Now if you were in a mood to push back against this modular view of the mind,
and I am sure some of you are in a mood to push against the modular view
of the mind, one thing you could say
is, okay, granted, sometimes these, these frames of mind
set in and I am not really aware of
it happening and maybe they are triggered by feelings.
Okay.
That does happen, and maybe sometimes I could see a movie that
would affect my subsequent behavior in ways I don't even really understand.
Fine.
But there's sometimes when I, the Chief Executive Self, I make a decision, okay?
So I may be tempted to eat chocolate or a powdered sugar doughnut.
But sometimes I say no, I'm not going to do it,
it's not in my long term interest to do it.
Well isn't that, proof that, the self the chief executive self actually exists?
well, I may have bad news for you.
I asked Rob Kirchbaum that question, you may remember him.
He was a, a strong proponent of the modular view of the mind, wrote
a book about it, and we heard from him a couple of times already.
And his view is that no, ultimately the fact that sometimes we seem to be
the ones consciously making the decision, that fact
does not ultimately mean that the self exists.
Here's how the exchange went when I asked him about this.
Tell me what's wrong with this common way of describing a situation involving me.
Okay.
I really wanted to have the chocolate.
And I really felt drawn to it but you know, I knew that if, if
I did today I'd do it tomorrow and the next day, the next day, eventually
gain weight and, and I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I had
you know, I ate so much chocolate and so I decided not to eat the chocolate.
Now, you think that's an inaccurate way of
describing what's actually going on in my brain, right?
Yeah, I think that from, again from a lay standpoint, it's fine to talk like that,
you know, when you're talking to your, you
know, family at the dinner table, that's fine.
But I think eventually, psychology, as a scientific enterprise, is going to
have to move on from sentences that have pronouns like that.
So, if those sentences are going to have to be something like, you know, there
are certain systems in your head which
are designed to be motivated to high-calorie foods.
And those, those systems have had certain kinds of, you
can call them motives, or beliefs or we'll have representations.
And then there's other parts of your
head that have motives associated with long-term health,
and those systems had certain beliefs about chocolate,
and what's a good thing to bring about.
And so those modules inhibited, you know, the
behavior that was being facilitated by the short-term modules.
And so, you know, in that description, there's no word I in there.
There's no, you know, there's no pronouns that
are sort of covering you the whole self.
Okay.
So this whole issue of conscious decision making is important
because after all, we make a lot of important, decisions.
You know, we decide, should I buy a car?
What car should I buy?
Which college should I go to?
Which job offer should I accept?
And in addition, there are a lot of issues of kind of self control in the traditional
sense that are more consequential than the question of
whether to eat some chocolate on a given day.
So there's a question of whether I should have a drink even though
last time I had one drink, had a bunch of drinks, and wound
up making a fool of myself, or should I smoke this cigarette, or
should I cheat on my spouse these are, these are really important questions.
It would be nice to know can, you know, this,
thing that feels like the reasonable me make decisions or at
any rate, is there some sense in which reason can
enter the, the equation, the process by which decisions are made?
And is it possible that meditation can empower
reason, can magnify the role of reason in these decisions?
So this whole thing is worth grappling with.
Now one question I asked Rob Kurzban is if really, as you say, this all boils down to
just kind of modules fighting it out and the more powerful module winning, then why
do we have to go through this whole ritual of listening to the reasons on both,
both sides of whether you eat the chocolate
or whether you, you do anything else, you know?
Is that just kind of for show or what?
And he had two answers kind of two somewhat conjectural explanations.
They are both very interesting.
First of all he said, well it makes sense that reason would play a role in here.
It makes sense that natural selection would
design the brain so that when the module
that is kind of concerned with long term
health or long term interest, comes up with
a reason on its side of the argument, you know, if the reason makes sense, if
there's merit to it, then sure, the, the
the that, that reason should enter the equation.
So, so it makes sense that our brains would be designed
that way, to give some kind of credit to, to good reasons.
Now Rob isn't saying that it's the way it feels.
Which is that, you know, I am this conscious judge adjudicating.
I, the, the, the Chief Executive self hears out the two parties, decides what
a which one has more reason on its side and then makes the decision.
He's not saying that happens.
But he is suggesting that somewhere in the system there's some
algorithm or something that kind of evaluates the merit of reasons.
Now that leads to another question I have which is, well why
is this process conscience, why does this whole have to enter conscientiousness?
You know because after all, presumably you
design a computer program that evaluates the merit
of, of logic or something and it wouldn't
have to necessarily have to be conscious so,
why is that we have to spend all the time hearing about you know the, the pros and
cons of the decision before the module with the most power winds up winning.
I mean even granted that a module's generation of a
valid reason, gives that module more power in Rob's scenario.
Why do we have to like hear about the whole thing.
Why don't we just let the decision making happen and then we just hear the verdict.
Well here I think the second question, or the second explanation
that Rob had in response to my question enters the picture.
So when I said, you know, why does, why does there have
to be this conscious rehearsal of, of the pros and the cons.
He said, well, there's a second possible explanation of that.
And here's the explanation he gave.
People want to come up with reasons to
justify their behavior to third, to other people.
Again, this goes back to the public relations thing,
so production of reason inside your head, my guess is
that a large part of the reason that that
goes on is because if someone ever challenges you or
asks you why you did X,Y, or Z you want to have that in your hand and you don't
want to take actions until you have some reason
ready to go, such that people ask you about it.
Social world, if the social world pings you, what was the story with that?
Mm-hm.
That you have something ready to go.
Mm-hm.
I think this is why, you know, the marketing people are telling me
that consumers need only one reason to buy a product is that basically,
it's not that the one reason dominates all the other features of the
product, the price, or the quality, or the whatever, the brand you always bought.
Who knows, but it's that as long as you have one
reason you can't look like an idiot for making the choice.
You can always tell the, the other guy
who asked why you bought that particular microwave.
You say, oh well, you know it has the gizmo.
So, the idea is here you know that one reason we go through this rehearsal of
reasons is so that we'll be prepared to
to give reasons for our behavior if we're challenged.
And I imagine this is especially important if you've done something that if found
out might meet with real social disapproval
or possibly even retribution from an offended party.
So for example, if you are having an extramarital
affair now the way you might think of this
in modular terms The decision of, of whether to
have one would be, you know, there's a module
that seeks short term sexual gratification, then there's a
module that's concerned about your long term reputation, or
is concerned about eventual retaliation, you know, and they're,
they're both coming up with reasons for their position Well,
one reason that the module, advocating the affair, can't come up with is
the truth, which is you know, I wanted short term sexual gratification, right?
That's not an acceptable answer in society, for, for, for violating
a norm, you have to have a better reason than that.
So, we, we come up with reasons like, oh if you knew how emotionally distant my
spouse was you'd understand why I did it, and so on.
And this explains why these reasons would be rehearsed consciously right.
If the purpose of the reasons is to be shared
with others in the event that we have to give reasons.
Then it makes sense that it would be the conscious mind that,
that observes and, and rehearses these reasons because after all it seems to be
the conscious mind that does the communicating with other people.
So, the idea is an analogy I guess would be suppose there's a corporation
and instead of two contending modules, you
have two contending vice presidents, they have
very different ideas about strategies, about what they want to do on a particular
issue, and so they go to the office of the public relations director and they
each give the reasons they have for advocating their position.
And a lot of the point of this exercise,
it's, it's not that the, the PR director is,
is necessarily going to prepare a winner, but rather
he or she is just kind of hearing the reasons.
So that they'll be prepared to share the
reasons with the world when the time comes.
Now on the other hand, this does suggest a second way that reason could matter.
Because after all, you know, if the, the, the, the policy
that one vice president is advocating is going to, to lead to huge blow
back and the reason that, that the Vice President is,
is giving for it just is not going to carry the day out there with the public.
Then that counts against, the argument that, that the Vice President is making.
So, you can imagine, this PR director saying no, I'm
sorry, that one is just, is just not going to fly.
If you don't have a better reason than that, that we can publicize after
we do this, then that counts against the argument that that we should do that.
So in theory there could be two separate senses in which reason matters.
First of all, as Rob Kirsbond suggested you know, you,
you would expect the brain to be designed that, that, such
that it pays attention when there are good reasons that
it's not in your long term self interest to do something.
And secondly to the extent that the reasons you would give
people to justify something controversial you've done are not going to fly,
are not going to be accepted then that too counts against kind
of the module that is advocating that particular course of action.
Okay, so reason can matter, but on the
other hand, with certain issues of self control, in
particular true addictions, reason seems to play a less
and less prominent role as time, time goes on.
You may deliberate earnestly before you
start drinking and then, and then later develop a drinking problem.
And as you become an alcoholic you do,
you, you, you kind of skip the deliberation issue.
You just drink.
You may have a rationale, a standard rationale for doing what you do but, but
the, the time for actual reason to enter the equation kind of seems to pass.
Or, or with any addiction with heroin addiction or whatever.
So, it seems as if modules in a sense gain more power with victory.
So, so the module that's, that's advocating doing
this thing that may lead to short term gratification.
It seems to get stronger as it kind of wins victory after victory.
You know your, your grandmother may have said,
you know, be careful about succumbing to temptation
that first time because it's going to get harder
to resist thereafter harder and harder and harder.
Well, that actually is the way system seems to work.
And one question is, why is it designed that way?
Why is it, that modules are given more power with victory?
I, I mean you could imagine a system where they, they just take turns, you know.
And the deal is, well, this module won last
time, the, the short term gratification module, now the.
The more responsible, farseeing module is going to get to win this time around.
That's not the way it works.
Now why is that?
Well, my own pet theory is actually this is a logical way
for natural selection to design a modular system of motivation.
Cause after all you know, if you imagine you know, these modules
are being built up over time and probably you know, the, the short
term gratification modules often existed in
evolutionary time before the, some of the
modules that look farther into the future and worry about long term consequences.
So the modules are kind of being stacked upon one
another and if there's indeed not a kind of chief executive
self to adjudicate among them, there, there have to be
rules for, for you know, how power's allocated among the modules.
And when you think about it, it does make sense that one rule would be that modules
that succeed in achieving gratification are given more power next time around.
So for example, if back during evolution there's
a module that seeks short term sexual gratification And
you imagine that there's a situation where it's kind
of saying yeah, yeah go for it, approach her.
And there's a module that's saying no, no you'll be
rejected you'll be humiliated, people will make fun of you, whatever.
Well if, if indeed the, the, the module advocating advance
prevails and you are not rebuffed and there is the sexual
gratification then in natural selection terms that's success.
So that the gratification is evidence that this
module counsel was you know in terms, in
the terms it natural selection cares about this
module's counsel was, you know, wise so to speak.
I mean, at least conducive to getting genes into the next generation.
Similarly, to revisiting an example we we gave earlier in the course.
If there is a module that's saying yeah,
you know the, those tree's off in the distance.
I think, I think they can have real fruit.
Let's make the effort.
Let's go.
Well if you go and you get to the tree.
There is fruit.
You taste the fruit.
It's good.
It's sweet.
It, it feels gratifying.
Well, that module, it makes sense that module would have more
power next time around because it's got a good track record now.
It was right this time and so, it would make to go with with the past winner.
Now, in a modern environment these rules of the road,
the rules that give, give more power to a module-seeking,
short-term, sexual gratification, if it achieves a graduate, the, the
gratification, or more power to a module that, that seeks fruit.
If, if you get the sweet taste of fruit, these same rules
can lead people to be addicted to pornography or addicted to junk food.
But in the, in the environment they were
designed for, they, these, these rules actually made sense.
And so too with things like alcoholism, of various kinds of drug addiction.
These are, these are the result of, of novel features
of the environment that allow people to intervene directly in
the chemical reward system that, back during evolution, it wasn't,
it wasn't so easy to intervene directly on, directly in.
So all of this, you know, drives home that, that self control can be a very
important question and raises the question of how, how can we how can we achieve it?
And, can meditation, in particular mindfulness meditation, play a
role in helping us get the system under better control.
Well there's somebody who, who has really looked into
that and it's somebody we've already seen Judson Brewer, who,
as you may recall, did an important study brain scan
study showing that the default mode network does get quieter.
During mediation it turns out he also does work
using mindfulness meditation to help people overcome chemical addictions
such as smoking and and, and Judd Brewer recently
explained to me you know how, how this worked.
You, you get them to view the craving differently?
Is that the key?
Yes.
So we use an acronym, with smokers in particular we use this acronym.
RAIN.
Where they have to recognize what craving feels like.
And they have to allow it to be there.
So often we push away unpleasant things.
And craving's unpleasant, so we try to push it away.
And so we, we don't allow it to be in our body.
And if we can't allow it to be there, we can't really investigate it.
We can't really allow it to do its thing, and
you know, come up, do its dance and go away.
So the A is for allow, the I is for investigate.
And I think of this as really getting curious.
Oh, what does craving feel like in my body right now?
And it can even, when you're really curious about
something, that actually flips the valence from unpleasant to pleasant.
The craving which was unpleasant, flips to curiosity which is pleasant.
And it can help us kind of steak the object.
And for the, for the N we use a noting practice.
This is simple [UNKNOWN] style noting, where people
can note craving as it comes and goes, tightness,
tension, clenching, burning, rising, you know, as the craving
comes and goes away, so we use, you know?
Other people have used this idea bird surfing you
know, where you can, you can ride out your urges.
Mm-hm.
And the RAIN acronym very much helps people get on top of that
wave and ride it instead of getting suck into the craving and using.
Mm-hm.
So whereas normally, Pete, you would have the feeling that if you've got a
craving, you've got to either succumb to it, surrender to it or push it away.
What you're saying is actually you can do neither.
You can sit there and by observing it, in effect weaken it.
Yes.
And you weaken it because you don't feed it.
So it's interesting in the, the language
of the Buddhist time, the aint dependent origination
where craving is this key link in this you know, this feeling tone comes up.
You crave something, you act on it.
And by acting on it you kind of reapply a self concept which then
spins back around and kind of changes
the way you interact with future situations, Mm-hm.
That are similar.
And, and they actually describe clinging another translation
over [UNKNOWN] which is translated as clinging is also sustenance or fuel.
Mm-hm.
And in essence you're fueling that fire every time you act on a craving.
And so what we teach people to do is just be
with the craving, notice that it's physical sensations in their body.
And you know mental restlessness or whatever and if they don't
act on it, they don't fuel it and they don't feed it.
Mm-hm.
And then when you don't feed it eventually you know if it's a stray
cat and you stop feeding a stray cat it doesn't come to your house anymore.
If you stop adding fuel to a fire it eventually burns out.
Okay, so the cat keeps coming to your door.
Now that's interesting metaphor to a psychologist, because it
suggests the dynamic of what psychologists call operant conditioning.
The classic example of that is just a rat that presses
the bar, food comes out so the rat keeps pressing the bar.
Now, if you quit giving the rat food in response to the
pressing of the bar then eventually
the behavior is, as psychologists say, extinguished.
And the, and rat no longer presses the bar.
Well then, the, the prospect being raised here is that maybe you
know, basically the dynamics of operant condition work with cravings.
So that when you kind of look at a craving mindfully
that's like, the rat pressing the bar, without the food coming out.
Because if you look at it mindfully you don't, it
doesn't get a grip on you, you don't follow it.
You don't smoke the cigarette or have the drink, or whatever.
And, I guess in this metaphor, then, then,
kind of of just pushing, pushing the craving away would
be more like, you know, not letting the
rat anywhere near the bar in the first place.
And, you know, that could, that could work.
That could be an effective self-control.
I would imagine that it winds up having different properties.
From the, the mindfulness therapy that Judd Brewer is talking about and
it maybe that if you just, just keep pushing the craving away.
Then when the craving does arise in full
body form maybe you're less capable of resisting it.
I don't know it's an empirical question.
But one, one other interesting question related to
this is whether you could view a lot of other
exercises of mindfulness as basically operant conditioning.
So, for example, when you feel rage.
If you pound your desk and yell at someone,
which after all feels kind of good, you know,
when you're in, in a rage is that, is
that the reward that reinforces the behavior, you know?
I, I, is that in other words, has, has the module been, been deemed successful?
If you scream and nothing bad happens, nobody retaliates
is that defined as success in natural selection's terms?
Or if you feel hatred, and as a result, you go around talking in very
unfavorable terms about the person you hate, which after all feels good, right?
I mean, especially if it turns out
the person you're talking to shares the opinion,
or you, you feel you persuaded them that this person you hate Is a bad person.
Well, is that, is talking about the person you hate a reward for, for the behavior.
Is it, you know, and, and by design and again,
is, is the idea that the module that generates the behavior
or the hatred has succeeded in natural selections terms if it
leads you to, to, to successfully kind of denounce the person?
That, to me, is a very interesting question.
It's a speculative question, for sure, but I do think it's possible that,
that, yes, it makes sense to think of modules in a not
quite literal sense as kind of organisms that,
that operate according to the principles of, of operat, operant conditioning
and to think that when we exercise mindfulness we may
have the ability to alter.
Their behavior via the principals of opperant
conditioning so that when we we, we look
at a feeling like hatred or rage mindfully and so it doesn't translate into the
behavior that it would normally translate into then we are, we are draining the kind
of long term power from that module rather than letting it amass more and more power.
okay, so, so far in this lecture we've seen three kinds
of connections between mindfulness meditation and
the modular view of the mind.
First of all, the default mode network that gets quiet
during mind meditation, or for that matter, during other kinds
of meditation, can be viewed as and maybe is best viewed as
different modules kind of vying for your attention.
Okay.
second, by, by being mindful of feelings we can, in principle,
determine which modules are and are not allowed to kind of take over the mind.
And then third, by exercising this mindfulness we can
affect the, the long term power that different modules have.
We can drain power from some modules and maybe empower other modules.
Okay, now let's turn to what is in some ways a
deeper connection between meditation and the modular view of the mind.
In a final segment of this lecture, we're going to hear from some people
who have had meditative experiences that convinced
them that the self does not exist.
And we're going to look at those experiences in light of the
modular view of the mind, and see if that tells us anything
about what's going on in their minds when they have these experiences,
and even whether these, these are kind of valid experiences of insight.
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