I made a reference to this book by Chris Wilson earlier and started a more thorough review … below.
Chris responded before I had published … so appended below is our initial exchange to my incomplete review. We can use the comments below to continue the public dialogue.
Psybertron asked “What am I missing ?”
I mentioned briefly earlier that I had started to read Chris Wilson’s “Healing The Unhappy Caveman”. Chris (the Enlightened Caveman) is someone I’ve communicated and corresponded with before, so I know we have a lot of common ground, but we are approaching our agendas from opposite ends.
Chris here is writing a self-help book for people who need enlightening that human brains evolved long before our cerebral minds, and that reasonable thought requires mental effort if we are to avoid being slaves to our genetically programmed emotions. Assuming people need that advice, Chris’ main thesis is that such effort is worth it, and the reward is a more reasonable outlook on achievable happiness, than the conflict and frustration we might achieve if we allowed primitive animal competition alone to drive our lives. Can’t argue with that.
Writing for the layman in a brief book Chris describes much mental and behavioural evolution involving collaborative economic models, as well as critical rationalism. Presented simply, no doubt this might appeal to his target audience. As a reviewer, the problem for me is continually having to discount my own starting position – namely that most decision-makers in the current world are too rationally sure of their own rationality – I’m approaching the problem from the hyper-rational end, not the absence-of-reason end.
Socrates had long since told us that the unexamined life is not worth living, but there are plenty of clues that Chris is on the right agenda. The idea that rationality requires evidence, the need to understand what is evidential, and that actively “embracing” life is crucial to gathering such evidence. That reasoning requires “discernment” of what actually matters, and the fact that there is a kind of economics at work in deciding when the effort is worth it and when to take a holiday. Chris uses an “ages of man” device in the life story of a maturing individual called Hank to illustrate his points. Lots of good stuff simply presented.
But now, an admission – I’ve only read half the book; the whole of the first half, plus the final chapter “Bringing It All Together”. I found quite a few sentences to baulk at in his deliberately simple presentation of human mental evolution, but I was stopped in my tracks by this “[In criminal trials] prosecutors present concrete evidence, defense lawyers present extenuating circumstances, and voila, sympathy takes over in the minds of jurors, rendering them helpless to see the truth.”
Surely we have more respect for the average juror than that ?
In my agenda truth is far more than “concrete” evidence.So I skipped to the summary chapter to see where we were headed with this.
And my disagreerment seems to remain … we have some problem around the concepts of Happiness / Reasonable / Good. As a simple self-help starter the book succeeds … but are some of the messages so simplified as to ultimately wrong or am I missing something ?
The Enlightened Caveman responded
Hey – finally some legitimate criticism!! Whoopee! Here goes…
To your most pressing issue, I can only say that I am using the emotionally-swayed juror as an example – one that we’re all familiar with, if only anecdotally – of a situation in which someone pressed the right stimulus button and the amygdala and its ancient processes blocked the cognitive mind out of the decision-making loop almost entirely. It certainly wasn’t meant to be a generalization of all jurors. It also wasn’t meant to imply that no emotion should ever come into play in a court room, so if others also take those ideas away from it, I’ll mark that as a MISS in the effective communication category.
In general, I think your sense that you may be somewhat distinct from the target audience may be correct. The vast majority of examples of how evolutionarily evolved emotions might manifest themselves – both in hunter/gatherer groups and in modern groups – are deliberately simplistic, almost cartoonish, if you will. My only real alternative there was to go down the usual path of science writers, which would have meant describing a bunch of experiments and results and then tying them to modern characteristics and behavior. I actually sort of tried that at first. It made the narrative seriously tedious and took the focus off the bigger point – that our specific emotions evolved to solve social problems and those emotions often render our more modern cognition mute. So I opted for over-simplification in the hopes that readers might seek out the references to gain more detail. (The references are the next level down in detail – the pop-science writers, who themselves cite actual papers and actual researchers.)
To your concern about having to discount your hyper-rational position, I’m not sure why you have to. I share the exact same belief, but mine is based upon the notion that most of us go through life thinking we know who we are and why think and feel the way we do – thus, that we are rational agents for our own ends. The central argument of my book is that our evolutionary baggage says different. More, a big source of the frustration and unhappiness that many feel is directly attributed to that misunderstanding. This means we really do need to understand more about where our minds came from and how they react to our modern world in order to be the rational beings we think we are, which ultimately leads to happiness or at least a reduction in unhappiness.
I guess I need a specific example or two of how my descriptions of evolution challenge your views of human economic interaction. The core of my discussion has to do with hominids who worked together in groups succeeding while others who did not dying out. The effects of kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and status-seeking on that are pretty well established – at least in the evolutionary psychology field. So are you disturbed by the assertions or simply my communication of them?
And then…if we have disagreements about happiness/reasonable/good, upon what grounds? I’m building on the likes of Bertrand Russel, Immanuel Kant, and Karl Popper, so did I get something wrong, or do you disagree with them?
Not to make this more work than its worth for you, but more info will help me better clarify my work. I remain convinced that the content in the book is valuable to the layman (or anyone, for that matter). I am not, however, even remotely sure of whether I’ve succeeded in getting the content across effectively. By the state of your review – and reading – it’s probably fair to say I haven’t, at least in your case. That’s ok – everyone tells me the first book is the hardest to write and is often the worst;-) The second is already brewing…
I do want you to know that I greatly appreciate your willingness to share even this with me. You’re the first to come back with anything I could actually respond to.
Psybertron continued with this suggestion
Simplest first response Chris …. If you don’t feel my starting point is too negative … is it OK is we do this debate in public – it might add more value. I post my “initial review” on the blog and I paste in your initial response – and we use the comments to develop it …. ?
As you describe it our central view is still remarkably similar – my perspective / drivers are a little different, and I am making more distinction between bio/genetic evolution and mental/memetic evolution than you seem to want to …
I can see your readings of Russell, Kant and Popper all too clearly … I’m saying those guys arguments fail – good in parts, clearly, but not good enough.Russell remained emprisoned in logic (Wittgenstein showed him the way out of the fly-bottle, but Russell never got it – oh how we laughed.)
Kant also remained too sure of goodness and happiness (morals) being logically tractable – very Germanic 😉 (Godel shows us that is an impossible dream.)
Popper got it in fact, but most readings ignore his better / important (ethics) stuff (Nick Maxwell picked-up where Popper left off – a philosopher of science who was a student of Poppers)
More coherent stuff later. This is worthwhile for me too.
And the Enlightened Caveman agreed to continue in public
Sure – I’d welcome a public discussion. I’m intrigued to learn how the failings of the three philosophers relate to my arguments.
So what next ? I guess the ball is in my court having questioned the value of the philosophers that Chris cites. Continued in the comment thread below …
OK, one point at a time … we have two subjects to come back to
(a) our opposite ends of the same agenda – genetics & memetics
(b) the quality of “philosophers & philosophies” behind any of this
These are both huge topics in their own right.
But for now … the emotionally swayed juror.
OK, as an anecdotal example – I’ll let you off – but you did express it in the plural, sounding much more like a generalization. For me the fear is the general (implied) suggestion that …
“extenuating circumstances” are for (emotional) wimps, and
“concrete evidence” is for real (rational) men
…. who are to be entrusted with decisions that matter.
With that implication it could not be more opposed to my agenda if it tried 😉
It is the very meme I am trying to turn around.
Rationality is good, evidence is good, but “misplaced concreteness” is the killer.
Agreed. A thread that runs throughout the book is the notion that our emotions are influencing us all the time, whether we like it or not, which means any idea that being emotional is bad really makes no sense. The point is that we have to manage our emotions, and that happens after we understand where they come from and how they will come into play in particular social circumstances. The thing to avoid is allowing “unmanaged” emotion that isn’t even mediated by cognition to drive our decision-making. That almost always does us harm. Thus, the example of the juror who feels the pang of sympathy so strongly that cognition as to the proper verdict is impeded.
Now to the other two topics….
Agreed, so let’s get to the “opposite approaches to the same agenda” point.
OK so we’ve got people to remember to apply (cerebral) rationality and MANAGE their initial (caveman) emotional responses. Basic life skills, that you are pointing out, in a self-help and evolutionary explanation kinda way. So far so good. (Manage notice, not suppress.)
Now put yourself a bit further up the pecking order in life. You’ve mastered that basic management of your emotions, learned some other useful skills, and got yourself promoted / elected to some position with significant influence. You could make a dent on other people’s lives, the future of the planet even.
Do you leave emotions out of all your decisions ? When asked to justify or rationalize a decision, claim someone else’s budget, dare you include emotions in that argument? If things don’t turn out the way you expected after acting on a decision, what counts as evidence that your original decision was good (or god forbid, criminally negligent – the fear, the fear) ?
My thesis is that the “western objective rationality” meme is that it would be very hard to put any “emotive” aspects of evidence on the decision-making balance sheet. Generally we are in fact “too rational” – too far the other way – the bigger the significance / cost / value / risk of the decisions / actions the worse this skewing to the hyper-rational end of the scale.
(I’m using your simple rational / emotional dichotomy here – but clearly we will need to address better understanding of both these things to make progress, and find that there are many varieties of both – which will of course lead us to good and bad philosophers and what makes good evidence.)
Okay, I think I understand your hangup. I can summarize my position as follows – properly managed emotions (via cognition) are how we determine WHAT we want to/should do; a rational (even hyper-rational), cognitive approach is what we use to determine HOW to do what we want to/should do.
Unmanaged caveman emotions will often (not always) lead us to choose the wrong WHAT and will hamper our ability to execute the HOW effectively.
Incidentally, the AQAL model that I’ve mentioned on my blog is fantastic for thinking about this kind of thing. Check it out at this link.
Hmm … in which case I am still largely disagreeing with you.
You said
“properly managed emotions (via cognition) are how we determine WHAT we want to/should do”
I can’t argue with “properly managed”, but we’d have to debate what you would include in “cognition” before I could agree to the statement.
You said
“a rational (even hyper-rational), cognitive approach is what we use to determine HOW to do what we want to/should do”
Same problem with cognitive, but I don’t agree with hyper-rational here or anywhere, just “properly rational” and effectively we are now debating the very ideas of “cognitive” and “rational”. I also cannot separate HOW from WHAT – they are not actually distinct in practical terms, and I would always favour a dynamic process view of the world that says “What” IS “How”, there is no other definition of “What” in my book.
I saw that AQAL model on a previous visit – looked interesting, but I’m not sure I got the significance … I’ll take another look.
We are as expected, drfting towards needing to debate “rationality” and “cognition” themselves – we need a philosopher or two 😉 (You aware of the footer to my blog ?)
Yeah, we probably need to stop and define terms at some point. Why don’t you tell me how you interpret cognitive and rational? That’ll help me frame my arguments better.
You said,
“I also cannot separate HOW from WHAT – they are not actually distinct in practical terms, and I would always favour a dynamic process view of the world that says “What” IS “How”, there is no other definition of “What” in my book.”
I honestly don’t know what to make of this. I don’t see how they’re NOT distinct in practical terms. What will I do? Cross the street, eat a sandwich, listen to music, or what? Though I might call upon some evidence from past experience to weigh my options, ultimately what I’ll decide to do will most likely be driven by emotion. That’s fine, so long as the emotions involved are properly managed. But once that decision is made, I’ll have another decision to make – how will I do it? For that, rationality should be my tool of choice. of course, I know that emotions will creep in – they always do – but I’ll be most effective (at achieving the WHAT) if I try to keep things more cognitive and logical and less touchy feely.
Of course, the two are connected to one another, but I think we can engage different faculties of our brains to deal with each one distinctly. In practical terms, that’s what I do every day.
You illustrate my point perfectly … cross, eat and listen are all verbs – processes.
As you say, we need to step back and explore the terms – I never say define (but that’s just me). Rational / emotional / cognitive / evidence / experience / brain-faculties amongst them – they’re all there, but also “most effective” would be a good one – how “objective” do you think that needs to be – or how much a “value judgement” ?
You give away your position – the one I disagree with – when you say “but I’ll be most effective (at achieving the WHAT) if I try to keep things more cognitive and logical and less touchy feely.” Dead wrong. “touchy feely” is a pejorative term that says “I don’t value stuff that’s not concrete / objective / logical” … which is the scary bit to me … the “misplaced concreteness” of objects.
This is gonna get pretty deep and philosophical pretty quickly – so we may need to just check whether there are any simple answers to “what am I missing” in the intended message of your book first, before we look at alternative messages. Like, I could finish reading it, would be a start. (I’m travelling after today – in the UK next week – not sure about my on-line time at the moment.)
It’s not that you’re missing something, necessarily. Perhaps it is that you can’t get on board due to the manner in which the message is delivered. For example, I say touchy feely only as a euphemism for placing an emotional evaluation/response above a logical, emotionally-disconnected evaluation of/response to a stimulus. In doing so, however, you’re inferring that I have, and am advocating, some disdain for that approach. I’m not. I’m only saying that sometimes it is inappropriate, such as when analyzing a HOW question.
A real-world example. You’re an emergency room doctor and a guy comes in with a wound to his leg that requires amputation. The implicit WHAT in your situation is that you will endeavor to restore the man’s health. The HOW is that you will amputate. Now, you are probably well suited to let your emotions, which are pleading with you to proceed with your pre-established WHAT, drive a bit more motivation as you proceed. However, with the HOW – the amputation – you’re best served to tune out the emotions that are latched on to his pleads to save his leg, so you can get on with what has to be done. My point is simply about when to let what faculties drive your decision-making processes.
Now you may very well still disagree with that. If so, then you’re not missing anything. We just have a philosophical dispute to resolve…
OK, so what we are agreeing is, in your phrase “… when to let what faculties drive your decision-making processes.” Or, rephrasing using the key terms in play “applying the appropriate balance of objective & emotional considerations to the what & how of life’s decisions”. Can’t argue with that.
Your thesis appears to be that the emotional, the objective, the what and the how are distinct, and that the objective can be applied more specifically to the what and the emotional to the how.
I seriously doubt the validity of that breakdown (two dichotomies) for two reasons.
Firstly, as I expressed already, I can’t really separate the how and the what – even in your latest example again. “saving the person”, “saving the quality of life of the person”, “saving the leg” are processes, amputation may or may not be part of them. The what and the how are not distinct, the end state(s) depend on the processes, and are continuing (living) processes themselves.
Secondly, my main underlying thesis, the more radical view, is that what we take to be objectively rational is largely the result of psychological evolution anyway – so even the objective and the emotional are intimately entangled in practice, and only appear distinct because of the everyday language usage that has also evolved.
What we need is a better way of looking at reality that recognizes it as a process that doesn’t need to carve the world into (rational) objects and (emotional) subjects before we do anything else with it. Most of the “objects” and “objectives” we deal with are much less “concrete” the common language would suggest. Hence my “misplaced concreteness” warning.
OK. I think we have both the agreement and the problem stated. You wanna ask me any questions before I expand on the why’s & wherefore’s and the basis of what I’m saying, related to your own chosen philosophical basis ?
My one problem with hanging your hat (forgive the pun) on the blurred boundary between cognitive and emotional activity is the actual physical structure of the brain. The amygdala, the emotional center, is near the brain stem – in the old town part of the brain – whereas the cerebral cortex is located higher up, in the forebrain – the newest part of town. Brain imaging scans can show when certain areas of the brain are active, and they conclusively (at least to me) show that some situations are handled by the evolutionarily old brain components – mainly emotions – while others incorporate activity from higher brain areas. Thus, there seems to be a physical correlate to the notion that some responses are more touchy feely than others.
Now I will concede all day long that our ability to discern how much of which is happening at any given moment is suspect at best. However, that doesn’t take away from the idea that cool heads do in fact prevail in many situations, and if you were scanning the brains of those cool heads, you’d be seeing a little emotional activity and a lot of cerebral cortex activity. I am simply saying that is good in some circumstances.
So my question is simply how do you resolve this physical phenomenon with your position?
OK Chris … again the “cool-head” is a bit pejorative against the idea the emotions = hot-head – but we can come back to this linguistic archaeology angle later.
So, yes, I’ve taken earlier interest in new-brain / old-brain stuff – see my blogged readings of Austin, Sacks, Zeman, Edelman, Searle, Wegner, Blackmore, Libet, and more … plenty of neuro-physiology, clinical brain-scans, neural-correlates, trauma and surgery, sensory, motor and mental behaviour as well as neuro-psychology and neuro-philosophy.
Yes, the amygdala, brain-stem, mid-brain and cerebellum are in physiological terms distinct organs with distinct evolutionary history and distinct functional capabilities – “within” them.
BUT – they are connected in a complex and many-layered “neuro-system” itself supervising a many-layered electro-chemical system. They are a complex system. Not distinct either / or components – use this or use that – in isolation. They are multiply-connected in many different ways, that inform / supervise / control / affect / influence each other many ways. I prefer the “free-won’t” model of free-will – the delegated supervisory control system. Look at a top-class tennis player and ask yourself how he returns a serve from another top-class tennis player – decision-making and action in real time – instinctive and learned skills, mental and physical, the whole deal ?
As organs – masses of meat – they may appear distinct – but their functions are not concretely isolated so far as the relationship between whole-human inputs and outputs are concerned.
Further to that brain (meat) evolution response – my agenda is still attracted to yours as an evolutionary agenda, beyond the caveman. But not because of the history of biological / genetic / physiological evolution (which we 99.9% share with the caveman), rather because of the history of rational / cognitive / mental / linguistic / memetic / communicative evolution since – which is infinitely faster and infinitely more significant (to us, modern man).
You said, “BUT – they are connected in a complex and many-layered “neuro-system” itself supervising a many-layered electro-chemical system. They are a complex system. Not distinct either / or components – use this or use that – in isolation. They are multiply-connected in many different ways, that inform / supervise / control / affect / influence each other many ways.”
I agree that our perceptions and responses are the result of a panoply of mental modules that are all inextricably connected. I was not suggesting that they are isolated or that it’s ever an either/or situation – not here or in my book. I’m saying that the *relative* contributions of the various areas of the brain are pretty well measurable/observable, and there are many situations in which too much emotional input and too little cognitive input causes problems. Not that emotions are always problematic, but being overly emotional can, in fact, be a bad thing *in certain circumstances*.
I’m not sure if you really disagree with that or if you’re determined to make sure I don’t get away with over-generalizing. In any case, to reject my main thesis – that our ancient caveman emotions cause us to misperceive our world and what we should to, and that we can modulate the influence of our ancient emotions in life to our benefit – by saying that you can’t separate out emotions from everything else seems to me to a “throwing the baby out with the bath water” argument.
Two examples –
1. Human development. If you’ve spent time with little kids, one thing is particularly apparent – they start out very egocentric, focused on their own emotional needs almost exclusively. You can’t reason with them at all. Then, as they age, their higher (more modern) faculties start to come online – yes, thanks in large to part to cultural nurturing. Nevertheless, even when they’re five or six and you can somewhat reason with them, if they’re really tired, they will often regress and become almost exclusively emotional, totally irrational, if you will. They can’t (or won’t) think. Having a 2 and 4-yr old at home right now, and regularly being around a lot of kids under 10, I can attest to this on a daily basis. Now fast forward – what we’re doing as we raise kids (if we’re doing it right) is teaching them, among other things, how to manage their emotions. Delay the immediate gratification of meeting a need/desire now in order to realize a better gratification later. Think your way out of fearful situation. And so on. The point is that the relative role of ancient emotions in coloring perceptions and responses to the world is obvious with kids – the older they get, the less their emotions are in the driver’s seat.
2. Cooking. To suggest that the interconnectedness of brain structures precludes drawing conclusions as to the relative influence of any one seems a bit like saying that once you mix and cook ingredients (precipitating the chemical state changes), you can’t make any statements about the influence of specific ingredients – they are interconnected now, no? Of course, that’s not the case. We can easily acknowledge that the overall taste of the food is a result of the combination of all ingredients while we can, at the same time, say that the food is overwhelmingly salty or creamy or bitter, which is the result of specific ingredients.
So – given your final comment – am I accurate in concluding that our primary disconnect is in the role of ancient emotions in our day-to-day lives? If your agenda is oriented around the non-genetic side of things, does that mean you reject:
1. That our emotions evolved to promote social cooperation and status-seeking, which was the primary differentiator of Homo sapiens from all other hominids.
2. That those emotions are essentially hard-wired programs designed to take perception input and stimulate output (behavior) that facilitates survival – in nomadic, hunter/gatherer environments with close kin
3. That those emotions, based upon their physical location in the wiring of the brain, and based upon the disparity between our modern world and the world for which they were designed, often influence our perceptions to our detriment (keeping up with the joneses, for example)
4. That recognizing how they work – i.e. when they will be triggered and the feelings they will elicit – enables us to manage them
4. That managing our caveman emotions helps us to be more rational, which is often – **not always** – more accommodating to enjoying our time on this planet
I agree that our non-genetic evolution is extremely significant, but to say that it is infinitely more significant is a massive stretch. If that were really the case, the most culturally enlightened among us would have long since shrugged off the most anachronistic of human characteristics – constant awareness of status, constant awareness of favors done and favors owed, rage at being betrayed, and on and on. That stuff is hard-wired, so it’s not going away – ever. It can be minimized in terms of influence – *when appropriate* – but it is simply fantasy to suppose that we’ll ever be rid of our most basic innate programming. I have always said that if you want to know what human nature is really about, simply read Shakespeare. If rational / cognitive / mental / linguistic / memetic / communicative evolution is really more significant than genetics, you’d think that in the nearly 400 years since the great bard did his thing, we’d have evolved to the point where Hamlet doesn’t really make sense to us. We haven’t.
Hi Chris, lots there, so I’ve copied your text in to insert my [IG] responses.
You said, “BUT – they are connected in a complex and many-layered “neuro-system” itself supervising a many-layered electro-chemical system. They are a complex system. Not distinct either / or components – use this or use that – in isolation. They are multiply-connected in many different ways, that inform / supervise / control / affect / influence each other many ways.”
I agree that our perceptions and responses are the result of a panoply of mental modules that are all inextricably connected. I was not suggesting that they are isolated or that it’s ever an either/or situation – not here or in my book.
[IG] the way I was suggesting you were suggesting they were distinct was in the demarcation of applying “mental” to the what and “emotional” to the how. If you didn’t intend that, them fine, we are probably just talking matters of emphasis.
I’m saying that the *relative* contributions of the various areas of the brain are pretty well measurable/observable, and there are many situations in which too much emotional input and too little cognitive input causes problems. Not that emotions are always problematic, but being overly emotional can, in fact, be a bad thing *in certain circumstances*.
[IG] Agreed, but being “overly” anything is problematic, by definition of the qualitative word “overly”.
I’m not sure if you really disagree with that or if you’re determined to make sure I don’t get away with over-generalizing.
[IG] As I admitted, that is what I was afraid of … that you were “overgeneralizing” – simplifying to a point where I couldn’t really agree anymore.
In any case, to reject my main thesis – that our ancient caveman emotions cause us to misperceive our world and what we should to, and that we can modulate the influence of our ancient emotions in life to our benefit – by saying that you can’t separate out emotions from everything else seems to me to a “throwing the baby out with the bath water” argument.
[IG] Interesting I’d use that argument back at you. Yes, part of “growing up” is recognizing when your emotions (genetic / biological responses) are at work, and remembering to apply your brain. But to dismiss or suppress the emotional side is “throwing baby out with the bathwater” too.
Two examples –
1. Human development. If you’ve spent time with little kids, one thing is particularly apparent – they start out very egocentric, focused on their own emotional needs almost exclusively. You can’t reason with them at all. Then, as they age, their higher (more modern) faculties start to come online – yes, thanks in large to part to cultural nurturing. Nevertheless, even when they’re five or six and you can somewhat reason with them, if they’re really tired, they will often regress and become almost exclusively emotional, totally irrational, if you will. They can’t (or won’t) think. Having a 2 and 4-yr old at home right now, and regularly being around a lot of kids under 10, I can attest to this on a daily basis. Now fast forward – what we’re doing as we raise kids (if we’re doing it right) is teaching them, among other things, how to manage their emotions. Delay the immediate gratification of meeting a need/desire now in order to realize a better gratification later. Think your way out of fearful situation. And so on. The point is that the relative role of ancient emotions in coloring perceptions and responses to the world is obvious with kids – the older they get, the less their emotions are in the driver’s seat.
[IG] As I say – it’s called grwoing up. (I have a grown family, and I have coached kids football teams, done the child psychology too – recognizing the inner child and parent in the adult are part of management behavioural psychology too.) I said already, anyone who needs reminding that they should learn to recognize situations where it is appropriate to temper emotional responses with mental ones would benefit from your “lesson”. I liked your “ages of man” in Hank to illustrate, growing up.
2. Cooking. To suggest that the interconnectedness of brain structures precludes drawing conclusions as to the relative influence of any one seems a bit like saying that once you mix and cook ingredients (precipitating the chemical state changes), you can’t make any statements about the influence of specific ingredients – they are interconnected now, no? Of course, that’s not the case. We can easily acknowledge that the overall taste of the food is a result of the combination of all ingredients while we can, at the same time, say that the food is overwhelmingly salty or creamy or bitter, which is the result of specific ingredients.
[IG] Hmmmm. Possibly – cooking involves chemistry too, and the nature of the things mixed can also change – but I get your point. If all you are saying now is “balance” or “all things in moderation” then you’ll get no argument from me. My problem is that despite maybe saying that, you come across as anti-emotional, as if being emotional was the problem, whereas in fact being too emotional (or too rational) is the problem – too anything.
So – given your final comment – am I accurate in concluding that our primary disconnect is in the role of ancient emotions in our day-to-day lives? If your agenda is oriented around the non-genetic side of things, does that mean you reject:
1. That our emotions evolved to promote social cooperation and status-seeking, which was the primary differentiator of Homo sapiens from all other hominids.
[IG] That is probably true, but once we were recognizing cooperation and status, I suspect there are memetic / communication aspects to developing those skills and habits too. Like I would suggest such “emotional” (bio-genetic-hormonal) arrangements exist in lower animals too to control / promote behaviours. The thing that’s different about the higher apes and later hominids is the power of (self-reflective consideration and) communication.
2. That those emotions are essentially hard-wired programs designed to take perception input and stimulate output (behavior) that facilitates survival – in nomadic, hunter/gatherer environments with close kin.
[IG] Yes – hard-wired = genetically programmed. But I doubt that is limited to hominids.
3. That those emotions, based upon their physical location in the wiring of the brain, and based upon the disparity between our modern world and the world for which they were designed, often influence our perceptions to our detriment (keeping up with the joneses, for example)
[IG] Yes, this is where we are agreeing. The “modern world” has evolved much, much, much faster – maybe not infinitely 😉 – than our biology. My point precisely. (Need to come back to this “status” thing.)
4. That recognizing how they work – i.e. when they will be triggered and the feelings they will elicit – enables us to manage them
4. That managing our caveman emotions helps us to be more rational, which is often – **not always** – more accommodating to enjoying our time on this planet.
[IG] Yes. Growing up #101. No brainer. The surprise I’m expressing is that you think many people need educating about this. We share 99.9% of this emotional biology with Caveman (and many other animals) – maybe more people can be usefully educated about this, but whatever the reason, I suggest most people know that learning to temper emotion with rationale is part of what they already learned growing up. (My contention is that precious few people however realize that tempering rationale with emotion is equally important – we don’t learn that when we’re growing up, or in any kind of education – hence a much more urgent message to get out there.)
I agree that our non-genetic evolution is extremely significant, but to say that it is infinitely more significant is a massive stretch.
[IG] Infinite was rhetorical clearly – but I really do mean zillions of times. Yes, we are aiming for “balance” but the rationale has most of the powerful backers in the world already – close to 100% of grown ups, educators, governors, managers, etc – the emotional side needs much much much more weight to restore that balance. I’m not throwing rationality ouy with the bathwater – I’m pleading for 400 post-enlightenement years worth of ignoring the emotional value to be restored – I’d still like to keep rationality thanks. (Read my footer, again.)
If that were really the case, the most culturally enlightened among us would have long since shrugged off the most anachronistic of human characteristics – constant awareness of status, constant awareness of favors done and favors owed, rage at being betrayed, and on and on.
[IG] And this is the point I am making to you…. “Shrugged Off” is not what is needed. We need those emnotions too. They are NOT anachronistic. They are very old, and VERY useful to this day. (Awareness of status / favours / debts – remain life skills – for collaborative beings in a risky and dangerous world.)
That stuff is hard-wired, so it’s not going away – ever. It can be minimized in terms of influence – *when appropriate* – but it is simply fantasy to suppose that we’ll ever be rid of our most basic innate programming.
[IG] Again NOT “minimzed” – just balanced, understood and recognized for what they are. We don’t EVER want “rid” of them. Who has such a fantasy ?
I have always said that if you want to know what human nature is really about, simply read Shakespeare.
[IG] I was a slow learner when it comes to valuing Shakespear, but I’d fully agree with you. You must have seen my Dupuy quote – I’ve done it to death – “there is more truth in literature than in science” – from a scientist.
If rational / cognitive / mental / linguistic / memetic / communicative evolution is really more significant than genetics, you’d think that in the nearly 400 years since the great bard did his thing, we’d have evolved to the point where Hamlet doesn’t really make sense to us. We haven’t.
[IG] No I wouldn’t, of course we haven’t. You are still pushing this all or nothing, either / or, choice thing. Two points … (almost) none of that evolution since the Bard is genetic – it is (almost) all mememtic, and the Bard is very very recent in terms of the evolution of rationality anyway, so this is spurious. Secondly, the memetic evolution doesn’t “undo” the genetically evolved state – it is added on top of it, not instead of it. It is more significant because it is “on top” – the new stuff tending to mask the value of the earlier stuff, or appear more valuable simpy because it is later. “Rationality is newer than emotion, so it must be better” – kinda thing – nothing could be further from the truth.
[IG] Caveat = This whole this done using rational / emotional words – not the words we should be using, we need to be more subtle than this. I’m really talking the difference between “wired” (physio-bio-genetic evolved – changing very slowly) and “free-will” information / communication / sematically / memetically / rationally evolved – changing very fast, too fast to tell if it’s any good or not, sustainable in eco-evo terms.)
Okay, I think we’re very close to resolution on all this. Only a couple of more minor clarifications to make…
I entirely agree that the agenda is not about erasing the influences of our emotions. It is about doing away with the influences that don’t help us in life. My biggest point is that the emotions were designed by natural selection to facilitate human survival in a world that no longer exists. Therefore, the emotional reactions we have to situations are often completely inappropriate. It is *those* and only those that I am addressing in my book. (If I didn’t make that clear, I’ll take the hit for it.)
For example – celebrity worship is a direct artifact of the caveman mind. Our emotions are designed so that we will notice status and emulate those who have it – so that we may have enough to survive long enough to reproduce. Now, in modern times, this little survival gizmo is altogether out of place, and it causes all sorts of problems in our larger society – who gets to be considered “credible”, for one thing.
Do I think emotions are inherently bad? No. Should we try to suppress them? Sometimes. Are there ancient emotions that are actually wonderful in today’s world? Yes. (Read: love).
Where we perhaps depart is on the notion that emotions have been pushed into the background by the focus on rationality – too much so. Theoretically, that may so. In practice, I just don’t see it. We humans are astonishingly emotional, no matter how much rationality we may claim – that’s one of my primary theses. I agree that we shouldn’t have an anti-emotions agenda, one that is pursued in the name of rationality. I’m sure you’ve expanded on the notion that too much rationality is a bad thing, but I haven’t seen it yet. I’d like to check it out – I need examples of situations in which the realization of hyper-rationalization caused something bad to happen.
We would also depart on the notion that rationality is better than emotion because it is newer. You say nothing could be further from the truth, but your obviously intended hyperbole notwithstanding, I would argue otherwise. You see, rationality is the one and only means we have of intentionally modulating our emotions. It is also the one and only means we have of determining whether we should or should not modulate our emotions. Clearly, we need both – our emotions contribute immensely to our experiences, but left unchecked, they rob us of our civilization. Alternatively, a rationality so rigid as to almost completely suppress emotion (as if that were possible) would make us robots unable to really do or enjoy anything. I believe the constant back and forth between Spock and Kirk speaks sufficiently to this.
Also – it’s kind of like power-steering in cars. You have two basic systems – the mechanical components connected to the wheels which make them able to be turned by a driver, and the system that controls those mechanical components. The original system, non-powered, worked very well. But the powered version works better. On its own, it is meaningless, because it’s a control system with nothing to control. But as part of a bigger system, it is far better than what came before. Same with rationality.
Now, as for Shakespeare – my point is that we recognize the jealousy, status-seeking, deception, love completely untempered by reason, and so on because they are directly connected to our wiring, *regardless* of the astounding cultural evolution that has come along since. When I say “shrugged off,” I only mean that we could have (had we the knowledge we have now) recognized the caveman emotions for what they were long ago and could have set a course to render them innocuous. Then, concern for looking foolish and weak in front of Lady Macbeth – the driver of Macbeth’s evil deeds – would seem childish and unrealistic today. And just as we semi-enlightened folks see racism – true racism, as in the inherent inferiority of certain races – as crude and animalistic, we would see the plots in Shakespeare’s works as relics of a time long since passed. But this is not what happens. We read his plays again and again and are astonished at how perfectly he nails us – even today.
BTW – have you finished the book? Hopefully, some of my earlier over-generalizations were worked out to your satisfaction by the end.
OK time to move on …
You say
“The emotions were designed by natural selection to facilitate human survival in a world that no longer exists. Therefore, the emotional reactions we have to situations are often completely inappropriate.”
I would just choose more temperate words.
“The emotions were designed for survival in a world that STILL exists, but which has evolved considerably in the memetic (mental / rational) realm. Therefore, the emotional (and rational) reactions we have to situations may be inappropriate if not PROPERLY balanced.”
Juts matters of balance and emphasis – by our conscious choices of which end of the agenda we’re approaching.
Actually I never did finish the book, but I notice it’s still lying here beside me. I will complete it next.
Almost finished Alastair MacIntyre’s “After Virtue” – a difficult but excellent read on “morals” – how we decide the best thing to do for the best life. Same agenda – same conclusions – emotional or rational – there is no complete and consistent morality, other than one based on a full lifecycle narrative of human evolution – past, present and future (a shared mythology). I don’t digress.
Yes, one dead horse beaten to a pulp.
Good stuff.
BTW – check out Stuart Kauffman’s latest – Reinventing The Sacred. His thesis is that there are many aspects of nature that are far beyond reductionism – that is, no matter how smart we get, we’ll never have laws that could have predicted our current biosphere. There are, he says, aspects of this world that are both ontologically and epistemologically emergent, which means there is truly a creative force in the universe. In his view, that’s a fine basis for spirituality, and it forces us to rethink the overly important role rationality has taken on in western culture in the last few hundred years. It’s right up your alley.
The book can be difficult at times – Kauffman is perhaps one of the most brilliant minds of our time – but it’s definitely the culmination of his life’s work. Well worth the time.
Finally – I’m speaking at the Atlanta Freethought Society’s September meeting if you’re up for coming over. Sept 14th at 1pm. http://www.atlantafreethought.org/
Yep “rethink the overly important role rationality has taken on in western culture in the last few hundred years” is exactly my agenda.
I think I’ve noticed that Kauffman book a couple of times, must check it out.
Yep also, noticed your September date – if I’m around (ie in S/E US) I will definitely attend, but that’s a lifetime away right now 😉 (It is in my diary anyway.)
Treating a myth as something “sacred” – worth preserving for “our” future, something not necessarily rationally, empirically or objectively explicable, but worth treating as a “telos” seems to be the “best” answer so far …. and I’m still an atheist, remember. Need to revisit your list of your source philosophers, with that thought in mind – see who comes close. (after I’ve finished your book.)