The neuroscience of purpose, meaning, and morals

One process to which ‘purpose’ can refer is that genes are self-replicating. Another process to which ‘purpose’ can apply is that genes set some of the goals for actions. These goals are fundamental to understanding emotion. Another process to which ‘purpose’ can apply is that syntactic multistep reasoning provides a route for goals to be set that are to the advantage of the individual, the phenotype, and not of the genes. Meaning can be achieved by neural representations not only if these representations have mutual information with objects and events in the world, but also by virtue of the goals just described of the ‘selfish’ genes, and of the individual reasoner. This it is suggested provides a means for even symbolic representations to be grounded in the world. Morals can be considered as principles that are underpinned by (the sometimes different) biological goals specified by the genes and by the reasoning (rational) systems. Given that what is ‘natural’ does not correspond to what is ‘right’, it is suggested that these conflicts within and between individuals can be addressed by a social contract.