Experience of rational understanding of life and death (biological and social plans of evolutionary development)

Rozin Vadim Markovich Doctor of Philosophy Chief Scientific Associate, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences  109240, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Goncharnaya, 12 str.1, kab. 310 rozinvm@gmail.com Other publications by this author

The very first explanation of life and death also refers to archaic culture: life is the presence of a soul in the body, death is its departure for good, for example, to the land of the dead or to a new home ("tree of life", burial, grave, ytterma ? a temporary home for the soul, from which the latter inhabits the newly born individual). Although Plato in the Phaedo proves through the mouth of Socrates that the soul is immortal, his disciple, the great Aristotle, in fact, denies the existence of an archaic soul, showing that soul and body are connected not through movement, but through the categories of form and matter. In his work On the Soul, he writes that if the body moved, then "after leaving the body, it could return again," and "living beings, after dying, come to life" ^{[1, p. 16]}. For Aristotle, this is a contradiction. Then he shows that the body and soul are connected not spatially, but as form and matter. "Thus," writes Aristotle, "it is necessary to recognize the soul as an essence, a kind of form of a natural body, potentially endowed with life <...> one should not ask whether the soul and the body are one, like wax and the image on it, nor in general with respect to any matter and whose matter it is" ^{[1, p. 4, 38]}.

But in the Middle Ages, the explanation of life and death is again based on the idea of the soul, true, not only having free will, but also created by God and guided by Him, up to the hour of death and Resurrection. And again, following Aristotle, philosophers and scientists of Modern times rethink the idea of the soul and eventually abandon this concept as explaining life and death. They are trying to comprehend these realities scientifically, which turns out to be convincing for someone, not very convincing for someone, since serious objections have been raised against all the basic rational concepts of the origin of life. For example, E.P. Teslova writes about Oparin's theory: "In the described scenario of transition from complex organic substances to simple living organisms, there are many white spots. Astronomer Fred Hoyle recently expressed the opinion that the idea of the emergence of life as a result of the random interactions of molecules described above is “as ridiculous and implausible as the claim that a hurricane that swept over a garbage dump can lead to the assembly of a Boeing 747.” There is not even a hint of how the ability to reproduce itself arose. But, despite this, the considered hypothesis remains one of the most promising areas of research on the formation of life. There are quite a few models of “prebiological” evolution. However, all of them are only the first steps on the path of knowledge. Academician B.S. Sokolov commented on this as follows: "The path that the organic world took from bacteria to you and me is simpler than the path that connected complex but prebiological molecules with biological evolution, forming the first self-reproducing prokaryotes" ^[10]. 

I set myself another task – not to explain the origin of life, but to try to understand how life and death can be conceived on the basis of the methodology and research of your humble servant, I will start with the idea of life. What is typical for her? Movement, activity, reproduction and similar realities. When the body dies, all this stops. Is it possible then to assume that life is a specific organization of inanimate matter (let's call it conditionally "vital"), acting as a condition of the listed realities. Under some conditions and complexity of inanimate matter, the indicated vital organization arises, triggering movement, activity, reproduction, development, etc.

I cannot answer the question of what this organization is in terms of physical or chemical or any other processes and structures. But I can point out that researchers are looking for such processes and structures. For example, N. Udumyan believes that life could arise at the molecular level in self-organizing systems. "By molecular evolution," she writes, "we will understand the origin and development of the molecular foundations of life, including prebiological evolution, the origin of life, as well as biological evolution, considered at the molecular level. <…>  

"The ability of molecules to exist in two mirror-opposite forms is called chirality. Almost absolute chirality is inherent in living nature: proteins contain only "left" amino acids, and nucleic acids contain only "right" sugars. The chiral purity of living nature means that at a certain stage of evolution, the mirror symmetry of the prebiological environment was violated, or rather, completely destroyed." In inanimate nature, there is a "tendency to racemization, i.e., to establish mirror symmetry." This transition occurs spontaneously under critical conditions, when the former unstable symmetric state can no longer exist and jumps into a new, stable state with "destroyed" symmetry. <…>

M. Eigan introduces another principle – "selection value", which allows to explain not only the selection of randomly occurring combinations of molecules, but the emergence of information. "Information is considered as a property of macromolecules and is evaluated by their ability to self-produce" ^{[11, pp. 426, 427, 428]}.

Omitting the question of how exactly the vital organization was formed on Earth three and a half billion years ago, let's assume that it was formed and the evolution of life began. In this case, death can be formally defined as such a violation of the vital organization in an individual, which entails the cessation of movement, activity, reproduction, etc.

The evolution of life. The life that arose on Earth in the form of separate "individuals" (i.e. unique, integral formations) tended to complicate and, consequently, develop. The latter happened not only under the influence of Darwin's law of struggle for existence, but also cosmic catastrophes, and "random factors from the outside", and new "information", and "abrupt change of reality". Just one example, the colossal variety of forms of biological life, food production, courtship and breeding of offspring, which cannot be explained without the action of random factors, as well as a variety of forms of communication ^{[2, p. 99-109]}.

For example, Rene Tom writes about the unexpected change of reality, so to speak, in a leap. "In his brilliant constructions, which have already become classics by now, the French mathematician Rene Tom expressed the idea that any organization, system or living organism obeys a certain logic in its development, following a certain growth curve until it reaches a certain ceiling. At such a moment, a scrapping (or "catastrophe") occurs, which predetermines the disappearance or disintegration of the object in question, thereby creating a new form, the type of which is almost impossible to predict on the basis of previously observed conditions. At the same time, the new form is self-organizing according to new principles, demonstrating a completely new way of development ... any system of causal laws is reliable only at a certain level, and the creation of conditions for achieving a certain aggregate state depends on some other, fundamental principles and laws, higher-order causal relationships that can be formulated only then when there is a qualitative transition to a new state… Consequently, the universe, the world can be characterized as an open system, a sequence of worlds in worlds where the unpredictable (i.e. unknown laws of a higher order) and necessity (i.e. the principle of consistent, logical organization) constantly interact with each other…Modern science has proved that the world cannot be perceived only as a simple collection of solid matter objects or a collection of masses with energy, but it should also take into account the information component in the sense of a certain genetic code, the communication component spreading between forms, the element of interaction between the observer and the object, the internal cohesion (that is, global interdependence) of all fragments of the mosaic" (cit. according to ^{[8, p. 128, 129, 131]}).

In other words, biological (as well as subsequent social) development is not just through the complication of individuals, but also the periodic change of the whole (system), which is a new reality (new events, their logic and laws). A necessary condition not only for life, but also for its change, as already noted, is the corresponding vital organization. Naturally, it should not just keep up with development, but rather be ahead of it, provide. Studies of biological evolution allow us to point out the following two features of the development of vital organization. On the one hand, it presupposed the complication of the biology of individuals (the formation of cells, nerve pathways, organs, brain, organism as a whole), on the other – the formation of external (environmental and collective) conditions, for example, unification into groups and communities, separation of the sexes, communication, struggle, mutual assistance, etc. As a result, not only damages and gradually accumulating systemic disorders, but also external transformations (for example, a sharp change in living conditions, an attack by predators, the death of partners, a group boycott, etc.) now act as conditions preparing biological death.

This is, so to speak, the idea of life, but the concrete development of life represented a more complex process. For example, the analysis of biological evolution allows us to assert that in its course three main states of individuals have developed: conditionally "wakefulness", which is characterized by the action of the vital organization (in this case, the individual perceives, acts, experiences, etc.), "sleep" as a state in which the vital organization is disabled, does not work (perception and there is no activity), and intermediate states, for example, "dreaming" or "coma". In the state of sleep, homeostatic processes take place in the individual's body, allowing to restore energy and strength and return to a state that allows the vital organization to turn on (the individual rested and woke up). In the case of serious damage to the body, homeostatic processes continue until either the vital organization finally turns on (the individual will come out of the coma) or not, which will lead to final death. Dreams are a special case of a homeostatic process occurring with a partial action of the vital organization, which allows the individual to perceive this process (see the author's concept of dreams in more detail ^[3]).

Social life. The evolution of biological life at the turn of 10-1 million years BC created the conditions for the formation of a new integrity, which in the XVIII-XIX centuries was called "anthropological" and "social". In terms of evolution, it can be characterized by the following two features. This integrity inherits (includes) developed biological individuals (a community of homenids), radically changing their physicality and organism (walking upright, brain enlargement, hand motor skills development, etc.). The second feature that allowed the new whole to be formed is the use of signs denoting not observable realities, but necessary for the management of the "primary collective" (family, tribal association, tribe), as well as the use of tools (more broadly, technology) ^{[4, pp. 29-44]}. The technique performed two main functions. Firstly, it expanded the possibilities of hominids in terms of adapting to the environment and creating the right environment (fire, tools, clothing, housing, etc.). Secondly, the technique seemed to confirm the use of signs, because with its help a reality corresponding to their meanings was created. For example, the idea of the archaic soul as one of the first semiotic schemes was confirmed by the procedures of burial (a house was built for the soul that left the body), treatment (so that the soul returned to the body), interpretation of dreams (explanations of what dreamed), the manufacture of masks, rock paintings and sculptures (in order to see souls and communicate with them) ^{[5, pp. 58-68]}. All these procedures can be attributed not only to magic, but also to an archaic technique, which, as I show, was one of the types of magic. The vital organization now provided syncretism of three planes of individual activity – semiotic (it was necessary to invent new words, symbols, schemes, expressions, responding to challenges), visual and hermeneutic (new vision and understanding) and activity. One illustration.

"In the language of tupi,? writes E. Taylor, ?a solar eclipse is expressed by the words: "the jaguar ate the sun." The full meaning of this phrase is still revealed by some tribes by the fact that they shoot burning arrows to drive away a ferocious beast from its prey. On the northern mainland, some savages also believed in a huge sun-eating dog, while others shot arrows into the sky to protect their luminaries from imaginary enemies attacking them. But next to these prevailing concepts, there are others. Karaites, for example, imagined the eclipsed moon hungry, sick or dying…The Hurons considered the moon to be sick and performed their usual sharivari with shooting and howling dogs to heal her" ^{[9, p. 228]}.

The challenge here was the eclipse situation, which initially caused fear due to a complete misunderstanding of what was happening and what needed to be done. Having invented this scheme (semiotic plan), the archaic man began to understand what was happening, the disk of the sun disappears into the mouth of the jaguar (hermeneutical plan) and, perhaps, almost see this jaguar in the sky (visual plan), finally, he realized what to do – make the jaguar release the sun, for this you need to shoot and arrange sharivari (activity plan). Here there is also the use of tools confirming the correctness of the scheme; the fact that the eclipse stops after a few minutes also strengthens it. Although in this case, the use of technology, from our point of view, is illusory (but the aborigine thought otherwise), the use of tools during hunting or on the farm made it possible to solve many tasks that ensure the archaic life of the primary collective.

This case allows us to understand one more thing – signs (diagrams, symbols, etc.) set an imaginary reality, which, however, was important in the practical plan of the primary collective's activity, much more important than the events observed in nature.    

The semiotic plan also allows us to introduce an idea of the individual's consciousness ^[6]. On the one hand, this is what becomes clear and visible through the sun (an eclipse is an attack by a jaguar on a luminary), on the other hand, consciousness is a vital organization that provides ethics, understanding and vision. During a real eclipse, the involvement of this organization is supported by real perception; during sleep, if the vital organization is partially working, the individual sees a dream, the plot of which is connected with the eclipse.

In the consciousness of the archaic man, death was understood as the departure of the soul from the body, and life ? as the presence of the soul in the human body. This is also a scheme that was invented to understand both. For an archaic person, there was no dissonance between the perception of a living person and a dead one, because he believed that life goes with the soul. At the same time, life does not disappear anywhere, it just continues to exist, but in a different place. The Northern peoples (Khanty and Mansi) are sure that the soul can even return to the body of a born child. After the birth of the mother, such a ritual is performed in the family (anthropologists observed this rite at the beginning of the twentieth century). The oldest man in the family picked up the ytterms and consistently pronounced the names of the souls who, as everyone was sure, lived in them. At this time, the mother synchronously lifted the cradle with the born child. When she announced that the cradle was heavier, it meant that the soul of the deceased namesake came out of the ytterma and entered the body of the child. At the same time, they usually said "grandfather or uncle or father has returned." The child was called by the name of the given name, and the ytterma ceased to be considered a sacred object, it was usually given to children to play ^{[7, pp. 103, 113]}.

The situation in our culture is completely different: here it is difficult to deny cognitive and emotional dissonance for an unbeliever watching the death of a loved one, or a friend, or just someone else. If there is no soul as a carrier of life, then where does life go? One minute she was there, and now she's gone – not breathing, not moving, not talking, a cooling corpse. It is difficult and incomprehensible to console oneself with the fact that life has stopped because the heart has stopped. Is man only a biological organism? It is naive to think that a thought or an experience, or our self-consciousness is reduced to electrical impulses or chemical processes in the brain. Of course, they are also impossible without a brain and a body, but they are not reduced to them.

By the way, life is impossible without other people, without language, activity, communication, technology, the environment in which we live, culture, history and much more. In social life, like biological life, the vital organization consists of two spheres: one belongs to individuals (psyche, activity, corporeality, etc.), and the other, properly social, encompassing, without which the first cannot exist and function. It is to the second sphere of vital organization that culture, sociality with its institutions, communication, collectives, which include individuals, belong. And again, death can be caused not only by damage as a result of aging or illness of the human body, but also by violations in the second sphere (for example, wars, hunger, violence, paralysis of law, abnormal relationships in the family or collective, inadequate social scenarios, etc.).

Cognitive dissonance is caused not only by a lack of understanding of the essence of death, but by two more circumstances: the fear of death and the desire to live as long as possible and without problems. Let's consider whether it is possible to resolve such experiences. For example, Plato resolves them, urging them to live correctly: to think over their fate, to follow virtue and goodness, to rely on knowledge of the ways that souls go through. In this case, Plato argues, a person becomes blissful and is not afraid of death. But his decision presupposed faith in immortal souls and gods, which is not typical for our time.

If we accept the provisions proposed here, it seems to be clear what death is, it is the impossibility for various reasons (old age, fatal diseases, violation of social conditions of life, etc.) of the vital organization's actions. So to speak, "eternal sleep", which, however, a person rehearses every night. But theoretically, he may not wake up in the morning, but he's not afraid. It is hardly possible to live forever, even if in the future medicine learns to change everything in a person, not just individual organs. And here's why. We do not know what, in the morphology of the individual, ensures the action of the vital organization. But even if it is ever possible to understand, the second social component of this organization does not depend on the individual, it changes over time and dramatically.

Cognitive dissonance caused by the thought of death or its observation is unlikely to be completely removed, but it can probably be mitigated. We perceive ourselves or others socially, that is, they are an organic part of our life. They do not exist for us as a complex result of the work of the vital organization (this is the explanation of the autoar), but as people. If people close to us or important to us die, we cannot expunge them from life, on the basis that they no longer exist; this is not allowed by the reality of consciousness itself, where people are its events. At the same time, we have to admit that certain people have left, died. On the one hand, dreams help to resolve this contradiction, but, unfortunately, they are rare, and the return of loved ones in a dream is conditional, on the other hand, the construction of a special reality helps, where the dead continue to exist for us, and we communicate with them. No less real than we communicate with the characters of works of art, more real than in dreams, although we feel and see the dead with unusual organs. How, for example, do I feel and see my deceased parents? It's hard to say, but I can feel and see them.   

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