"Is Human Consciousness a Mistake of Nature?" A Response to Tanner Campbell

Judy Stove, editor of Stoicism Today, throws a haymaker!

Tanner recently suggested, in an episode of the thought-provoking Practical Stoicism podcast which he co-hosts with Kai Whiting, and subsequently here on Substack, that human consciousness may be some kind of “mistake of nature.” He has kindly welcomed my offer to respond.

Tanner’s central contention (I hope to indicate fairly) is that only humans, in the animal kingdom, do not “live according to Nature,” which is of course the Stoic ideal. Only humans, with their higher intelligence, at times – indeed, most of the time – fail to achieve their potential. On this basis, he suggests, it is human consciousness which is the problem. To be sure, he also indicates that it is consciousness, or high intelligence, which can permit the solution, as far as the Stoics see it: consciously to pursue virtue, or living according to Nature.

So what is a “mistake of Nature”? Tanner writes: “Human consciousness seems, then, like a mistake or, at the very least, an unplanned outcome that gets in the way of humans creating harmony with the Universe.” He seems to base this statement simply on the observation that non-human animals have no difficulty in living according to Nature – indeed, they have no option but to do so - whereas humans evidently appear to struggle.

The most obvious response here is that Stoic Nature does not, as a matter of principle, make mistakes or unplanned outcomes. If it did, the cosmos would not be ordered (which is what “cosmos” means), but subject to random effects of unknown causes.

The Stoics generally followed Plato’s schema, set out in the Timaeus, of a creator god, a Demiurge, who made humans along with the rest of nature. Zeno of Citium himself wrote that the active principle in the cosmos was God, everlasting, and the creator of each individual thing (Diogenes Laertius 7.134). Seneca, in a letter (65) which explicitly attempts to convey Platonic ideas in Latin, asserts that the first cause was simple for the Stoics: “reason: that is, God” (12). The creator, then, is not an amateur, a beginner, or a corner-cutter; it is very unlikely that he would have left the most complex of animals with a fundamental and conspicuous defect.

Nor is it even clear how we might identify a “mistake” in this context. If it is simply a non-optimal result – well, even the animals often find their powers of evading predation, or of reproducing successfully, insufficient, or at least sub-optimal. Diseases remain in nature, and both people and animals contract them. Yet we do not locate a mistake of Nature in these ongoing processes (or at least Tanner has not).

It seems that Tanner’s major problem may, in fact, lie in a separate issue: the special status assigned in Stoicism to humans. He writes: “Framing the Universe as a benevolent entity that cares especially for humans, and gives us special gifts because we are in favor with it, is a bridge too far for me. The ancient Stoics were smart, but they didn’t know everything.”

There was no question that in ancient Stoicism, humans had a special position. Cicero explains, in a book based on the Stoic Panaetius’s lost work (On Duties Book I), that human connections begin with family relationships, and the love of children. Humans’ higher intellect means that they can review the past and plan for the future. They care for their infant offspring more thoroughly than any other species. It is through reason that nature causes people to make relationships, aided by humans’ unique power of speech. The principal function of human reason, Cicero adds, is the pursuit of truth, and to this is linked the cultivation of excellence (I.11-3).

But it is not quite clear what Tanner means by consciousness, if not humans’ high intellect. He writes that “Claiming the cosmos has consciousness (in that consciousness arises within us, and we are part of the cosmos, so the cosmos must contain, at least, the ingredients for consciousness) is one thing, but to suggest that consciousness has a personal interest in humans and that it acts benevolently towards us, is categorically beyond the pale. At least for me.” 

It is not at all evident why he accepts a conscious cosmos but rejects a benevolent one. To be sure, the ancient Epicureans conjectured that there were many worlds, made up solely of atoms and void (Diogenes Laertius 10.45), with no benevolent involvement by the gods. The Roman Epicurean Lucretius stressed the hostility of the “state of nature” towards unprotected humans (On the Nature of Things V); but we are not Epicureans. We may note in this context that a recent 25-year bet between neuroscientist Christof Koch and philosopher David Chalmers, that neuroscience would have by now solved the mysteries of human consciousness, was won by Chalmers – and consciousness remains largely opaque to the latest science.

Or does Tanner reject Stoic (and Platonic, and Aristotelian) teleology – the aim of human life, being to live virtuously, in accordance with Nature, and achieve eudaimonia – altogether? Before junking teleology, it is worth considering that even evolutionary writers have a hard time writing about nature without any implication of teleology: it seems baked into our conceptions, that organic processes have an aim, goal, or function.

It may be true, as Tanner writes, that “No doubt if Zeno were shipwrecked today, the information he would have available to him during the formative years of a 21st Century Stoicism would result in a significantly different looking Stoicism at least where Stoic Physics are concerned.” But even if true, is it relevant? Tanner’s concerns do not seem to be related to recent conjectures in physics (which, at least in respect of String Theory, seem to revive elements of Pythagorean and Platonic concepts). 

Rather, Tanner may be uncomfortable with the Stoic insistence that humans, while members of the animal kingdom, are different from other animal species. Humans are indeed unique, notably in the scale of human co-operation. Marcus Aurelius writes: “For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands…”(Meditations 2.1) Part of the reason that humans are extraordinarily co-operative, is because of our intellect, our ratio as Seneca put it. It is the human ratio which enables and justifies oikeiōsis, the process through which we extend our care, initially for self-preservation (an impulse shared with other animals and even with plants), through family members, outward throughout our world.

As Christopher Gill has recently argued, the principles of Stoicism can enhance our ideas about the roles of humans, including as agents responsible for protecting their environment (Learning to Live Naturally: Stoic Ethics and its Modern Significance, 2022, Chapter 7). This is also an aspect emphasised by Tanner’s friend and colleague Kai, writing with Leo Konstantakos: “Posidonius accepted that the capacity for rationality allowed humans to better understand and co-operate with the cosmos” (however patchily achieved in practice: Being Better: Stoicism for a World With Living In, 2021, p. 134). I look forward to further debate with the warm and thoughtful Tanner about key Stoic concepts of both broader Nature, and the nature of human life.

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Judith Stove is a writer based in Sydney, Australia, the assistant editor of Stoicism Today, and co-host of podcast Soul Searching With Seneca at thewalledgarden.com. 

Photo by Johann Walter Bantz on Unsplash