Objective: To account for self-worth related emotion (i.e., needs for love, acceptance, moral integrity, recognition, achievement, purpose, meaning, etc.) and emotional disorder (e.g., depression, suicide, etc.) within the context of an evolutionary scenario; i.e., to synthesize natural science and the humanities; i.e., to answer the question: 'Why is there a species of naturally selected organism expending huge quantities of effort and energy on the survivalistically bizarre non-physical objective of maximizing self-worth?'

Observation: The species in which rationality is most developed is also the one in which individuals have the greatest difficulty in maintaining an adequate sense of self- worth, often going to extraordinary lengths in doing so (e.g., Evel Knievel, celibate monks, self-endangering Greenpeacers, etc.).

Hypothesis: Rationality is antagonistic to psychocentric stability (i.e., maintaining an adequate sense of self-worth).

Explanation: In much the manner reasoning allows for the subordination of lower emotional concerns and values (pain, fear, anger, sex, etc.) to more global concerns (concern for the self as a whole), so too, these more global concerns and values can themselves become reevaluated and subordinated to other more global, more objective considerations. And if this is so, and assuming that emotional disorder emanates from a deficiency in self-worth resulting from precisely this sort of experiencially based reevaluation, then it can reasonably be construed as a natural malfunction resulting from one's rational faculties functioning a tad too well.

Explanation (alternative wording): Being the blind arational bitch that she is, mother nature instills in all her creatures, a sense of their own importance (or of the importance of their needs) that is rationally inordinate. And, as a species (our own for example) reaches a certain stage in its rational/ cultural/memetic development its members come to increasingly question this inordinancy, and to increasingly come to require reasons for maintaining it (needs for love, acceptance, moral integrity, recognition, achievement, purpose, meaning, etc.)

Normalcy and Disorder: Assuming this is correct, then some explanation for the relative "normalcy" of most individuals would seem necessary. This can be accomplished simply by postulating different levels or degrees of consciousness. From this perspective, emotional disorder would then be construed as a valuative affliction resulting from an increase in semantic content in the engram indexed by the linguistic expression, "I am insignificant", which all persons of common sense "know"to be true, but which the "emotionally disturbed" have come to "realize", through abstract thought, devaluing experience, etc.

Implications: So-called "free will" and the incessant activity presumed to emanate from it is simply the insatiable appetite we all have for self-significating experience which, in turn, is simply nature's way of attempting to counter the objectifying influences of our rational faculties. This also implies that the engine in the first "free-thinking" artifact is probably going to be a diesel.

Another simile would be an atomic pile of less than critical size: an injected idea is to correspond to a neutron entering the pile from without. Each such neutron will cause a certain disturbance which eventually dies away. If, however, the size of the pile is sufficiently increased, the disturbance caused by such an incoming neutron will very likely go on and on increasing until the whole pile is destroyed. Is there a corresponding phenomenon for minds? (A. M. Turing).

Additional Implications: Since the explanation I have proposed amounts to the contention that nature's most rational species (presumably) is beginning to exhibit signs of transcending the formalism of nature's fixed objective (accomplished in man via intentional self-concern, i.e., the prudence program) it can reasonably be construed as providing evidence and argumentation in support of Lucas (1961) and Penrose (1989, 1994) . Not only does this imply that the aforementioned artifact probably won't be a computer, but it would also explain why a question such as "Can Human Irrationality Be Experimentally Demonstrated?" (Cohen, 1981) has led to controversy, in that it presupposes the possibility of a discrete answer to a question which can only be addressed in comparative terms (e.g. X is more rational than Y, the norm, etc.). Along these same lines (the inability to constrain rationality within that which is formal, discrete, etc.), the theory can also be construed as an endorsement or metajustification for comparative approaches in epistemology (explanationism, plausiblism, etc.)

So even if mathematicians are superb cognizers of mathematical truth, and even if there is no algorithm, practical or otherwise, for cognizing mathematical truth, it does not follow that the power of mathematicians to cognize mathematical truth is not entirely explicable in terms of their brain's executing an algorithm. Not an algorhithm for intuiting mathematical truth -- we can suppose that Penrose has proved that there could be no such thing. What would the algorithm be for, then? Most plausibly it would be an algorithm -- one of very many -- for trying to stay alive ... (D. C. Dennett, Murmers in the Cathedral).

Oops! Sorry! Wrong again, old bean. (me again, in response to Dennett's knee-jerk assumption that homo sapiens is running the same program as other species).

My ruling passion is the love of literary fame (David Hume).

I have often felt as though I had inherited all the defiance and all the passions with which our ancestors defended their Temple and could gladly sacrifice my life for one great moment in history (Sigmund Freud).

He, too [Ludwig Wittgenstein], suffered from depressions and for long periods considered killing himself because he considered his life worthless, but the stubbornness inherited from his father may have helped him to survive (Hans Sluga).

The inquest [Alan Turing's] established that it was suicide. The evidence was perfunctory, not for any irregular reason, but because it was so transparently clear a case (Andrew Hodges)