False Rationality
Rationality is something we humans think we are endowed with. Millions of years of evolution and natural selection has allowed us to develop a brain that is rational, analytical and logical. However, it is constantly thwarted by our “irrational” instincts and emotions. Plato agreed that our minds are in a constant war between our instincts, emotions and rational mind. I am certain that you must have felt this tug-of-war between desire and reason many a times. However, this is where I will diverge from common thinking, I do not think that our rationality separates us from our “primal” instincts and emotions.
Just like heat is a byproduct of a incandescent light bulb, rationality is a byproduct of our human brain being such an efficient prediction machine. Rationality is merely a product of natural selection that has not interfered with the propagation of the human species, and therefore cannot be attributed to be superior to our instincts and emotions. Despite this, we constantly allow rationality to form this wedge between nature and us. Moreover, with the birth of more sophisticated organised religions, it was paramount that we detach ourselves from nature and its beasts. It was crucial that we were the caretakers of the natural world rather than a humble part of it. Additionally, our cognitive ability to discern emotional and instinctual thinking from rational thinking solidified this assumption. However, just like how our instincts and emotions are product of natural selection, rationality is also a product of natural selection — it does not separate us from nature but is a part of nature.
Another problem of mine is the usage of the word ‘intelligence’ in its most narrow and anthropocentric form. Intelligence is an arbitrary word we made up to define anything that can learn and understand things. This definition implies that our current mental capacity as a species should be the natural progression for any species, including alien species. We even use this narrow definition when looking for “intelligent” life in the expanse of space. Therefore we are looking for ourselves, we are looking for a species that has gone through the same phases of evolution as us. I do not wish to undermine our technological and scientific advancements, however, to attribute “intelligence” only to skills such as tool usage, construction, mathematic calculations, genetic manipulation and nuclear fission seems extremely reductive. Just because the human species has evolved this way it does not mean every species would evolve this way. To impose our narrow subjective perspective of intelligence to the expanse of our universe seems ludicrous. It is high time that we accept that the chances of us finding a species that fits our definition of intelligence are extremely slim. Therefore, our definition of intelligence needs to be more inclusive or we ditch the search for “intelligent life” completely.
