Recursive Rationality

 The theory of emotions presented here starts from the evaluative character of the processes of primary consciousness, from the ordering of homeostatic processes based on survival criteria. But such a statement is valid for processes simpler than those associated with primary consciousness, since, in general, for the living organism, vital processes make sense by reference to survival actions. The value systems for a particular species are determined by evolutionary selection. Endpoints are displayed in the brain in the regions that control internal homeostasis (pulse, respiration, endocrine functions, autonomic responses) and relationships with the environment, emotional systems. Value systems act by restricting the domains of categorization to functions that have been evolutionarily reaffirmed. The biological value is produced by the biochemical rewards or punishments that the neurotransmitters produced by the brain nuclei provide to the cells. Physiological value is then a substitute for physiological efficiency, since the primitive function of the assessment processes is to ensure that the physiological tissue is within a homeostatic interval in which it can survive, for which it carries out continuous monitoring of the corresponding parameters through non-conscious devices, and when they deviate from the homeostatic interval, corrective mechanisms are put into place1. The simplest assessments are those associated with pleasure and pain, which provide a basic semantics for categorization processes, but the ultimate reference for pleasure and pain remains survival. The basic emotions use the pleasure and pain circuits as their own constituents. Furthermore, the social-emotional systems, especially motherhood and sociability, seem to be evolutionary developments of general pain systems. We can speak of a general recursive process of semantic ascension that coincides with the process of increasing complexity that we call organic evolution. Here I understand the term semantics more broadly than in its use in linguistic science or psychology. While the linguistic notion refers to the connotative-denotative sense of human languages, and the psychological to the so-called explicit semantic or factual memory (knowledge of the world2), by semantics I understand the interpretation of a system, that is, any mapping or assignment of identity between the elements of two sets. Such an identity assignment, which in Russell's logic was called definition, corresponds to a principle of economy by which some processes (physiological or otherwise) can be synthesized in others, in an ascending way. The protein system is interpreted in terms of cellular functioning, which respects molecular laws, but synthesizes processes of emergent complexity that have their own syntax, and similarly occurs with the organic structures that form cells, and the following structures in complexity, until reaching levels of explicit interpretation for the regulation of homeostasis that lead me, for example, to semanticize a slight discomfort such as thirst, and to take the necessary measures to solve it. When I pick up a glass to drink water, I do not interpret the action in relation to biochemical deficiencies, not even in terms of homeostasis (unless I am in an emergency situation), but from a social point of view, as one more action of my life interpreted in a given environment, and I will look for water, or another drink according to the environment in which I find myself.

What would be degree one of the recursion? It is difficult to answer this mythological question. The determination that seems most consistent with the current state of knowledge would be that of the first life forms, the ancestor of eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells that originated some three and a half billion years ago. Although it may seem absurd to propose a recursive function of rationality that begins in bacteria, if we understand them as an ordered system that complies with the conditioning of their DNA, we cannot help but see simple forms of intelligence in them. The corollary of the proposal is that life, being order, is intelligence, a proposal that, in a different formulation, we can already find in Aristotle's metaphysics. For our purpose of understanding the origin of emotions and rational thinking, it is enough to start the recursion in the global mappings as they have been defined by the theory of neural Darwinism.