Beyond Darwin: the second type of evolution based on mind intentionality and selection

Abstract

The paper deals with the mechanisms of evolution beginning with Darwin’s ideas on the moral sense and with the proposal of defining the evolutionary process as a mechanism of chance and necessity. The following points are discussed. The first concerns the thesis that in order to overcome the mind–body dualism, the naturalization of the conscience is a necessary step. The second concerns the distinction between deterministic and non-deterministic processes, where the former are responsible for the evolution of the natural world and the generation and reproduction of the DNA system of the living organisms, and the latter are essential to explain the evolution of the mind–brain systems of the human beings. The third concerns the nature and the role of intentionality and rationality. Intentionality and rationality of the human beings are properties which render the behaviours and the other mental events of the primates directed toward the conditions and the events of the living organism world. But, in my opinion, these operations do more and precisely they tend to move the whole evolutionary process from the predominant effects of the chance and necessity principles of the natural world to the alternative effects of the intentional and free will procedures of the human world. The fourth concerns the mechanisms responsible for the transition from the deterministic systems—as are all the molecular and cellular processes which constitute the basic structure of cells, organs and apparatus of living organisms as well as of brain—to the non-deterministic systems of the neural networks which are responsible for the production and development of the operations elaborated by the mind–brain systems. I have also discussed the mechanisms—specific to human beings, and absent or present to a very limited extent in other primates—by which the mind–brain system of the Homo sapiens sapiens generates culture, moral sense and free will.