Does the evolution of reason undermine the belief in evolution?

Athena, goddess of reason and intelligence, looks over the blotchy, plasticine horde of humankind.
“Are you sure?” she says to her companion. He’s sure.

Prometheus, that mischievous, Zeus-bothering titan, loved the humans he had created. But he could only do so much with clay, and looking out over the inanimate eyes of muddy figurines made him sad. So he needed Athena.

The goddess took a deep breath and blew with all her divinity. Wisdom, reason, deliberation, intelligence, and consciousness pushed out over the figures, and Homo sapiens were born. We are all creatures of clay with a divine spark. We have eyes, and light behind the eyes to think.

This idea of “divine reason” has, in one way or another, dominated Western philosophy and thought. From Plato to Descartes to Freud, the idea of some rational “overseer” or conduit to truth has rarely gone away for long. It inspired the Enlightenment, the scientific revolution, and secular humanism. It pulled God from His divine throne and replaced Him with “reason.” Hubris is best served rationally.

Now, however, we’ve gone the other way. Now, reason and intelligence are dragged through the evolutionary mud. As philosopher Alex O’Connor explores in this week’s Mini Philosophy interview, this raises a new and interesting problem in itself.

The dethronement of reason

“I became convinced that the traditional views on the nature of rationality could not be correct,” neuroscientist Antonio Damasio writes in the introduction to his book Descartes’ Error. “And so I began writing this book to propose that reason may not be as pure as most of us think it is or wish it were.”

Before you even pick up the book, you know what Damasio is going to argue. But actually, it should have been called Descartes’ Errors because Damasio really has two targets in mind. First is the idea of the Cogito — “I think, therefore I am” — which imagines thought to be primary in who we are. Second, though, is Descartes’ substance dualism, that we are made of res extensa (blotchy clay) and res cogitans (Athenean divinity). Damasio thinks both are wrong.

If we are materialists, then reason cannot be an immaterial thing. If we are atheists or irreligious, then rationality cannot be divine breath. Instead, reason is just the latest product in a long line of neurological evolution that resulted in the reproductively useful tool we call “the human brain.” Reason can be no more divorced from the other facets of our mind or body than our ability to sweat, metabolize, or sleep. “Reason” is inseparably wedded to the entirety of the human organism — an organism that evolved to be precisely this way.

Plantinga’s attack

I presented all this to O’Connor in our interview. I admitted to him that I was feeling brought low by the bastardization of reason. Things were easier and more glorified when reason was special in some way. Now, what are humans? Trumped-up primates with pretensions of divinity. But then, O’Connor introduced me to an argument I had never heard before: the evolutionary argument against naturalism, which was best expanded in philosopher Alvin Plantinga’s 1993 book, Warrant and Proper Function.

Evolution is all about reproduction. And sometimes, when an organism reproduces, there will be certain random genetic mutations that allow the organism to out-reproduce others. Those genes hang around. Every aspect of every animal on Earth is the way it is because it helps it, at some point, to reproduce.

So, where does reason and the love of truth fit into this theory? Well, it doesn’t. Our reason is a product of our brain, which is the lucky and useful result of reproduction. If evolution is right, the human mind doesn’t care about the truth in and of itself but only cares about utility and survivability. Of course, sometimes knowing a thing is true can help us survive, but not always and not necessarily.

So, Plantinga presents the problem: How do we know evolution is true? Well, we use our reason. But if evolution is true, our reason isn’t designed for the truth except incidentally.

And so, if you’re a materialist, you cannot believe in evolution.

A return to the logos

What are the solutions to this? Well, Plantinga argues that the only way to salvage the “truth” of evolution is to salvage the notion of reason by recourse to divinity. We need a God-guided reason or something closer to the ancient Greek idea of logos: a rational lattice that runs through the metaphysics of the Universe. Athena’s breath, running through everything.

In our interview, though, O’Connor argues we should redefine what truth means. O’Connor says we need different criteria of what truth is or even that the notion of “truth” itself is an empty and pointless expression — a theory known as deflationism, which I explore in this week’s Mini Philosophy newsletter, coming out this Friday.

Of course, there are responses to the evolutionary argument against naturalism, but as with all provocative and brilliant philosophy, the debate still goes on. What do you think? Is reason some adamantine gift of the gods? Or is it some mucky, muddy tool that cares only about reproduction and survivability? Neither answer sounds that great.