Thank you for your thoughtful response, Geoffrey. In general, I do not disagree with any of the claims you’ve made about our uniqueness as a species and the special responsibility it brings. However, I entirely reject the conclusion you draw from these — the Cartesian view that “Res Cogitans” refers only to the human mind, and sets us above, and sovereign over, “Res Extensa” or “nature.” The reason has to do with your claim that “agency” is unique to humans. Yes and no.

Let me explain this. Teilhard de Chardin, a brilliant theologian and proto-Gaian thinker, posited three concentric layers of nature: the Physiosphere, the Biosphere, and the Noosphere. In his view, of course, the Noosphere referred to our connection with God, but later systems theorists, such as Gregory Bateson and Ken Wilber, have reconfigured these concepts, roughly as follows:

The Physiosphere refers to matter/energy — the stuff of which the physical universe is made. And as the First Law of Thermodynamics tells us, the Physiosphere is a constant, subject only to transformations, but not “death.” (Even quantum phenomena, with their spontaneously appearing and vanishing photons and other particles, are simply transforms of energy into matter and back again). Think of the Physiosphere as the “hardware” of Gaia, our living world (and of all other worlds as well, living and dead alike).

Conversely, the Biosphere evolved from the physiosphere (though no one knows exactly when or how) but differs fundamentally from it, in that it processes both matter/energy and information, and it is subject to death (or collapse back into its physical substrate, the Physiosphere). And information, as Gregory Bateson succinctly defined it, is “a difference that makes a difference.” But it can only “make a difference” if it matters to the recipient — that is, if it helps a living organism survive a bit longer. Even the simplest bacterium, unlike the most complex inorganic molecule, has a vested interest in its own survival, and processes information from its environment — like where glucose (an energy source) can be found for its metabolism — to that purpose. And so — yes — to that extent, even a bacterium has “agency.” Like every other living being, it chooses to harvest energy when it can, in order to “keep on keepin’ on” until it dies (or divides into two). Bacteria likewise exchange their genetic material — another form of information in order to reshape their environment more efficiently to serve their own purposes. I would argue, moreover, that all human agency boils down to nothing more than this: choosing options that enhance our own chances for survival, whether individually or collectively, and altering or molding our environment accordingly.

So how do we differ from other animals? Quite simply, it has to do with the one “difference” that makes all the difference: the evolution of our language, that discrete, combinatorial system of production rules encoded in our genes that sets us apart from all other creatures — even our closest relatives, the great apes — and that crucially enables us to process information not just about relationships (which most other complex animals can do quite well) but about concepts and propositions (otherwise known as nouns and verbs). And thus arose the Noosphere — the sphere of pure information, liberated from its fleshly embodiment in organisms.

So what is this thing called “consciousness”? I would define it as awareness of awareness — which in turn is possible only through language. All living things are aware to one extent or another, and to that extent, all living things have agency. Other animals make choices all the time — I’ve seen cats carefully triangulating in preparation for a jump from one tree limb to another, before deciding it is too far to jump, and giving up. If that is not choice, what is?But only social beings like us, with the ability to conceptualize given by our unique possession of language, have the capacity for moral choice.

Just as we have no idea how the Biosphere evolved from the Physiosphere, we also have no idea how the Noosphere evolved from the Biosphere. And in both cases, it seems to have happened only once (although lacking access to any other life-sustaining planets, we may never know if this is true.) And just as the Biosphere, once it happened, changed everything, reconfiguring the Physiosphere to serve its own purposes (i.e. the Gaia Theory), the Noosphere, engendered by Language, changed everything once again, reconfiguring the Biosphere to serve our own purposes. But there is only one problem here: the Physiosphere is indestructable — it can only be transformed but not destroyed. But the Biosphere is perishable. And we (the Noosphere) evolved entirely from both, and depend entirely on the Biosphere for our own survival. That is the crux of our dilemma today.

So our survival, if it happens at all, must depend first on the fact that like every other living organism, we are utterly dependent upon the Biosphere — on Gaia — for our survival — for the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the climatic ranges within which we can survive. So the survival of the Noosphere which exists only in human minds, but manifests in the ways we have altered the biosphere, depends entirely on our shifting from a parasitic to a symbiotic relationship with Gaia, our biological support system. And that begins with acknowledging that we are a part of, not apart from Nature.