Has anyone noticed the blasphemous tendency in my posts to belittle cognition? The position is that brains are imperfect and tiny subsets of the universe that are not remotely up to the task of supplanting time-tested ecologies with cognitive constructs involving agriculture, writing, money, and legal systems. Paraphrasing Frank Egler, it’s not that nature is more complex than we think, but more complex than we are capable of thinking. Brains can’t be expected to fool Mother Nature, in the end.

Does that mean cognition as a whole is ecologically worthless and inherently destructive? Of course not! Lots of creatures—even crickets—rub neurons together to make thought. Moreover, non-neural forms of cognition take place among plants, fungi and microbes to help figure out how to cope with varied situations. These neuron-free beings even learn (see examples of amoebas and plants). Clearly cognition itself is not ecologically disastrous—demonstrating compatible utility over eons. Humans used top-shelf brains for millions of years without precipitating ecological disaster. Yet human brains are also key players in staging the current disastrous path.

How can we tell what sorts of human cognition are safe, then? I propose a metaphorical framing that helps identify when cognition “goes rogue” that I hope will also be useful for others.

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