After my post on the psychology of 'Dukkha', I thought I might touch upon some more interesting ideas in evolutionary psychology that tie in quite nicely with the core Buddhist concepts.
There is a school of thought in modern psychology that the mind is modular in nature (Jerry Fodor, Pylyshyn, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby et al) - that there is no CEO self inside the brain, making decisions based on the huge mass of neurobiological information, giving instructions to the rest of the brain and thereby controlling other systems, but that the mind may be composed of innate neural structures or modules which have distinct established evolutionarily developed functions. When presented with a constant flow of stimuli or information, one or the other (or sometimes more than one) module gets activated based on evolutionary cues, and governs the ongoing process of sensory input -> cognitive impulse -> mental reaction -> conscious decision.
The perspective I refer to for most part in this piece comes from evolutionary psychology, particularly from the work of Leda Cosmides and John Tooby. This perspective suggests that modules are units of mental processing that evolved in response to selection pressures. On this view, much modern human psychological activity is rooted in adaptations that occurred earlier in human evolution, when natural selection was forming the modern human species. Evolutionary psychologists propose that the mind is made up of genetically influenced and domain-specific mental algorithms or computational modules, designed to solve specific evolutionary problems of the past. This theory considers the brain a physical system - an information processing machine, with modules as functionally specialized cognitive systems. These modules are domain specific, encapsulates a certain class of information, and are involved in low-level visual as well as central processing. This theory is also called 'massive modularity', and it is highly contested.
One of the arguments to explain the 'massive modularity' thesis goes somewhat like this:
I believe that the idea of certain parts of the brain neurologically controlling the rest of the system could have arisen from a science which was highly rooted in certain (monotheistic) religions which prefer unitary models of the universe and all other systems in it, rather than federal ones. It also explains why, despite its enormous success in explaining our universe and ever-increasing influence in the world of theoretical physics, classical theorists have never taken to quantum mechanics because of its inherently probabilistic nature and the possibility (according to the Copenhagen interpretation, again contested) that this probabilistic nature will eventually be replaced by a deterministic theory, and in the process, will bring about the final renunciation of the classical idea of "causality." The arguments against this and in favour of determinism (most famously by Albert Einstein who said 'God does not play dice') deeply dislike the bizarre ideas thrown up by quantum theory such as the one that says all the possibilities described by quantum theory simultaneously occur in a multiverse composed of mostly independent parallel universes, or that there's a world of tiny particles behind everything that's governed at the most basic level by (a version of) randomness.
So if physics and mathematics, with their theoretical history as old as human civilisation itself, grapple with questions of determinism, it's only fair to give a young science like psychology the leeway to pursue some of the less accepted theories and see where they go.After all, one really can count the number of people who have most influenced our thinking on the matters of the mind on the fingers of one hand, so the statistical probability of us being right about anything at all in this entire field is alarmingly low. So let's just keep that in mind, and go back to our theory of modularity.
Now, assuming that there is no CEO in the brain who has the final say on how the various systems act and react, it falls to these modules to do this - and it is fair to assume that they are able to do this by mining the storehouse of evolutionary information stored in our brains. So when someone insults or threatens us, it is possible that there the part of the brain concerned with self-preservation is the one that tells you how to react. Or in more scientific terms, it is possible that this part of the brain processes the genetic information relevant to this situation and triggers the eventual reaction. This is all wild hypothesis, of course. However, it is important to pay attention to ANY hypothesis in a field where the difference in experimental cases between the established theories and the newbies may be in the thousands, or even in the hundreds.
This idea of modules was elaborated by Kenrick & Grisckevicius, who posited that there are seven 'sub-selves' in our minds, which each take care of:
At the risk of repeating myself, the linear dependencies between these are quite intuitive - in Buddhist terms, the physical world includes the material body and the sense organs which receive the stimuli, these stimuli result in sensation or feeling i.e. pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, which in turn gives rise to perception, cognition or discrimination i.e. a registering. This then causes a very important next step - mental formations, or all types of mental habits, thoughts, ideas, opinions, prejudices, compulsions, and decisions triggered by a stimulus. Finally, the solidification of these mental formations is what results in consciousness or cognizance, which in Buddhist thinking, is the base for future 'suffering'. The reason for this is that the five aggregates are the "ultimate referent" in the Buddha's elaboration on dukkha (suffering). Clinging causes future suffering: the five aggregates are the substrata for clinging and thus "contribute to the causal origination of future suffering".This clinging to the five aggregates (also reference in my previous post on this subject) must be removed in order to achieve release from 'samsara'.
The scheme of the five aggregates is not meant to be an exhaustive classification of the sentient being, but it does describe various aspects of the way our 'individuality' manifests - in this, it sound remarkably similar to the theory of modularity. The 'mental formations' are those very impulses which have been evolutionarily programmed into us and seem to control our actions and reactions - protect when afraid, push back when threatened, turn on the charm when we like someone romantically, work at keeping a relationship strong, say or do the things which we believe will help us either make friends or keep them. Our minds are conditioned to recognize the behaviours which result in gratification to these various selves in different situations, and reward the modules that trigger them, thus ensuring that the impulses driving these behaviours become even more deep-seated residents of our subconscious minds.
This is us. Our 'self' which we talk about as some unique and coherent identity could just as well be described as a collection of pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, sometimes coming together in one way, at other times in another. It calls into question all those theories which consider the mind and the psyche to be a precise structure, such as Freud's id-ego-superego, and all the concepts of clinical psychology which heavily depend on this understanding of the human mind, like transference neuroses, narcissistic neuroses, psychoses etc. The implied determinism in the way our mental 'modules' seem to be designed to function (unless trained to do otherwise) clashes with the implied randomness in the idea that a plethora of disconnected stimuli are influencing and remoulding our subconscious and unconscious mind on a daily basis.
Mindfulness meditation supposedly trains the mind to stem the causality of consciousness at the initial steps of sensation and cognition by instructing the practitioner - try not to label any sensation as pleasant or unpleasant, because by doing so, you will be taking cognizance of it and forming or strengthening hard-to-break mental habits. Since the labeling is usually inevitable, at least initially, try then not to get attached to the mental reaction that it causes. Be aware that this reaction is a temporary phenomenon, occurring because your mind is designed and conditioned a certain way, but attaching an idea to it - of why something is a certain way, or what it makes you feel, or what you should do because of it - gives it a degree of permanence, and causes us to continue to act in exactly the same way our forebears were programmed to in order to survive. They, of course, needed those impulses - those evolutionarily programmed instructions - much more than we need them today. In the ideal evolutionary phase, obeying these instructions would resolve some manner of conflict, capable of causing some kind of harm - physical, emotional, communal. Through this resolution, the impulse would exhaust itself and leave no residue behind. In other words, there would no repression of any kind.
However, while labeling is actually critical to recognizing deep-seated evolutionary signals and ensuring the survival of our genes as per Darwinian theory, there are studies ('they saw a game', a case study by Hastorf and Cantril on a Dartmouth-Princeton football game in in 1952) that demonstrate that in today’s world, this kind of labeling may be leading to 'selective perception' and thereby tendencies towards ‘groupism’ or other unhealthy biases. By using something that we do not need over and over again, by trying to 'resolve' where there ought not to be any reason for resolution, we may be encouraging unnecessary impulses (which then get repressed when they do not achieve the required evolutionary effect), and discouraging behaviours that need to be strengthened for enabling the constructive adaption which is critical to the higher evolution of our minds.
These deterministic impulses, or mental habits, when repressed, start controlling us in the form of 'complexes' as described by Jungian psychology. They famous split-brain experiments discussed in the first part of course outlined the possibility of the brain ‘making up’ plausible stories in order to make possible a cohesive understanding of the world it is trying to navigate. This also has resonance with the Buddhist idea that our minds may possibly be showing us ‘realities’ that are most compatible with our evolutionary and psychological needs.
Thus, allowing the brain to do whatever it likes based on its evolutionary feedback seems to enable a rather unhealthy relationship between our conscious and subconscious minds. Another very interest example of how the way our brain works may not necessarily be in our 'best' interests is demonstrated by the famous split-brain experiments (Roger Sperry et al, Nobel Prize for Medicine/Physiology, 1981) - some results from these pointed to the possibility that our brains actually ‘making up’ plausible stories at times in order to make possible a cohesive understanding of the world it is trying to navigate. In a sense, our brains may be showing us ‘realities’ that are most compatible with our evolutionary and psychological needs, and in this way, propagating our sub-conscious delusions about our conscious selves.
Our brains are presumably doing a lot of subconscious work on a daily basis - first reacting to every stimulus or situation of potential conflict as predisposed evolutionarily, then resolving the dichotomy between the unnecessary impulse and the actual situation a.k.a. reality by repressing the unnecessary impulse, and then constantly 'managing' the ongoing conversation between the conscious self and the 'shadow self' - the repository of our evolutionary instincts which in my opinion, in the most influential part of our subconscious.
I find it interesting that Buddhism asks us to side-step the basic instincts that drive the choices which are best suited for us from an evolutionary point of view. It seems to be telling us to reduce subconscious work by bringing the core internal actions and decision-making process into conscious territory, i.e. using any stimulus as an opportunity to:
Perhaps this is best done by gradually removing the psychological smokescreens created by the modular system of motivation built into us through activities such as mindfulness meditation. Meditation is said to give us a way to experience the objective truth with a sense of non-attachment, or in other words, a non-affective experience. I think it is able to do this because it first reduces the activation of the ‘Default Mode Network’ (in neuroscience, a network of brain regions most commonly shown to be active when a person is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest, such as during daydreaming and mind-wandering, or when the individual is thinking about others, thinking about themselves, remembering the past, and planning for the future i.e. the mental activity almost ever-present in our daily existence), and allows us to achieve the mental equanimity which is required to be able to make relatively unbiased choices. Meditation can be looked at as a focused activity which reduces the constant flow of information which activates this or that mental module and effects a pause in the ongoing process of sensing and reaction. This, I believe, is critical to increase our ability to control the activities of the mind, and practice some of the precepts mentioned earlier which may help reduce our enslavement to the vagaries of our subconscious minds.
Once this quietness of inner narrative is achieved, Vipassana meditation advocates self-observation at the subtlest level – a kind of focused introspection ideally leads one towards a sense of inter-connectedness between the sensations in one’s body, the external stimuli, and the mental activity which results thereof i.e. the intimate relationship between mind and matter. With practice, there should be a seamless movement towards the understanding that the essence of all things are interconnected. This is the starting point for universal empathy, inclusive growth and sustainable living. It is something that people of various religions have claimed to have learnt from their more recent ancestors, but who, I'm afraid, still act as their earliest ancestors did before the dawn of civilisation.
Notes:
1. Many of the ideas expressed in this piece are not mine. I have mentioned references for most, however may have missed out quite a few which have probably become a part of my world view.
2. The idea behind these posts is to achieve some manner of narrative continuity to my thoughts about a few subjects which have held my interest for quite a while now. They assume basic prior knowledge on various subjects, or flesh out certain ideas more than others, or try to piece together disconnnected notions willy-nilly, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle which sometimes come together, but often do not - all at the cost of clarity and coherence. They are self-serving, and show little respect for the reader - for this, I apologize.
3. I regret to admit that I do not meditate regularly any longer. I wish I could say that my practical experience has borne out some of these ideas over time, but my practice, whether of meditation or of the psychological experiments that I believe go hand in hand with it, has only begun, and I am struggling to keep at it. In this respect, these posts are purely academic in nature. I wish I could make them more interesting, but for now, please excuse their phlegmatic features.
4. I am a slave to many things that are quite inexplicable by evolution, such as being unapologetic couch-potato-style laziness. But I like to explain it off by hoping that evolution considers my mental activity more important to the survival of the collective genes of the species than my physical activity. Go figure.
There is a school of thought in modern psychology that the mind is modular in nature (Jerry Fodor, Pylyshyn, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby et al) - that there is no CEO self inside the brain, making decisions based on the huge mass of neurobiological information, giving instructions to the rest of the brain and thereby controlling other systems, but that the mind may be composed of innate neural structures or modules which have distinct established evolutionarily developed functions. When presented with a constant flow of stimuli or information, one or the other (or sometimes more than one) module gets activated based on evolutionary cues, and governs the ongoing process of sensory input -> cognitive impulse -> mental reaction -> conscious decision.
The perspective I refer to for most part in this piece comes from evolutionary psychology, particularly from the work of Leda Cosmides and John Tooby. This perspective suggests that modules are units of mental processing that evolved in response to selection pressures. On this view, much modern human psychological activity is rooted in adaptations that occurred earlier in human evolution, when natural selection was forming the modern human species. Evolutionary psychologists propose that the mind is made up of genetically influenced and domain-specific mental algorithms or computational modules, designed to solve specific evolutionary problems of the past. This theory considers the brain a physical system - an information processing machine, with modules as functionally specialized cognitive systems. These modules are domain specific, encapsulates a certain class of information, and are involved in low-level visual as well as central processing. This theory is also called 'massive modularity', and it is highly contested.
One of the arguments to explain the 'massive modularity' thesis goes somewhat like this:
- The human mind is a product of natural selection.
- In order to survive and reproduce, our human ancestors had to solve a range of adaptive problems (finding food, shelter, mates, etc.).
- Since adaptive problems are solved more quickly, efficiently, and reliably by modular systems than by non-modular ones, natural selection would have favored the evolution of a massively modular architecture.
- So the human mind is probably massively modular.
- The brain's developmental plasticity and adaptive responses to local conditions are being labeled modular responses to evolutionary environments.
- The evolutionary psychologists' definition of "mind" is heavily influenced by cognitivism and/or information processing definitions of the mind, precluding the discussion of adaptive psychological traits.
- The argument lacks rigorous empirical support, contains several inferential errors and uses untested evolutionary assumptions to eliminate rival reasoning theories
- Some theories posit domain-general processing, in which mental activity is distributed across the brain and cannot be decomposed, even abstractly, into independent units. These argue strongly against with the enterprise trying to localise cognitive processes in the brain, partly because a successful taxonomy of mental processes has yet to be developed.
I believe that the idea of certain parts of the brain neurologically controlling the rest of the system could have arisen from a science which was highly rooted in certain (monotheistic) religions which prefer unitary models of the universe and all other systems in it, rather than federal ones. It also explains why, despite its enormous success in explaining our universe and ever-increasing influence in the world of theoretical physics, classical theorists have never taken to quantum mechanics because of its inherently probabilistic nature and the possibility (according to the Copenhagen interpretation, again contested) that this probabilistic nature will eventually be replaced by a deterministic theory, and in the process, will bring about the final renunciation of the classical idea of "causality." The arguments against this and in favour of determinism (most famously by Albert Einstein who said 'God does not play dice') deeply dislike the bizarre ideas thrown up by quantum theory such as the one that says all the possibilities described by quantum theory simultaneously occur in a multiverse composed of mostly independent parallel universes, or that there's a world of tiny particles behind everything that's governed at the most basic level by (a version of) randomness.
So if physics and mathematics, with their theoretical history as old as human civilisation itself, grapple with questions of determinism, it's only fair to give a young science like psychology the leeway to pursue some of the less accepted theories and see where they go.After all, one really can count the number of people who have most influenced our thinking on the matters of the mind on the fingers of one hand, so the statistical probability of us being right about anything at all in this entire field is alarmingly low. So let's just keep that in mind, and go back to our theory of modularity.
Now, assuming that there is no CEO in the brain who has the final say on how the various systems act and react, it falls to these modules to do this - and it is fair to assume that they are able to do this by mining the storehouse of evolutionary information stored in our brains. So when someone insults or threatens us, it is possible that there the part of the brain concerned with self-preservation is the one that tells you how to react. Or in more scientific terms, it is possible that this part of the brain processes the genetic information relevant to this situation and triggers the eventual reaction. This is all wild hypothesis, of course. However, it is important to pay attention to ANY hypothesis in a field where the difference in experimental cases between the established theories and the newbies may be in the thousands, or even in the hundreds.
This idea of modules was elaborated by Kenrick & Grisckevicius, who posited that there are seven 'sub-selves' in our minds, which each take care of:
- Self-protection
- Mate attraction
- Mate retention
- Affiliation
- Kin care
- Status
- Disease Avoidance
At the risk of repeating myself, the linear dependencies between these are quite intuitive - in Buddhist terms, the physical world includes the material body and the sense organs which receive the stimuli, these stimuli result in sensation or feeling i.e. pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, which in turn gives rise to perception, cognition or discrimination i.e. a registering. This then causes a very important next step - mental formations, or all types of mental habits, thoughts, ideas, opinions, prejudices, compulsions, and decisions triggered by a stimulus. Finally, the solidification of these mental formations is what results in consciousness or cognizance, which in Buddhist thinking, is the base for future 'suffering'. The reason for this is that the five aggregates are the "ultimate referent" in the Buddha's elaboration on dukkha (suffering). Clinging causes future suffering: the five aggregates are the substrata for clinging and thus "contribute to the causal origination of future suffering".This clinging to the five aggregates (also reference in my previous post on this subject) must be removed in order to achieve release from 'samsara'.
The scheme of the five aggregates is not meant to be an exhaustive classification of the sentient being, but it does describe various aspects of the way our 'individuality' manifests - in this, it sound remarkably similar to the theory of modularity. The 'mental formations' are those very impulses which have been evolutionarily programmed into us and seem to control our actions and reactions - protect when afraid, push back when threatened, turn on the charm when we like someone romantically, work at keeping a relationship strong, say or do the things which we believe will help us either make friends or keep them. Our minds are conditioned to recognize the behaviours which result in gratification to these various selves in different situations, and reward the modules that trigger them, thus ensuring that the impulses driving these behaviours become even more deep-seated residents of our subconscious minds.
This is us. Our 'self' which we talk about as some unique and coherent identity could just as well be described as a collection of pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, sometimes coming together in one way, at other times in another. It calls into question all those theories which consider the mind and the psyche to be a precise structure, such as Freud's id-ego-superego, and all the concepts of clinical psychology which heavily depend on this understanding of the human mind, like transference neuroses, narcissistic neuroses, psychoses etc. The implied determinism in the way our mental 'modules' seem to be designed to function (unless trained to do otherwise) clashes with the implied randomness in the idea that a plethora of disconnected stimuli are influencing and remoulding our subconscious and unconscious mind on a daily basis.
Mindfulness meditation supposedly trains the mind to stem the causality of consciousness at the initial steps of sensation and cognition by instructing the practitioner - try not to label any sensation as pleasant or unpleasant, because by doing so, you will be taking cognizance of it and forming or strengthening hard-to-break mental habits. Since the labeling is usually inevitable, at least initially, try then not to get attached to the mental reaction that it causes. Be aware that this reaction is a temporary phenomenon, occurring because your mind is designed and conditioned a certain way, but attaching an idea to it - of why something is a certain way, or what it makes you feel, or what you should do because of it - gives it a degree of permanence, and causes us to continue to act in exactly the same way our forebears were programmed to in order to survive. They, of course, needed those impulses - those evolutionarily programmed instructions - much more than we need them today. In the ideal evolutionary phase, obeying these instructions would resolve some manner of conflict, capable of causing some kind of harm - physical, emotional, communal. Through this resolution, the impulse would exhaust itself and leave no residue behind. In other words, there would no repression of any kind.
However, while labeling is actually critical to recognizing deep-seated evolutionary signals and ensuring the survival of our genes as per Darwinian theory, there are studies ('they saw a game', a case study by Hastorf and Cantril on a Dartmouth-Princeton football game in in 1952) that demonstrate that in today’s world, this kind of labeling may be leading to 'selective perception' and thereby tendencies towards ‘groupism’ or other unhealthy biases. By using something that we do not need over and over again, by trying to 'resolve' where there ought not to be any reason for resolution, we may be encouraging unnecessary impulses (which then get repressed when they do not achieve the required evolutionary effect), and discouraging behaviours that need to be strengthened for enabling the constructive adaption which is critical to the higher evolution of our minds.
These deterministic impulses, or mental habits, when repressed, start controlling us in the form of 'complexes' as described by Jungian psychology. They famous split-brain experiments discussed in the first part of course outlined the possibility of the brain ‘making up’ plausible stories in order to make possible a cohesive understanding of the world it is trying to navigate. This also has resonance with the Buddhist idea that our minds may possibly be showing us ‘realities’ that are most compatible with our evolutionary and psychological needs.
Thus, allowing the brain to do whatever it likes based on its evolutionary feedback seems to enable a rather unhealthy relationship between our conscious and subconscious minds. Another very interest example of how the way our brain works may not necessarily be in our 'best' interests is demonstrated by the famous split-brain experiments (Roger Sperry et al, Nobel Prize for Medicine/Physiology, 1981) - some results from these pointed to the possibility that our brains actually ‘making up’ plausible stories at times in order to make possible a cohesive understanding of the world it is trying to navigate. In a sense, our brains may be showing us ‘realities’ that are most compatible with our evolutionary and psychological needs, and in this way, propagating our sub-conscious delusions about our conscious selves.
Our brains are presumably doing a lot of subconscious work on a daily basis - first reacting to every stimulus or situation of potential conflict as predisposed evolutionarily, then resolving the dichotomy between the unnecessary impulse and the actual situation a.k.a. reality by repressing the unnecessary impulse, and then constantly 'managing' the ongoing conversation between the conscious self and the 'shadow self' - the repository of our evolutionary instincts which in my opinion, in the most influential part of our subconscious.
I find it interesting that Buddhism asks us to side-step the basic instincts that drive the choices which are best suited for us from an evolutionary point of view. It seems to be telling us to reduce subconscious work by bringing the core internal actions and decision-making process into conscious territory, i.e. using any stimulus as an opportunity to:
- Avoid unnecessary labeling of sensations
- Avoid clinging to the perceptional and cognitive impulses generated from these sensations
- Avoid forming meanings, or mental formations around these perceptions
Perhaps this is best done by gradually removing the psychological smokescreens created by the modular system of motivation built into us through activities such as mindfulness meditation. Meditation is said to give us a way to experience the objective truth with a sense of non-attachment, or in other words, a non-affective experience. I think it is able to do this because it first reduces the activation of the ‘Default Mode Network’ (in neuroscience, a network of brain regions most commonly shown to be active when a person is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest, such as during daydreaming and mind-wandering, or when the individual is thinking about others, thinking about themselves, remembering the past, and planning for the future i.e. the mental activity almost ever-present in our daily existence), and allows us to achieve the mental equanimity which is required to be able to make relatively unbiased choices. Meditation can be looked at as a focused activity which reduces the constant flow of information which activates this or that mental module and effects a pause in the ongoing process of sensing and reaction. This, I believe, is critical to increase our ability to control the activities of the mind, and practice some of the precepts mentioned earlier which may help reduce our enslavement to the vagaries of our subconscious minds.
Once this quietness of inner narrative is achieved, Vipassana meditation advocates self-observation at the subtlest level – a kind of focused introspection ideally leads one towards a sense of inter-connectedness between the sensations in one’s body, the external stimuli, and the mental activity which results thereof i.e. the intimate relationship between mind and matter. With practice, there should be a seamless movement towards the understanding that the essence of all things are interconnected. This is the starting point for universal empathy, inclusive growth and sustainable living. It is something that people of various religions have claimed to have learnt from their more recent ancestors, but who, I'm afraid, still act as their earliest ancestors did before the dawn of civilisation.
Notes:
1. Many of the ideas expressed in this piece are not mine. I have mentioned references for most, however may have missed out quite a few which have probably become a part of my world view.
2. The idea behind these posts is to achieve some manner of narrative continuity to my thoughts about a few subjects which have held my interest for quite a while now. They assume basic prior knowledge on various subjects, or flesh out certain ideas more than others, or try to piece together disconnnected notions willy-nilly, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle which sometimes come together, but often do not - all at the cost of clarity and coherence. They are self-serving, and show little respect for the reader - for this, I apologize.
3. I regret to admit that I do not meditate regularly any longer. I wish I could say that my practical experience has borne out some of these ideas over time, but my practice, whether of meditation or of the psychological experiments that I believe go hand in hand with it, has only begun, and I am struggling to keep at it. In this respect, these posts are purely academic in nature. I wish I could make them more interesting, but for now, please excuse their phlegmatic features.
4. I am a slave to many things that are quite inexplicable by evolution, such as being unapologetic couch-potato-style laziness. But I like to explain it off by hoping that evolution considers my mental activity more important to the survival of the collective genes of the species than my physical activity. Go figure.
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