiritual animals</title>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font color="#993366"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>S<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="TtsOtkCRS08_06" align="right" hspace="5" width="300" height="32" border="0">piritual
animals. </b></font></font>The evolution of a primitive language
marks, therefore, the evolution of a new kind of animal. But it is
unique, because, according to this ontological explanation of
revolutionary evolution, this stage of evolution has two ontological
causes. Like previous stages in the evolution of multicellular
animals, one ontological cause is a higher level of neurological
organization, because what makes it possible to guide social level
animal behavior is the use natural sentences. But since it is also
the evolution of an animal at the social level of biological
organization, another ontological cause of this revolutionary change
is a higher level of biological organization. Being caused by higher
levels of part-whole complexity in evolving organisms in two
different ways at once is unprecedented in the course of evolution.
And it makes what evolves at the first spiritual stage unique is
other ways. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">U<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="TtsOtkCRS08_07" align="right" hspace="5" width="225" height="23" border="0">nique
kind of essential nature. </font>The use of natural sentences to
coordinate behavior in groups of hominids is a new animal behavior
guidance system. Indeed, it is the new kind of animal behavior
guidance system made possible by the social level of biological
organization, just as the nervous system was the new kind of animal
behavior guidance system made possible by the multicellular level.
And as we shall see, it is only the first stage in the evolution of
that animal behavior guidance system.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">What makes
<i>animal societies </i>so much less powerful than spiritual animals
is that they not no behavior guidance system to guide social level
animal behavior. They have only the animal behavior guidance systems
built into their multicellular bodies, and their social nature, such
as it is, comes from desires built into their brains that make them
gregarious and, perhaps, set up a dominance hierarchy among them. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Insect
colonies and other multisomatic animals do have behavior at the
social level that is generated by a behavior guidance system, but it
is a biological behavior guidance system, not an animal behavior
guidance system. That is, insect colonies are what we called
“anomalous animals,” because the only animal behavior guidance
systems involved in generating their behavior exist in the lower
level parts, the individual insects. Insect colonies are like
sponges, except that being on the social level, they are made up of
insects, rather than collar flagellates. Thus, they do not have
<i>animal </i>behavior at the social level at all. They do not move
around in space as a whole, nor do they act on other objects as a
whole. Only the parts have animal behavior. Their social level
behavior is like that of a plant, acting on the world as a whole or,
at most, orienting behavior in an ambient field. In short,
multisomatic animals have only a biological behavior guidance system
at the social level of biological organization., and even that is
only an extension of the multicellular biological behavior guidance
system (or the mechanism of embryological development) to construct a
multisomatic body on the social level in addition to the bodies it
already constructs on the multicellular level. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Social
level biological behavior guidance system.</b></i> Spiritual animals
do have animal behavior on the social level guided by an animal
behavior guidance system, as we have seen. But the first indication
of their unique kind of essential nature is that their animal
behavior guidance system is not constructed by a social level
biological behavior guidance system. At all previous stages in which
animals evolved at a higher level of biological organization, their
new kind of animal behavior guidance system required a structural
cause that was constructed by their biological behavior guidance
system, and thus, the biological behavior guidance system had to
evolve first. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Multicellular
animals had to evolve a mechanism of embryological development before
there were animals with nervous systems on the multicellular level,
because that is what constructs their nervous systems. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">And
in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes, the first behavior guidance
system to evolve was a mechanism that could lead them through their
reproductive cycles independently of the cycle of night and day. Only
later did they evolve the capacity to acquire energy by ingesting
other objects in space and the special mechanisms required to choose
between incompatible kinds of behavior toward other objects in space,
such as whether to ingest them or not. And those animal behavior
guidance systems were both constructed and maintained by the capacity
of their biological behavior guidance systems to coordinate the
behavior of the lower level organisms of which they were composed. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Spiritual
animals are, therefore, radically different, because they evolved a
behavior guidance system for animal behavior at the social level
without first evolving a social level biological behavior guidance
system. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
lack of a social level biological behavior guidance system is not so
puzzling when we think about them concretely, because we can
understand how the use of a primitive language of natural sentences
makes it possible to coordinate the members behavior in generating
social level behavior. That is why I introduced spiritual animals by
explaining the function of language in groups of primates. We can see
that its evolution is inevitable, if language is possible. However,
an ontological explanation of the stages of evolution cannot afford
to overlook the curious nature of spiritual animals. The use of
language is clearly a social level behavior guidance system, because
it guides animal behavior on the social level in groups of primates.
But it would be wrong to conclude that spiritual animals have no
social level biological behavior guidance system at all. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
truth is that the use of natural sentences is also a biological
behavior guidance system at the social level. Spiritual animals also
go through cycles of reproduction in which they use free energy to do
both kinds of work, the non-reproductive work of controlling relevant
conditions as well as reproduction itself, and since they choose for
themselves when to grow and when reproduce, they have their own
biological behavior guidance system. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Their
non-reproductive work is the social level animal behavior that
explains why language evolved. The use of language is an animal
behavior guidance system, or the structural cause for social level
behavior, and animal behavior is a form of non-reproductive work. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
spiritual animal also reproduces as a whole. Indeed, reproduction is
easy for spiritual animals, because it is just a matter of the group
dividing into smaller groups which go their separate ways. And
reproduction becomes necessary from time to time, because the members
continue to reproduce on the individual level and spiritual animals
eventually become too large to gather enough food for everyone by
hunting and gathering by wandering around. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
division of the group can be generated by the instructions of a
leader in the same way as other kinds of behavior, and when they
divide, the smaller groups have all the same kinds of powers as they
parent group. That is, each takes their primitive language with them,
and the instinctive desires that lead to a dominance hierarchy gives
each daughter group a leader so that it can do the non-reproductive
work of acquiring energy and growing. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>A
new form of life. </b></i>Since spiritual animals have all the
characteristics that led us to believe that prokaryotes were the
first living organisms, it seems that they must be considered a new
form of life. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">What
marked the beginning of life, we decided, was the evolution of the
first biological behavior guidance system, for that enabled the cells
to go through reproductive cycles on their own, independently of the
cycle of night and day. Since each cycle included non-reproductive
work as well as reproduction, those cells had the kind of <i>autonomous
activity </i>that is ordinarily meant by “living.” And we took
this ordinary meaning of life to be ontologically significant,
because it indicated a change in the ontological cause of evolution.
It meant that natural selection was no longer imposed on them from
outside, by the circadian cycle. Reproductive causation takes the
cause of natural selection to be reproduction, because population
growth leads to a scarcity of free energy that requires some
reproductive cycles to come to an end. After the evolution of the
first biological behavior guidance system, therefore, organisms
imposed natural selection on themselves by their own reproduction. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Spiritual
animals clearly have <i>autonomous activity </i>in the ordinary
sense, for they generate both growth and reproduction on their own.
And it has the same ontological significance as it did in
prokaryotes, because their social level reproduction does mean that
growth in the population of spiritual animals will eventually make
resources scarce. They will eventually impose natural selection on
themselves, and thus, like other forms of life, they will make
themselves evolve. Their social level reproductive cycles will add up
in space over time to a gradual change in the direction of maximum
holistic power for organisms of their kind, which is natural
perfection for organisms of their kind.</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Spiritual
animals might even be called the “third origin of life.” </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Life first
evolved when cell enclosed loops of DNA with a regulatory mechanism
evolved into a biological behavior guidance system that led
prokaryotes through cycles of reproduction independently of the
circadian cycle. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">But much
the same thing happened again when colonies of prokaryotes that
constructed aquatic balloons evolved a nucleus and were also able to
go through reproductive cycles independently of the cycle of night
and day. In both of these cases, life began with the evolution of a
structural cause that could take over responsibility for their entire
reproductive cycle. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">That is
also what happened to nomadic groups of primates when they evolved
the capacity to use language to guide their social level animal
behavior, for that was the evolution of a structural cause that would
generate the reproductive cycles by which they would impose natural
selection on themselves. Though in this case, the mold for their
reproductive cycles was no the cycle of night and day, it was just as
inevitable, because they were imposed by the reproduction (and,
hence, population growth) of its members. With the evolution of
natural sentences, choices about social level growth and reproduction
were made by a behavior guidance system. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">There
is one aspect of spiritual animals that may make us reluctant to
think of them as living organisms, though it does not disqualify them
in the end. It comes from how spiritual animals are different from
multicellular animals. Individual multicellular animals can have
minds, but spiritual animals cannot. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">By “mind,”
I mean not merely a process of guiding animal behavior, but one with
the unity of consciousness as well. We have seen how the behavior
guiding process that occurs in brains gives rise to a form of matter
whose intrinsic essential nature accounts for phenomenal properties,
that is, the appearances that subjective animals have in perceiving
the world, thinking about it, and feeling desires. (See <font face="Arial, sans-serif">Stage
6: Subjective animals: Unity of consciousness.</font>) </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Spiritual
animals cannot be conscious in that sense, apart from the
consciousness of its members. Disjointed, composite organisms cannot
have neurons working together as in the thalamic projection to the
neocortex like a massive complex antenna generating photons that
register activity throughout the brain. Spiritual animals do not have
conscious minds. But the assumption that such a subjective aspect to
experience is essential to life may explain the reluctance to think
of spiritual animals as living organisms. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">It is not,
however, sufficient reasons to deny that spiritual animals are a new
form of life, for if it were, we would have to deny that prokaryotes
and eukaryotes, plants and telesensory animals are forms of life.
They do not have the unity of consciousness. But they are surely
alive. Thus, I see no reason to deny that spiritual animal are a new
form of life. The fact that they are made up of parts that are
themselves living organisms, indeed organisms with the unity of
consciousness, does not mean that they are not alive. It only points
up how spiritual animals are unique in the course of evolution. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Lack
of a social level material structure.</b></i> What makes spiritual
animals different from the evolution of life in prokaryotes and
eukaryotes is that spiritual animals do not have any unchanging
structure on their level of biological organization, except the more
or less continual linguistic interaction among its members. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
members must continually interact linguistically, for that is what
coordinates their behavior as parts of a higher level organism. But
since the continual exchange of linguistic representations is the
only unchanging geometrical structure that is required at the social
level for the use of language to guide the behavior of the spiritual
animal, it is provided by their gregariousness, which is due to the
biological behavior guidance system of each individual member. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This is the
reason for calling the new kind of animal at the social level of
biological organization “spiritual” animals. The spiritual animal
has no body of its own, except the bodies of all its members, and
since a form of life that does not have a physical body is the
traditional meaning of “spiritual,” it is appropriate to call
these groups of language using primates “spiritual animals.”</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Having
a spiritual nature gives spiritual animals a great advantage when it
comes to the efficiency of reproductive causation, because it means
that natural selection is at work simultaneously on two different
levels of biological organization. At the same time that the
reproduction of spiritual animal at the social level is causing a
population growth that imposes natural selection at the social level,
the sexual reproduction of its members is causing a population growth
within spiritual animals that imposes natural selection at the
individual level. Simultaneously on two levels of biological
organization, therefore, there is a gradual change in animals in the
direction of natural perfection for organisms of their kind. As
spiritual animals become as powerful as possible for animals made up
of language using multicellular animals as parts, their members
become as powerful as possible for animals that exist as parts of
spiritual animals.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">What makes
this two-level gradual evolution possible is having a spiritual
nature, because that makes social level reproduction easy. The
members of a spiritual animal move around in space separately from
one another, and so reproduction at the social level is merely a
matter of subgroups separating from one another and going off in
different directions, terminating their linguistic interactions with
one another. That is what makes it so easy for language to serve as
a biological behavior guidance system, given that it has the capacity
to guide social level <i>animal </i>behavior. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
evolution of eukaryotic cells is analogous to the evolution of
spiritual animals, except that eukaryotes have a material structure,
or physical nature, rather than spiritual nature. The behavior of the
lower level organisms is coordinated by enclosing them all within a
cell, and thus, reproduction depends on dividing the cell and all
reproducing all the lower level organisms of which it is composed.
And since there are two lower levels of structural causes contained
within the eukaryotic cell (the prokaryote-level chromosomes and the
RNA-level genes of which chromosomes are composed), eukaryotes have a
very complex structure, which taxes the capacity of reproductive
causation to change in the direction of natural perfection. As
evolving structures become complex, more random variations are
possible, and eventually there is not enough time to try them all
out. Their star will die first. Eukaryotes overcome this obstacle, as
we have seen, by sexual reproduction. Sexually mixing their lower
level structural causes as part of the process of reproduction
focuses natural selection on those parts whose contribution to the
whole makes the biggest difference to their power to control relevant
at that point in their gradual evolution. Thus, instead of evolving
by simple branching, like prokaryotes, eukaryotes can evolve as a
species with a gene pool. And favorable random variations that occur
in different members of previous generations can accumulate in
individuals of later generations.</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
advantage of having a spiritual nature is that no such special
mechanism is required to focus natural selection on the lower level
structural causes of which they are composed. Or rather, the way in
which members mate outside their own group and migrate from one group
to another means that a kind of “sexual mixing” is constantly
going on in spiritual animals. Nor does the evolution of the parts
depend on group level natural selection. Natural selection works to
some extent on individuals within spiritual animal, because there are
still conditions to be controlled within spiritual animals that
affect their reproduction, and those who are better able to control
them tend to leave more offspring. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
way that spiritual animals differ from organisms with a material
structure makes them seem like what we called “composite
organisms,” but they are something more. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">We
recognized the existence of composite organisms in discussing what is
the “unit of selection” according to reproductive causation. We
have seen how mating pairs and families are organisms that impose
natural selection on themselves by their own reproduction and make
themselves evolve. Even nomadic bands of hominids were composite
organisms of a kind, since they were subject to group level
selection. We called them composite organisms, because what goes
through those reproductive cycles is not a material structure (with
an unchanging geometrical structure), but a collection of material
organisms. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Individual
organisms are different from composite organisms because each
originates from a single fertilized egg cell and they cannot be
divided up without dying. Composite organisms are “dividual,”
rather than individual, organisms. Though they can die, they do not
necessarily die when they are divided up. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Spiritual
animals are composite organisms by this test. They evolve by going
through reproductive cycles and imposing natural selection on
themselves at the social level. And they are “dividual,” because
they do not necessarily die when they are broken up. Indeed, that is
how they reproduce. But they are not merely composite organisms. Even
though they do not have a material structure as a whole, they do have
a structural cause of their social level animal behavior. It is a
spiritual structural cause, and that is what is unique about
spiritual animals. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">S<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="TtsOtkCRS08_08" align="right" hspace="5" width="225" height="27" border="0">ocial
and cultural aspects of the spiritual structural cause. </font>Spiritual
animals have a unique kind of essential nature, therefore, because
the ontological cause of their social level behavior is a spiritual
structural cause, rather than a material structural cause (or
material structure). The spiritual animal is the new kind of animal
that is made possible at the social level of biological organization
stands, but it stands in stark contrast to all previous animal.
Though it has biological and animal behavior at the social level, it
does not have any unchanging geometrical structure at the social
level to serve as its structural cause — except for the continual
linguistic interaction of its members. That is, the use of language
to coordinate the members behavior is its structural cause. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
spiritual animal has no body of its own, because with the use of
language, it does not need a body to have a structural cause to serve
as its behavior guidance system. Its only body is all the bodies of
its members, which are in more or less continual linguistic
interaction with one another. That is what earns the spiritual
animals its name. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Since a
form of life without a body is what has traditionally been meant by
“spiritual,” “spiritual animal” is the appropriate name for
the kind of organism that evolves from manipulative animals, that is,
at the eight stage of evolution. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
use of language as a structural cause to guide social level behavior
gives spiritual animals an essential nature that includes two kinds
of structures, and it should be noticed at the outset, because it
will play an important role in explaining the evolution of spiritual
animals. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
use of language, as we have seen, is both a biological and an animal
behavior guidance system for spiritual animals. It is able to serve
both functions, because it generates social level behavior by
coordinating the behavior of its individual members. That is, it does
not need any material structure at the social level to serve as a
structural cause for its social level animal behavior. But it does
need the continual linguistic interaction among the members, and in
that mechanism, there are two, fundamentally different kinds of
structures, involving two fundamentally different kinds of part-whole
complexity, which are essential to their spiritual nature. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
evolution of spiritual animals involves, as we have seen, higher
levels of part-whole complexity in both ways that have been traced in
this ontological derivation of the overall course of evolution in a
spatiomaterial world: a higher level of neurological organization as
well as a higher level of biological organization. Language has a
nature that makes it essential to both. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
capacity to use language is the function of the higher level of
neurological organization in the individual members, for, as we shall
see, it a new way of manipulating “object images” in the “local
image” and constructing “maps” of such “local images.” </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">But
linguistic representations are not just constructs in imagination.
They can be generated publicly by speaking, and their public
manifestation is what makes it possible for them to coordinate the
behavior of many different multicellular animals as parts of a higher
level organism. Thus, this other aspect of language, its being
public, is also essential to the nature of the spiritual animal. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Language
is, therefore, what ties these two higher levels of part-whole
complexity together as a single object in space with a new kind of
essential nature, and that means that spiritual animals have two
fundamentally different kinds of structures <i>as a whole</i>. In
other words, the essential nature of the spiritual animal is uniquely
<i>twofold</i>. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">All the
organisms and structures whose evolution we have traced thus far,
including not only biological organisms and neurological structures,
but also behavioral schemata, have essential natures that are defined
by a <i>single, </i>material structure. I have called them
“organisms,” or “reproducing organisms,” but they all involve
a single way in which material parts are bundled together so that
they go through reproductive cycles as a whole and impose natural
selection on themselves. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">But in the
case of case of spiritual animals, two structures define their
essential nature: how multicellular animals are combined as parts of
a social level organism and how words are combined as parts of the
sentences that they can all generate as public behavior. Both are
aspects of the “organisms” that go through reproductive cycles
and impose natural selection on themselves by their own population
growth. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
structure that spiritual animals have because of their higher level
of biological organization will be called the “social aspect” of
spiritual animals, and the structure that spiritual animals have
because of their higher level of neurological organization and the
linguistic representations that they exchange will be called the
“cultural aspect” of spiritual animals. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Social
aspect. </b></i>The social aspect is a structure of the spiritual
animal as a whole in the same way as each higher level of biological
organization involves a new structure. Lower level organisms are
bundled together as parts of a higher level organism by coordinating
their behavior. In the case of spiritual animals, they are bundled
together in a way that does not require a specific set of spatial
relations among them. But being in continual linguistic interaction
is nevertheless a kind of structure, for it makes them all parts of a
higher level organism. And as we shall see, that kind of structure is
the source of its greater power as an animal and, later, makes it
possible to for additional social structures to evolve because they
generate social level behavior that controls some condition that
affects the reproduction of spiritual animals.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Cultural
aspect.</b></i> The cultural aspect is also a structure of the
spiritual animal as a whole, because what makes it possible for
linguistic interactions to guide the behavior of the spiritual animal
as a whole is that all the members speak the same language. The
structure of language is a structure of the whole because it is a
structure that is contained in each member of the spiritual animal.
Its being located in each member is what makes it possible for one
and the same structure to serve as both the biological animal
behavior guidance system for the spiritual animal. The spiritual
animal does not need a biological behavior guidance system that can
set up a complex structure to function as an animal behavior guidance
system, because that mechanism is contained in each of the parts and
all that is necessary for it to generate group level behavior is that
the members continually interact with one another linguistically. The
cultural structure is potentially complete in each individual brain,
and calling the linguistic structure “culture” anticipates
somewhat the significance of this aspect. Not only are the two
subsequent stages of evolution caused by higher level of part-whole
complexity in linguistic representations exchanged as culture (that
is, higher levels of neurological organization), but culture is
itself capable of evolving by reproductive causation. That is the
main source of increases in the power of spiritual animal to control
relevant conditions. </font></font></font>
</p>
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