The Dalai Lama has said that Buddhism and science are deeply compatible and has encouraged Western scholars to critically examine both the meditative practice and Buddhist ideas about the human mind. A number of scientists and philosophers have taken up this challenge. There have been brain scans of meditators and philosophical examinations of Buddhist doctrines. There have even been discussions of Darwin and the Buddha: Do early Buddhist descriptions of the mind, and of the human condition, make particular sense in light of evolutionary psychology? This course will examine how Buddhism is faring under this scrutiny. Are neuroscientists starting to understand how meditation “works”? Would such an understanding validate meditation—or might physical explanations of meditation undermine the spiritual significance attributed to it? And how are some of the basic Buddhist claims about the human mind holding up? We’ll pay special attention to some highly counterintuitive doctrines: that the self doesn’t exist, and that much of perceived reality is in some sense illusory. Do these claims, radical as they sound, make a certain kind of sense in light of modern psychology? And what are the implications of all this for how we should live our lives? Can meditation make us not just happier, but better people? All the features of this course are available for free. It does not offer a certificate upon completion.
‘Self’ Control
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Do curso por Princeton University
Buddhism and Modern Psychology
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Mental Modules and Meditation
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Robert WrightVisiting Lecturer
Religion Department and the Center for Human Values
Now if you were in a mood to push back against this modular view of the mind and
I'm sure some of you are in a mood to push back against the modular view of the mind.
One thing you could say is, okay granted, some times these these frames of mind set
in and I'm not really aware of it happening.
And maybe they're 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 some times when I,
the Chief Executive Self, I make a decision.
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 Kerspon that question.
You may remember him, he was a strong proponent of the modular view of the mind,
wrote a book about it, we heard from him a couple 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 is 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.
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.
And that leads to another question I have which is why is this process conscious?
Why does this all have to enter consciousness?
Because after all, presumably you can design a computer program that evaluates
the merit of logic or something and wouldn't necessarily have to be conscious.
So why is it that we have to spend all the time hearing about 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 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 explanation that Rob had, in response to my question enters the picture.
So when I said,
why does there have to be this conscious rehearsal 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 other people.
Again, this goes back as a public relations thing.
So the production of reasons 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,
since people ask you about it.
The social world pings you and says, what was the story with that?
That you have something ready to go.
I think this is why the marketing people are telling me that consumers need only
one reason to buy a product.
Is that basically,
it's not that one reason dominates all the other features of the product.
The price, or the quality, or whatever, the brand, 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 other guy who asked you why you bought that particular
microwave is well, it has the gizmo.
>> So the idea here is one reason.
We go through this rehearsal of reasons so
that will 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're having an extramarital affair.
Now the way you might think of this in modular terms, the decision of whether to
have one would be, 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 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 violating a norm.
You have to have a better reason.
So, we come up with reasons like, 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 observes and rehearses these reasons because after all,
it seems to be the conscious mind that does the communicating with other people.
So the idea here is an analogy I guess would be suppose there is 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 that they have for advocating their position.
And a lot of the point of this exercise,
it's not that the PR director is necessarily going to declare 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 when the time comes.
Now on the other hand this does suggest a second way that
reason could matter because after all,
if the policy that one vice president
is advocating is going to lead to huge blowback
and the reason the vice president is giving for
it just is not going to carry the day out there with the public then that
counts against the argument that the vice president is making.
So you can imagine this PR director saying, no,
I'm sorry, that one 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
so in theory, there could be two separate senses in which reason matters.
First of all, as Rob Kurzban suggested, you know you would expect the brain
to be designed 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 goes on.
You may deliberate earnestly before you
start drinking, and then later develop a drinking problem.
And, as you become an alcoholic, you do, you kind of skip the deliberation issue.
You just drink.
You may have a rationale, a standard rationale for doing what you do, but
the time for actual reason to enter the equation kind of seems to pass.
Or with any addiction, with heroin addiction or whatever.
So it seems as if modules in a sense gain more power with victory.
So the module 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.
Your grandmother may have said, be careful about succumbing
to temptation that first time because it's going to get harder to resist.
They're after harder and harder and harder.
Well, that actually is the way the 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 mean you could imagine a system where they just take turns, you know and
the deal is, well, this module won last time, the short term gratification module.
Now the more responsible, far-seeing
module is going to get to win this time around, but that's not the way it works.
Now, why is that?
Well, my own pet theory is that actually this is kind of a logical way for
natural selection to have designed a modular system of motivation.
because after all, if you imagine these modules are being built up over time and
probably the short term gratification modules often existed in evolutionary
time before some of the modules that looked farther into the future and
worry about long-term consequences.
So the modules are being stacked upon one another and
if there is indeed not a chief executive self to adjudicate among them
then there have to be rules for how power is 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 where 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 indeed the module advocating advance
prevails and you're not rebuffed and there is the sexual gratification.
Then in natural selection's terms, that's success.
So the gratification is evidence that this module's council was
in the terms that 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 revisit an example we gave earlier in the course,
if there is a module that's saying, yeah, you know, those trees off in the distance,
I think I think they could have real fruit, let's make the effort, let's go.
Well if you go and you get to the trees, there is fruit.
You taste the fruit.
It's good, it's sweet, it feels gratifying.
Well, then that module, it makes sense that 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 makes sense to go with the past winter.
Now, in a modern environment these rules of the road,
the rules that give more power to a module seeking short term sexual gratification
if it achieves the gratification or more power to a module that seeks a fruit.
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 environment they were designed for, these rules actually made sense.
And so too with things like alcoholism, various kinds of drug addiction.
These are the result of novel features of the environment that allow people
to intervene directly in the chemical reward system that back during evolution,
it wasn't so easy to intervene directly on, directly in.
So all of this drives home that self control can be a very important
question and raises the question of 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 a brain scan study showing
that the default mode network does get quieter, during meditation.
It turns out he also does work using mindfulness
meditation to help people overcome chemical addictions such as smoking.
And Judd Brewer recently explained to me how this works.
You get them to view the craving differently, is that they key?
>> Yes, so we use an acronym with smokers in particular,
we use this acronym RAIN where the 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 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 it's thing and come up do it's stance and go away.
So the A is to allow,
the I is for investigate and I think of this as really getting curious.
What is craving feel like in body right now?
And, it can even, when you're really curious about something,
that actually flips the valence from unpleasant to pleasant
because the craving which was unpleasant, flips the curiosity, which is pleasant,
and it can help us kind of stay with the object.
And for the end we use a noting practice.
So this is simple Mahasi style noting where people can note craving as it
comes and goes of tightness, tension, clenching, burning, rising,
you know as the craving comes and goes away.
So we use this other people use this idea of urge surfing,
where you can ride out your urges.
The RAIN acronym very much helps people get on top of that wave and
ride it instead of getting sucked into the craving they're using.
>> So whereas normally, Pete, you would have the feeling that if you 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 language of the Buddhist time,
the dependent origination where craving is this
key link and this feeling tone comes up.
You crave something, you act on it, and
by acting on it, you kind of reify a self concept which, then, spins back around and
kind of changes the way you interact with future situations that are similar.
And they actually describe clinging what another translation of
which is translated as clinging is also sustenance or fuel.
So, in an essence you're fueling that fire every time you act on 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
mental restlessness or whatever.
And that if they don't act on it, they don't fuel it and they don't feed it.
And when you don't feed it eventually, if it's a stray cat,
if you stop feeding the stray cat, it doesn't come to your house anymore.
If you stop adding fuel to a fire, it eventually burns off.
>> Okay, so the cat keeps coming to your door.
Now that's an 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 pressing the bar,
then eventually, the behavior is, as psychologists say, extinguished,
and the rat no longer presses the bar.
Well, the prospect being raised here is that maybe,
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, 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 kind 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 work, that could be an effective self control.
I would imagine that it winds up having different properties.
From the mindfulness therapy that Judd Brewer is talking about.
And it may be that if you just keep pushing the craving away,
then when the craving does arise in full bodied 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 when you're in a rage,
is that the reward that reinforces the behavior, you know.
Is that, in other words, has the module 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 feel you persuaded them that this person you hate is a bad person.
Well is that, is the talking about the person you hate,
a reward for the behavior?
And by design, again, is the idea that the module that generates the behavior or
the hatred has succeeded in natural selection's terms if
it leads you 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 yes, it makes sense to think of modules,
in a not quite literal sense, as kind of organisms that
operate according to the principles of operant conditioning.
And to think that when we exercise mindfulness, we may have
the ability to alter their behavior via the principles of operant conditioning.
So that when 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 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
mindfulness meditation, and 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 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 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 the 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 are kind of valid experiences of insight.
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