The Emergence of Reason in the origins of Mankind, Neurology and Paleoanthropology

Resumen

In the first three sessions of the seminar we have with no doubt addressed relevant issues to explain the evolutionary origin of reason. It is clear that human senses (produced in the evolution of animal sensorial systems) make us perceive a «world of structures or systems». Therefore, the origin of human reason relates to representations created in the mind to adapt to an objective and «systemic» reality (Poli). Nickel’s contribution has had a positive, fully manageable result in the dynamics of the seminar: reason, especially mathematical reasoning in the set of formal sciences, is born of the free creativity of human mind. Reason produces «formal worlds». But reason is part of a natural being (man) and we must explain why reason has the power to create formal worlds. The discussion raised the alternative of an a priori origin (say, in the Kantian tradition) and of an a posteriori evolutionary origin. According to the latter hypothesis reason should have arisen from a natural evolution (in adapting to a world of objective structures). This adaptation would be driven by its own dynamics to make human reason able to imagine formal worlds in a creative and free mind activity.