Life, Consciousness and Symbolism. An Essay on Natural Hierarchy

The problem presented here belongs to the philosophy of nature and to metaphysics. It is thus concerned with the philosophical interpretation of facts as well as with the way some thinkers extend such facts and interpretations to justify one doctrine or other. My aim is twofold: in the first place I describe a plausible way of conceiving the natural hierarchy by giving a brief outline of several kinds of natural systems; in the second place, I make some observations about the explanation of such a hierarchy. This reflection is guided by the ideal of elaborating a comprehensive naturalism capable of avoiding both the excessive reductionism of materialism and scientism on the one hand, and the excessive division between living and non-living matter imagined by vitalist and spiritualist thinkers on the other. These are my main assertions: (I) Nature is composed of emergent systems. (II) There is a hierarchy of systems and a hierarchy of natural strata. (III) Nothing in the formation of strata and systems happens by chance: everything is the outcome of a multiplicity of different kinds of causes. (IV) The formation of new strata and systems is causally and spatiotemporally continuous. (V) Finally, we do not have the appropriate concepts to describe and explain adequately the natural hierarchy - this is why, for instance, the emergence of consciousness seems so mysterious.