In this case, we are dealing with the other extreme, the opposite of Snooks’ views: an individual need not be rational, a population is rational. Populations can make mistakes and still evolve, but individuals do not evolve: unlike populations, individuals are mortal. One extreme exalts reason, reduces all of history to the results of free choices, and does not recognize the evolution of strategies. The other extreme reduces reason to consistent activity: individuals simply follow programs to maximize utility, and evolution selects the most successful programs.
The limitations of thinking are no cause to deny people their ability to make choices, although instincts and practices that have fused together over hundreds of thousands and millions of years are a set of powerful programs that people follow. Human thinking is a combination of selection and choice, of strategy and reason. “The mixing of custom and choice at any one time produces, almost tautologically, the existing culture” (Jones 2006, p. 261).
Like biological evolution, the evolution of meaning does not seek the “best” or “maximum” solution; it only seeks the “sufficient,” “minimum” solution. This applies equally to making, communicating, and thinking. Evolutionary rationality is not based on utility and its maximization, but on preferences and propensities that allow us to choose a necessary and sufficient option. Moreover, utility is only one of the types of meanings between which a person chooses—along with morals, dreams, ideals and other meanings that are not always ordered among themselves. People’s needs and thinking are shaped by culture-society, and people behave rationally not only when they maximize utility, but also when they strive to comply with norms—that is, with the socio-cultural programs they have internalized:
“Rational conduct means that man, in face of the fact that he cannot satisfy all his impulses, desires, and appetites, foregoes the satisfaction of those which he considers less urgent. In order not to endanger the working of social cooperation man is forced to abstain from satisfying those desires whose satisfaction would hinder the establishment of societal institutions” (Mises 2005, p. 163).
Evolutionary rationality does not assume that reason is limited, but rather that reason and choice play different roles at different stages of socio-cultural and personal development. A child’s mind begins with an uncritical perception of another person’s actions, but as it matures, critical ability develops. The human brain and intelligence did not evolve to choose, but to persuade others, but now we try to use reason to make decisions: