I really wanted to have the chocolate, and I really felt drawn to it.
But, I knew that if I did it today, I would do it tomorrow,
the next day, next day.
Eventually, I'd gain weight and I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I ate so
much chocolate, and so I decided not to eat the chocolate.
So you think that's actually an inaccurate way to describe what's going
on in my brain?
>> Yeah, I think that from, again,
from a lay standpoint it's fine to talk like that.
When you're talking to your family at the dinner table, it's fine.
But I think eventually psychology as a scientific enterprise,
it's going to have to move on from sentences that have pronouns like that.
So, those sentences are going to have to be something like, there were certain
systems in your head which are designed to be motivated to eat high calorie foods.
And those systems have had certain kinds of, you can call them motives,
or beliefs, or 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 that
behavior that was being facilitated by the short term modules.
And so in that description, there's no word I in there.
There's no pronouns.
That are sort of covering the whole self.
>> Okay, so this whole issue of conscious decision making is important because,
after all, we make a lot of important decisions.
We decide should I buy a car?
Which 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 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 the question of whether I should have a drink even though last time
I had one drink, had a bunch of drinks and would up making a fool of myself.
Or should I smoke this cigarette, or should I cheat on my spouse,
these are really important questions, it would be nice to know can
this thing that feels like the reasonable me make decisions?
Or at any rate, is there some sense in which reason can enter the equation,
the process by which decisions are made.
And is it possible that mediation 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 Courson is ff 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 sides of whether you eat the chocolate or whether you do anything else?
Is that just kind of for show or what?
And he had two answers, kind of two somewhat conjectural explanations.
They're 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.
If the reason makes sense, if there's merit to it, then sure,
that reason should enter the equation.
So it makes sense that our brains would be designed that way.
To give some kind of credit to good reasons.
Now, Rob isn't saying that it's the way it feels which is that,
I am this conscious judge adjudicating.
I, the chief executive self, hears out the two parties,
decides 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 is some algorithm or
something that kind of evaluates the merit of reasons.