Reason in Nature

The existence of the universe, by default, gives rise to all philosophical problems. Given that we are beings with minds that can pose philosophical questions, one perplexing aspect of the universe is that it has brought about beings capable of reason. Discoveries in cognitive science suggest that minds, or specifically mental phenomena such as perception, thought or memory, are the result of neural activation patterns in our brains. Animal brains have the remarkable capacity, through the process of activation patterns, to extract information from the world and make this information accessible in a format that we experience subjectively and call ‘mind’.

Our capacity for reason is especially interesting. Consider that calculators possess the property of being ‘semantically well-behaved’. That means calculators can give the correct answer to an arithmetic problem such as 5 + 1 by tracking correct derivations in the domain of arithmetic. The calculator undergoes a physical state transformation, and through interior state changes, it can output the correct answer. Human brains also possess the property of being ‘semantically well-behaved’.

Imagine the paths of electrical signals in the brain. The signals move in space and in time. Generated and maintained by neurons, they move along connected pathways and are interpreted and transformed––through the process of activation patterns––according to some unknown neural firing rules. These activation patterns present themselves to us as semantically well-behaved thoughts.

We can calculate 5 + 1 in thought, we keep track of the calendar, and we use grammatical rules to produce spoken and written language. We can reason in such startling complex ways that we have built houses, written books on innumerable subjects, and put a telescope in space capable of capturing light from stars that were there at the beginning.

The existence of reason in the natural world is a profound phenomena.