Most animals’ consciousness is hard wired into their brains — the landmarks and pathways they notice and follow in their outer landscapes are simply mirrored in their neuro landscapes — in other words, most animals’ landmarks are signs. Animals see a sign and they react to it.
People do too, of course, but we also notice symbols, which allow us to conceive of things in our minds, and to think, reason, and dream. They allow us to look inward, to become aware of an inner landscape which does not always reflect the outer landscape of the senses.
Both landscapes are realities. We might call the outer landscape real while we might call the inner landscape ideal. Or, we might call the former material and the latter qualiadelic. This mind is qualiadelic and filled with ideals, while the brain is made of matter like the rest of what common sense calls reality.
The symbols the mind conceives are its landmarks and pathways. Our ancestors probably had but few of them, but they were deeply respectful of the ones they had. Between one symbol and another they began to make connections, building pathways between them. This was the beginning of rational thought. (You may have an opinion about how far we’ve come – I know I have.)
Perhaps some ancestor conceived of what it would be like to be alpha (the leader of the pack), or they imagined that the bone they picked up and used to fend off a hostile boar had some miraculous quality to it. Trodding down the pathway between these two ideas he envisioned himself wielding the bone against the alpha male of his own group.
The chronic imbalance between our interest and participation levels can be understood as the difference between signs and symbols, realism and idealism. We are still beating each other up…