Youth brings self-assurance, and age should bring wisdom. But if age turns the self-assurance of youth to stubbornness, opportunities of wisdom become squandered. Einstein was possibly the greatest human genius, but when other scientists discovered quantum mechanics, Einstein rejected the new knowledge on the moral grounds that "God did not play dice with the universe". Likewise, when the Big Bang theory of cosmology was proposed, several prominent astronomers rejected it on the moral grounds that it seemed unscientific for the universe to have a "creation". Emanuel Kant was among the greatest modern philosophers, but he was stunned by Hume's brash assertion that cause-and-effect was merely an impression of mind. Kant set out to disprove Hume's moral heresy, but Kant's righteous wisdom led him to commit a stupid error from which his philosophy never recovered.

Thus, when confronting new ideas we must be careful. We all have theories about the universe, but no matter how brilliant any idea it must be tested against facts. Age, experience, and moral wisdom provide guides, but they cannot give proof, especially about the universe. For many years this author considered the universe was an empty stage into which humans entered, like actors. If humans did not come, the stage would still be there. This view offered the surest path to a scientific explanation of how humans fitted into the universe, because it allowed their presence no unique function.

The idea of the universe as an empty stage has been known throughout history as materialism because it postulated that material existed in the universe independently of mind. The opposite view was called idealism. It supposed that that existence of the universe had no meaning until it formed an idea in somebody's mind. These rival concepts of materialism and idealism have been debated since antiquity, when Plato divided philosophers into either of these camps. Plato was an idealist. Further dividing the sides was a sociological concept that materialism represented a scientific outlook and an open political philosophy, while idealism favored a mystical universe, and a hierarchical political structure. The divisions reached their nadir under Soviet Marxism, when philosophers were forced to declare their views, with persecution of those not adhering to an official line. Soviet Marxism also declared the universe governed by cast iron laws of matter, life and thought. But as these laws did not help the Soviets much in the end, we now question the validity of any laws formed for a purpose other than the practical expedient of increasing human options.

How does the Theory of Options approach the ancient debate of idealism versus materialism? What theory of the relationship of mind to matter do we see allowing maximum human options?

Firstly, reflecting on the two-and-a-half millennia of debates over this, we hope that books will not get burned, or people will not get jailed or persecuted for expressing ideas about it one way or the other. This author still believes that the universe exists as an empty stage, only I now question what purpose the stage of the universe would fulfill if devoid of its human actors, at least for a theory of knowledge. To return to the cosmological problem, we can mathematically conjecture a universe in which humans do not appear, but because all theories must be verified by evidence of the senses, we would have no way to verify if this model would be valid. Moreover, this observer problem applies to the universe we presently inhabit. For example, the universe is presently expanding at such a prodigious rate that at distances near maximum radius objects expand away from us at the speed of light. At that distance they effectively cross an event horizon beyond which human observers would no longer see them, or have any physical connection to their events. On the other hand, at the instant of the Big Bang the universe was so small that all events did interconnect within a common event horizon. Only this creates another problem for our cherished endeavor of specifying every cause-and-effect in the universe. As the universe expands objects once connected acquire unique event horizons beyond which they are no longer connected, so what happens to all those cause-and-effect events which become split across event horizons? Humans can only answer such questions by determining which events of those we remain connected to can we measure. The 3 ⁰ K background radiation from the Big Bang was an event we could measure.

Even so, the event horizon creates other problems. If you stand five feet from another human, your event horizon is five feet different from his at the legendary edge of the universe. Five feet in twelve billion light years is an infinitesimally small margin. But if humans one day had an observer station on the Planet Pluto the difference would be five hours, which is perceptible for observations of events in the Solar System or nearby stars. Another problem is that while we appear physically free to move our event horizon any direction within three dimensions, space is four-dimensional. We all stand on the surface of the Earth, which gives us our up-down sense of direction, but we are also standing, or embedded in the surface of time, which is expanding outwards from events of the Big Bang. We are aware of time but have no sense of how to travel back and fourth within it. If we were two-dimensional beings we should imagine ourselves on the surface of a giant sphere that is expanding. Going backwards in time would be like moving into the sphere (burrowing into the surface) while forward travel in time would be like ascending above the surface of the sphere. Because the sphere of time is expanding too points on its surface move further apart, which happens to galaxies.

We can reframe the earlier problem of cause-and-effect in terms of our sphere of possibilities. We, as three-dimensional beings are free to move in those dimensions in which we have control. But we have no in-out control over the time dimension, which traps us in a surface in which the universe expands, and galaxies move away from each other. As Hawking has pointed out, in the direction in which the time surface expands disordered events, such as a windowpane being smashed, always follow ordered events, such as stone striking an unbroken windowpane. This reinforces our sense of loss of control. It makes the drivers of cause-and-effect, expansion of a time surface in which we are embedded, and winding down of order in the universe. (If you are getting confused, time keeps marching on. During the expansion phase of the universe we are on the outside of a sphere growing larger. If there is a contraction phase we would be on the inside of a sphere growing smaller.)

Considering these effects of the universe in which we live to an observer, we must be careful specifying the relationship of mind to the universe. It is not that mind exists independently of matter but that matter does not form a flat, Newtonian stage. All events in the universe, including mind, exist at unique points of space-time. At the present point of Earth space-time, there has come into existence in the universe elements containing more than 92 protons. We might therefore say that in a four dimensional model of our universe conditions for the creation of artificial elements will occur when the time radius of the universe reaches fifteen billion light years. We know this happens because it has, so we can test this result against any model of the universe we devise. But we could not specify where, in three dimensions, on the surface of our four-dimensional hyper-sphere artificial elements will first appear because we can only measure their appearance at the one point we know of. At fifteen billion years radius parts of the surface of our hyper-sphere will be beyond Earth's event horizon anyway, so there is no way to measure what is happening there. Even for closer galaxies, even if we picked up radio signals from an intelligent civilization within a million light years, this is only knowledge of a minuscule portion of the normal three-dimensional surface of the space time hyper-sphere.

4.4.2 The Limits of Mathematics 

This limitation to the number of events we can measure in the universe from our unique three-dimensional perspective is a further caution against viewing mathematics as the cause of structure in the universe, and not the effect of intelligent beings trying to analyze the universe in which we live. The very structure of the universe precludes us from measuring every effect in it, and it would be imprudent to expect that any equation whose results we could not measure would be true a priori. This was Kant's error, explained in the previous chapter. Kant assumed that any connection that was logically specified in mathematics must reflect a physical property of the universe, because the connection works so consistently. Except there have already been several attempts to derive a cosmology of the universe using this reasoning, and they all failed against the need to measure how the universe exists factually. The latest Theory of Everything seems to avoid this, only it does make the assumption that the only possible universe is the one in which intelligent life can exists. Except it is not logically necessary that a universe contain intelligent life. It would only be logically necessary in a model of the universe in which intelligent life was required to evolve, with all the equations of its evolution.

Only humans have never specified what those equations are, so such equations might contain empirically derived values that eventually concatenate as the physical constants of the present universe. We somehow hope from a perspective of symmetry and beauty that this would not happen, but we simply do not know. Ironically, Hawking appeals to an argument of evolution to select the correct equation of the universe. The Theory of Options teaches that the argument of evolution is precisely that for humans mathematical analysis is optimized in the imaginative higher cortex, while the verification of measurement is optimized in the lower, specialized circuits of reflex. We can support this view with an understanding of how the brain processes cause-and-effect.

The primitive purpose to any brain is reflex. If A (danger) occurs, B (flee) is the response. In human brains our primary senses such as sight, smell, or touch are reflex, and so are physical emotions such as anger, fear, or arousal. But as brains become more complex, as neural circuits multiply million-fold, the simple connection of A causes B becomes lost in the higher human cortex. We learn from biology that existence is a trade-off; giving up something assured for alternatives offering greater opportunities. The evolution of humans is replete with this. Say, humans gave up easy childbirth for the opportunities inherent to a baby with a large cranium. But neural evolution is more complex. It might take millions of years to evolve precision-reflex neural circuits, but humans require vastly expanded brain capacity faster than that. So, nature evolves non-precision circuits, not because it anticipates that imagination will be useful, but because non-precision neural circuits are easier to evolve. The drawback, the 'trade-off' within the human brain is that the solid connection of cause to effect, of stimulus A causing response B is lost to the higher human cortex. Imagination gains humans the advantage that they can now connect things together symbolically, such as planning the hunt before it occurs. But humans loose a mental assurance guaranteed to an earthworm, that the universe perceived is the universe that is.

Consider again the primitive hunter. He plans in his mind the hunt. He sees the animal. He throws the spear. The animal falls. Then he goes on the hunt. The same sequence he first imagined occurs. The hunter learns that if he throws the spear with a certain force, a certain way, at a certain deflection, the animal will fall. The grip on the spear, the snap of the muscles, the sensing the wind, the following of the eye, is reflex. But the sequence of events is in the imagination, not just the first time round! The sequence in real-time on the hunt is also connected in the higher cortex in the neural circuits of imagination. The hunter sees the spear fly but there is no reflex circuit in the human brain prescribing the trajectory the spear will take. Yet, thank goodness there is not. The mechanics of spear throwing do not consider other effects of nature; electric charge, quantum effects, the sound barrier, relativity. These are all trajectory problems that humans eventually will face. But through imagination and a brain that learns humans get maximum mechanical options. Unlike birds who reflexively understand flight, or fish who reflexively understand swimming, humans get to understand any mechanical problem by shifting the natural theory of it to the highly modifiable neural circuits of imagination. They use fixed circuits of reflex only to test if the underlying assumptions are correct. Only humans have been both somewhat fortunate, but also deluded, that the "theory of spear throwing" held up so well through all the ages of man. But recent discoveries at the start of the 20^th Century stunned humans. A particle of light, striking the mirrors of a Michelson Interferometer at 300,000 kilometers per second, did not obey the same mechanics laws of a crude wooden spear thrown by an ape-like human ancestor on the savanna hundreds of thousands of years ago.

There is a classic illustration of this need to measure assumptions derived by abstraction. Nothing can seem more natural to us than parallel lines never meeting. We can see it in railway tracks. Yet for centuries after Euclid pronounced his "Fifth Postulate" mathematicians tried to prove it true, some going crazy over the issue. Finally it was realized that "parallel lines never meet" is not an assertion about the physical universe. It is instead a definition-statement in which the word "parallel" means "lines never meet" and the phrase "lines never meet" defines the meaning of the word "parallel". In mathematics the term for definition-statement is axiom, and mathematics is an axiomatic system. In the axiomatic system in which "parallel lines never meet" other truths can be derived, such as that the angles of a triangle will sum to two right angles. Conversely, in systems where they do meet, it will be less than two right angels. But the only way we can know if in the universe parallel lines do or do not meet is by measuring it. This is another task of modern cosmology, and scientists are now trying to measure distances and angles on the huge scale of galaxies to find out what type of universe we live in. If the universe eventually contracts parallel lines will always meet in at least two places. But if the universe expands forever parallel lines will never meet. So to infer anything about parallel lines first we must state that they will be a measurable property of the universe we live in. Then we must measure that property, to see if the assertion is correct.

Yet, if mathematics is a product of abstraction, why does it work so well? Why does mathematics, in Russell's words, "hold sway above the flux?"

Well, we have no proof that it does. Most mathematics humans use has at its core a property called a series, or a regular repeatable pattern. Our mathematics also assumes certain properties about the universe such as one part of empty space being as good as any other. We assume say, a droplet of mercury in a gravity free vacuum would form a sphere, but not some irregular shape. Or if the sphere were set spinning it would rotate with a regular periodicity, and not in some jerky, non-geometric way. Mathematical functions that display these properties of space are called hyper-geometric, and such functions can be subject to other mathematical operations such as integration, differentiation, and conversion to a series. Cunningly then, we might say that when humans study the universe they first study those parts of it which exhibit hyper-geometric design. They then abstract laws of that design first because these laws offer the most cost-study-benefit for the type of mathematics we possess. Nature obliges us too, because basic structures of nature such as micro-particles or electromagnetic fields seem to work hyper-geometrically, and we can only assume that this is an efficiency of nature. Even when we study objects that are not strictly hyper-geometric, such gas clouds, or the universe, we can adopt smoothing techniques. These reduce complex structures to a hyper-geometric analog. Only when we find objects truly discontinuous, irregular, or asymmetrical are we forced into less familiar mathematical techniques, such as numerical analysis or use of empirical formulas. Even then, we hope to eventually break the new process into hyper-geometrical components, despite knowing that a hyper-geometrical template we impose will never describe every process exactly.

The other issue is that mathematics describes the universe so well because its use has been refined by practice. Remember the planets moving in circles? Although circles are hyper-geometric assuming that circles explained planetary motions was out of step with the need to verify mathematical truths against the measured properties of the universe. Or take Laplace's equations. These are very elegant applications of hyper-geometry but they do not operate in the universe to the exclusion of other, non-hyper-geometric effects which eventually undermined Laplace's strict determinism. Then there are the parallel lines. We can construct equally rigorous universes in which parallel lines meet once, twice or never, but the only way we can know which universe we occupy is by measuring it. We need to measure effects because despite how it appears there is no other physical connection between the laws of mathematics and the outside world apart from data appearing in our senses. Mathematics is founded on axioms, but as we shall learn into any axiomatic system at least one axiom is an insertion of choice, which, like the parallel lines postulate, can be neither proved nor disproved by the other axioms. Yet, it is precisely this insertion axiom, a product of choice, which is the only physical nexus between the outside world and the inner world of pure mathematical logic.

The issue again concerns cause-and-effect in a partially constrained universe. Because certain properties of this universe exhibit regularity, repeatability and symmetry over long periods, humans have learnt that this could be represented by a symbolic language we call mathematics. Mathematics has become classification of all patterns in the universe. In this, mathematics has proved of enormous utility to humans in understanding their options, because mathematics presumes that the instance of pattern in one part of the universe makes probable repetition of pattern in another. This allows mathematics to prove for us a property of exceptional importance, best called non-contradiction. We all know that humans do not always think clearly. The more complex the topic, the more easily it is to become muddled. If a group were discussing a square, and one person said "all three sides..." another person could correct "but squares have four sides.." so this would be non-contradiction easily spotted. In everyday terms, if a busy family were planning a holiday, a date would be chosen when the holiday would begin, and airfares and hotels must be booked, and each person must plan to be free at those times. This would not guarantee that the holiday would still take place, because for all we know the entire universe could end before the chosen date! But if each person had planned based on what they presently knew about how the universe would likely behave, the plan for the holiday would be free from non-contradiction. (This would make it an amazingly good plan by standards of how holidays are usually planned in partially constrained life on Earth).

But humans do not just plan holidays. They design ships, airplanes, and electric power systems. They try to understand how the universe evolved, and how the fundamental particles of matter interact. They send spacecraft across billions of kilometers to probe other worlds, and they try to regulate the economy and organize production on a global scale. When humans engage in such complicated activities, it becomes important to gather as much information as can be known about the problem at hand, to ensure mistakes are not made. But when facts are not known, it becomes important to confirm that anything that is assumed is at least non-contradictory to everything that is known. This is where mathematics comes in. Mathematics is a tool for proving non-contradiction. When we work with this tool, by common human idiom, it is acceptable to say that "I have just proved that if we do this, so and so will result" and scientists, engineers and accountants use this phrase all the time. But in strict terms mathematical formulas do not really prove anything apart from their own non-contradiction. In factual terms too we do not know for certain how anything is going to behave in the future, which is the point Hume made. But we humans, frail, unknowing creatures which we are, can assure ourselves as best we might by proving through mathematics, non-contradiction of the things which we already know to the things which we attempt to predict. There is almost a legal issue here. When things that we predict go wrong for reasons which nobody could have foreseen no one is culpable. But if something goes wrong when a calculation could have demonstrated the predicted result was in logical contradiction to what we might reasonably expect, people could be criminally culpable.

However, because mathematics works so well, and has been used so many times to test the laws of the universe, humans naturally subtend an impression that mathematics does more than prove its own non-contradiction, but actually explains how the universe works in physical terms. Normally this is not a problem. While ever people work with something we term finite quantities, there are no practical distinctions between physical objects which we count such as money, and the 'laws' of mathematics as they apply to numbers. But once we involve infinite numbers (which happens very quickly, say the area of a circle can be calculated to an infinite number of places) we never get an exact match between the universe which we can measure in practical terms, and the universe we can describe it mathematically. Normally this is not a problem in engineering or physics because where difficulties occur people have been trained how to deal with them. This discrepancy between mathematical and physical reality should not be a problem in other sciences either, especially the life sciences, because we imagine that in these the scientists understand better than most that mathematics is only a tool for analyzing and predicting the physical processes under study.

The real limitation to mathematics then is not in its logical power, but that ever since the industrial age science has faced a dilemma. On the one hand it needed to reduce matter in the universe to simple cause-and-effect in order to study it. Yet, it needed to leave the human mind rationally free to investigate nature as an impartial observer. This is why the "stubborn duality" to the thought processes remains. The Theory of Options offers an escape by showing that the split in the thought processes between analysis and verification is only an optimization of evolutionary design of the brain. The price we pay for this is abandoning not the science, but the ideology of supposing that all the processes of thought can be specified by a single equation. Equations are axiomatic investigative tools of thought, just as computers are electronic investigative tools. We use computers as tools to increase human knowledge, including how to design and build better computers. But we would never ask a computer to explain its own existence if it became a mystery to us, how the computer came to be there! (But it would make an excellent science fiction story.) Mathematics too arises from human choice; choice to invent it and refine it, choice of axiom, choice to test it, and choices we make of how to use the knowledge obtained. We can use mathematics to investigate thought, just as we can choose how to interpret the results. But the only equation that can specify thought exactly will be the one free from its origins in human frailty. We have not uncovered any equations free of that, even in the form of our assumptions.

At our present level of knowledge then, it is intellectually more disciplined to view mathematical truths as only logically connected within themselves, while their only connection with outside reality is by psychological association. Again, we do not argue this is strictly the case in a physical sense, but it is the assumption that maximizes our options and understanding. Every human is strongly tempted, beginning in childhood, to assume that logical and empirical truths are physically connected in the universe. It might be so, only this assumption does not maximize clarity of understanding or options of thinking. Only in cosmology it is always a challenging assumption that equations drive the universe, because the huge energy of the Big Bang appears to curl space-time into mathematical patterns. We are not certain if mathematical logic was created at the instant of the Big Bang and its patterns exist awaiting discovery. Or more likely, the universe forms naturally sculptured mater-energy-structure gradients, which billions of years later humans discover bear remarkable concordance with a symbolic language humans find most easy to use.

4.4.3 Expanding Human Options 

But if mathematical logic does not explain why the universe exists the way it does, how does one explain it? How does the Theory of Options explain it?

Here we must be careful. If one wants to understand how the universe exists physically one should read a book by a physicist. A philosopher could only contribute information he had already learned from physics and interpret it for the reader, only the view of physicists is that philosophers do this rather poorly. The province of philosophy instead is adding clarity of meaning to statements that we make about the universe. This can often be illustrated by examples from physics or cosmology, only it is crucial to get the examples right. By this we mean that the discoveries of physics and utterances of physicists confirm to the philosopher that his own, often limited interpretation of the problem is correct. It is a question of what is measured and measured against. The philosopher measures his own understanding against how the physicists sees the problem to check that philosophy is not drifting away from the latest discoveries about reality. It is not the other way around. Perhaps the only exception to this is that the short "Tractatus" of Wittgenstein enjoys a certain authority among physicists, in that Wittgenstein was a peer in mathematics and logic. Yet even in Tractatus the moral views of Wittgenstein and his later views once he moved away from logic are reassuringly as utterly confusing and beside the point as the views of any philosopher.

The task of the Theory of Options then is not to explain the physical forces of nature, but to explain how humans increase their real options. Mathematics vastly increases options, because its axiomatic structure allows us to investigate from the first occurrence of a cause other instances in which the effect might apply without mathematical contradiction. The power of mathematics comes from keeping its logic pure. Again, the classic problem would be transferring a set of calculations about how events occur on Mars against how they occur on Earth. With so many other unknowns, we increase human options by being certain that when we transfer an event over time and place to another location, at least the equations themselves are logically free of contradiction. This was the point made by Hume and corroborated by Wittgenstein (see above quotes, and others). Cause-and-effect is a psychological connection made within the mind, but not revelation of underlying law. This is not because anybody doubts that in nature physical causes have physical effects, just that we get optimum usage from ideas if they are not rigidly chained to events.

For example, we posed that it is not known why many structures of nature follow a hyper-geometric design. If the Theory of Everything could explain the general case it would increase human options by delineating to which range of physical problems humans might profitably apply their most fruitful mathematics. Yet, even if the Theory of Everything explained why the Big Bang created hyper-geometric structures in the universe, it would only explain why these structures lay along an energy-efficiency geodesic. It would not prove that physical cause in the universe arose because of how humans did mathematics. We could not claim that the cause of physical structure in the universe was that humans found hyper-geometry easy to use. On the other hand, we might legitimately suppose that a universe that could nurture beings capable of understanding it would display hyper-geometric properties such as order, regularity and symmetry.

Studying the universe opens our range, it broadens the savanna, it shows us where we must go next. It tests our science, it categorizes the problems our present mathematics can solve, and warns us where we must explore fresh abstractions. It tests the brains of our young men, and old ones, makes a prize of intellect, pushes technology, and it helps focus our philosophy. Physics, mathematics, and cosmology are key sciences. Philosophy, epistemology, and the theory of mind must work first for physics and mathematics because success here provides the greatest human options, by providing the deepest understanding. The Theory of Options cannot offer to the cosmologist any physical theory of the universe, but that is the point. Physical theory represents precious knowledge because it can only arise from concentrated effort, and because once verified it cannot be dismissed. The discoveries of cosmology are breaking news, because they show how far the human mind can push the abstraction problem.

In 1872 the German philosopher Ernst Mach first postulated how the unique position of any observer would effect his understanding of the universe; a bold conjecture which later helped Einstein consolidate his own ideas of relativity. But Mach's conjecture fell foul of the future Soviet leader Lenin, who savagely denounced Mach for allegedly abandoning the "materialist" view of the universe. It was not so much who was right, but by refusing to allow truths of the universe to be tested by measurement and pronouncing a philosophical viewpoint false for political reasons, Lenin laid seeds for the catastrophe that would eventually befall all Soviet science. Big Bang cosmology, quantum theory, the observer problem, our inability to test truths beyond the event horizon, the complexity of cause-and-effect related to mind all challenge our intellect. Continual confrontation with new ideas cautions that if the universe seems too "comfortable" to our understanding of it, we are not thinking boldly enough. The Theory of Options teaches that the purpose to human inquiry is not to create a model of reality comfortable to our sentiments, but to increase human options. If the inquiry we confront will not yield to usual investigative methods, we must try a fresh approach.

This is why when humans encounter intractable theoretical problems that we must remember most what we are. We are the chimp that walked, the beast that uses its brain to increase its options. At the Big Bang, Nature found the easiest way to absorb the tremendous energy of creation was by multiplying simple pattern and structure throughout the universe. Billions of years later, Nature found it easier to rapidly multiply the modifiable circuits of the higher human cortex to increase brain capacity than to further evolve the complex circuits of reflex. The primal human survival skill of imagination is exploring possibilities. Mathematics is powerful to humans because it provides a method to carry out the imaginative element of thinking in a logically rigorous way. Just as nature optimized design of the higher cortex to be free from the encumbrance of cause-and-effect, mathematics optimizes the processes of imagination to be free but logically rigorous, to explore possibilities within an axiomatic framework. This enables mathematics to take us into logically rigorous worlds our ordinary imagination cannot conceive such as multi-dimensional space-time or quantum effects.

These chapters on the human brain debate if the problems of mind will yield to the normal cause-and-effect approach of science. Analytical thinking almost by definition can only arise when the cause-and-effect connection between the thinking device and outside information has been effectively broken. Yet to some philosophers, recasting functions of the higher cortex for what they are, psychological association, whose truths must be verified against evidence of the senses is another retreat from materialism. It allegedly represents a return to the Cartesian concept of mind-first in the universe, and the much-ridiculed ghost-in-the-machine theory of mind. But while ever mind is explained as merely a machine ("wiring" etc.) there will be ghosts left running around in it, just as there will remain a "stubborn duality" to investigations of mind and the universe. The real materialism of today must instead be simple appreciation that we are embedded, as mentioned, in the fourth time dimension of existence, and as three-dimensional creatures enjoy no freedom of physical movement in that dimension. We arrive at a point of space-time with all our history behind us. This history limits even our three dimension options of how far we can physically go next. What humans must ensure is that however much we are dimensionally constrained we are not additionally constrained in our minds by the psychological baggage of a past age. We must instead search the best possible next move from all the intellectually unconstrained options available to us.

But if the thoughts of the higher cortex are pure abstraction, capable of a physical disconnection from the underlying reflex, how does this occur? How did humans evolve in neurological terms from organisms of reflex to creatures of abstraction? At what point did the chain of cause-and-effect with outside reality become broken?

This is the final great problem of the philosophy of mind.