Our knowledge and understanding of the inner and outer environments is rooted in (a) nature -inherited modules in the mindbrain (hard wiring) and (b) nurture - inputs channelled through our various sense organs ie visible light, audible sounds, types of taste and smell, types of touch.
We understand reality using our mindbrains which have evolved through reptilian, mammalian, primate, hominid and now human stages. Our contemporary mindbrains have to deal with our being social animals who now use language. New adaptations have been and will be tweaked from existing and aging heritage systems – the stone age mindbrain contemporises?
As language users we clump and categorise reality into manageably sized things and events linked by cause and event chains. We tend to populate our realities with agents and patterns (Shermer).
Classic examples of classification include (a) the binomial system of Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) – he arranged plants and animals into seven levels - Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species, and (b) the periodic table of the elements drawn up by Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907 – his system predicted the existence of elements that were unknown in his time.
The above examples are standing the test of time. Other more common sense examples have now been relegated to that dustbin of history called myth and magic – eg
- arranged marriages
- atoms are indivisible
- children should be seen but not heard
- every cloud has silver lining
- female genital mutilation
- heavier than air machines cannot fly
- honor killings
- human sacrifice to placate the Gods
- if a pregnant women eats boiled eggs the baby will be born bald
- intelligent design
- nature red in tooth and claw
- seeing is believing
- the divine right of Kings
- the lord helps those that help themselves
- watched kettles never boil
With the recent advances in neurology it is becoming clear that most (99.99%) of what happens in the mindbrain is confined to the unconscious; or to put it the other way round – self consciousness accounts for only about 00.01% of mindbrain activity - and most of that is after the fact of unconscious churn which is laden with cognitive bias and heuristics
A cognitive bias is a pattern of deviant thinking where inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion. Cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality. But then again, some cognitive biases are presumably adaptive. They may lead to more effective actions in a given context, eg by enabling faster decisions when timeliness is more valuable than accuracy, as illustrated in heuristics.
A heuristic is a mental shortcut that helps us make decisions and judgments quickly without having to spend a lot of time researching and analyzing information. Heuristic methods are used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution via mental shortcuts to ease the cognitive load of making a decision. Examples of this method include using a rule of thumb, an educated guess, an intuitive judgment, stereotyping, or common sense
Most people exhibit what Hanson calls Negativity bias. This is about pessimism and Velcro for the bad as opposed to optimism and Teflon for the good. This may be adaptive. Those who are easy going and freewheeling are more likely to be lion lunch than those who are restless and panicky.
According to Kahneman we are prone to thinking fast and slow and fast is the most common. Fast is adaptive in emergencies while slow is better when there is time for deep reflection. Fast thinking is riddled with cognitive biases and heuristics and much of it is intuitive and instinctive. Slow thinking is tougher as it involves paying more attention to the real evidence while analysing, planning, implementing and evaluating. When you are running on fast thinking you are on automatic pilot, when on slow thinking you are less habit bound and more authentic.
But it is not easy to be authentic rather than to be a creature of blind habit. We are both hard wired and culturally conditioned to run this way rather than that. There is, however, the option of mindfulness which involves being awake to and aware of what is going on in those parts of the mindbrain to which there is conscious access. By bearing witness to the stream of thoughts and feelings that are channelled through the attention centre we can realize that the mind has a mind of its own and that therefore our view of ‘self’ needs reworking.
BUT none of the above is cast in stone. There is neural plasticity which allows the brain to change the mind which in turn changes the brain.
I am minded of the Taoist insight that the reality that can be described is not the real reality. Reality is complicated, awesome and endlessly fascinating. Arguably if the mindbrain has a purpose it is to be conscious of its consciousness and thus to fathom reality in a way that ensures its survival in a post stone age, globalised world.
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