CK:
I am intrigued by James's concept of under- and over-belief, and
how it relates to addiction specifically. I think it's fair to say that many
addicts are aware that their addictions are harmful - especially in cases of
more psychological addiction. Cases of addiction that are on a neurological
level - things like domestic abuse, anger, self-mutilating behaviors, where
access to the "substance" can't be restricted as simply as it can
with drugs and alcohol. I wonder if underbelief is a symptom, rather than a
cause, in the cases of "bad conscience" as it were. In the case of
domestic abuse specifically, it's generally cyclical - abusers often have a
history of being abused. An abuser can consciously know, believe, and profess
that actions of domestic violence are wrong, but it's rare, even with
counseling and rehabilitation, for abusers to break the cycle - the behavior
pattern is so ingrained in the wiring of his or her neurons. I imagine living with
that level of dissonance might turn a person into an underbeliever.
And of course, the above mentioned are situations that involve
an action (or reaction) associated with a stimulus (thought or feeling). There
are countless neurological processes that don't necessarily result in direct,
measurable action, such as the belief that one can speak with God, or spirits,
or aliens. Or the belief that your vote counts (or doesn't). Whether the belief
or the action comes first is often a tough call.
I guess what I really wonder is, if one day we could identify
the neurological process involved in cases of addiction - be it domestic
violence, anger, alcohol, drugs - and zap the brain so that the compulsion to
engage in the behavior vanishes - could we also change people's beliefs? If the
same mechanisms in physical addiction are present in psychological, could the
mechanisms of action and thought (conviction and belief) be altered as well? If
this were possible, could someone choose to believe in God when they hadn't
before, perhaps to satisfy a partner by converting to a given religion before
marriage? I'm sure if that technology existed, some religious faction would
have an interest in using it to their advantage...
SB:
James was trained as a physician and brought a medical
perspective to
his study of philosophy -- this is also true of many other philosophers --
Rhazes, Avicenna, Averroes … and Karl
Jaspers.
James was fascinated by addictions and in particular the vast
impact
alcohol had on American society in his epoch. One of his
famous
statements is "the cure for dipsomania is
religomania." That is: the
cure for alcoholism is religious fanaticism. James thought
that in
effect one kind of mania can take the place of another. He
also
reflected that in many cases a person actually gets better
because of
outlandish beliefs that he or she holds. He drew the
conclusion that
the benefit we receive from believing a proposition is not in a
one-to-one relationship with its truth. In some cases we
benefit from
beliefs that are false but nonetheless health-inducing, strength-
inducing, strengthening the will, strengthening the
person's
belief in himself or herself -- encouraging the person to get
out of
bed and get well; encouraging the person to get out into the
world and
do something; helping the person believe that his or her values
are
important, worth fighting for, worth the hardship of struggle
that
believing them may entail. In some cases, belief shows its
value by
what it brings to life, rather than its literal truth. He
applied
this principle to the study of diseases that have a
psychosomatic
etiology (causation); he also applied it to his study of
religious
experiences. He defined the extremes of underbelief and
overbelief as
ways of talking about "the will to believe" in medical
and religious
contexts. Underbelief is what happens to us if we let our
skepticism
overwhelm our senses and our common sense -- we apply too strict
a
standard of evidence and end up missing a whole range of human
phenomena that come into view when we grasp that people can
actually
"get better" (or get stronger, get healthier) because
of the attitude
that they themselves take about what is happening to them.
Overbelief is what happens to us when we have too little
skepticism
and become gullible -- we fail to use our critical faculties and
common sense and end up believing wild ideas that are not only
false
but do us no good.
James thinks that all the phenomena that are going on inside
human
beings -- ideas, memories, habits, addictions, beliefs, doubts,
impulses, flashing thoughts, urges -- everything that is
included in
what he calls "the stream of consciousness" -- is
subject to our will.
In some cases the will gets a chance to be active and
makes choices
because two or more opposing impulses act simultaneously and
thus give
reason a chance to step in and bring rationality to
decision-making.
In some cases, reason gets a chance to be powerful because it
believes
itself to be powerful -- i.e. because we believe in the power of
rational thought -- i.e. because we believe in ourselves.
Based on all this, James would argue with you about cases such
as the
ones you cite -- abuse, domestic violence, addiction, anger,
self-mutilation, weird beliefs such as ideas about aliens,
religious
beliefs or powerful convictions really of any kind -- he would
not
agree that any of these beliefs have a neurological determining
cause.
He would bring the discussion back to human experience and
the
choices people make. Everything that is going on in the
thought
process is subject to human will. Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle,
Epictetus -- medieval and modern thinkers too -- make this claim
over
and over again. Or maybe again this is not a claim but (as
James
expresses it) a decision that we make to consider ourselves
powerful.
Nietzsche says that we have to find the strength to carry out
the
experiment of belief in our own will -- even if we consider this
strength to be a kind of fiction -- he adds that, if we do not
believe
in this will, it is certain that no one else will.
You talk about people who are caught in a cycle of disastrous
behavior
and you try to explain it by talking about the hard-wiring being
all
messed up. You also refer to the idea that a new
technology could fix
this kind of problem. A good deal of psychology does refer
to
supposed problem-complexes that originate in neurochemistry and
that
have solutions in new pharmacology. There is also much
psychology
that refers to problems that date from infancy and that keep
inserting
themselves in adult behavior. We keep going over the same
territory
again and again -- this is what Freud called "repetition
compulsion."
A newer trend in psychoanalysis is the idea that people keep
rebuilding problematic structures in the present. Thus we
bring the
problems with us to new situations. We do this over and
over again.
We don't know how to live without bringing our familiar problems
with
us. Then we say -- "we can't help it" -- we are
powerless -- there's
nothing we can do on our own -- it's our neurochemistry or our
childhood or the traumatic event we suffered. But these
ideas may all
be delusions. The truth is that we are making choices
every step of
the way. Staying in a cycle of dysfunctional behavior is a
choice --
as is getting out of it. Human agency creates both
situations:
carrying the old problems to new situations, as well as
jettisoning
the old problems and opening up to self-confidence and new
experiences.
CK:
I certainly agree with the idea that the
benefit of a belief does not hold a one-to-one relationship with its truth. The
most recent WIRED I received in the mail has an article in it about how the
idea of God affects behavior - I haven't had a chance to dig in to it yet, but
they doubtless have some interesting up-and-coming research to cite on the
matter. I will be sure to report. The placebo effect has intrigued me for a
long time, and seems related to this discussion. If you have the chance to read
a book called Kitchen Table Wisdom by Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, I highly
recommend it. Remen recounts her experiences as a therapist, mostly for cancer
patients, and some of her own history with chronic illness and healing. It's a
book that had a significant impact on how I think of wellness.
I want to address the hard-wiring argument - because I don't
necessarily believe that someone can be "hard-wired" to be an abuser
- I tend to think much more along the lines of strong neural memory. For
instance, if a child of an abusive parent is taken away and raised in a stable,
loving environment from birth, I have no reason to believe that some kind of
neurological process would be "passed down" in DNA - simply that,
perhaps, when a stressful situation is encountered, the mechanisms the child
uses to deal with the stress will be markedly different. What might seem like
inaction (taking a deep breath when someone says something to upset you, rather
than striking out violently) is just as much of a neural process (as in, as
many neurons are moving through the brain) as lifting an arm in offense. Of
course these habits can be changed, when we are aware of them - it might be natural
to flinch when someone gets in your face and yells at you, but people in basic
training in the Army learn to get over that impulse every day. Even so, most of
these recruits are still fairly young - and maybe have not reached the point
where their axons are fully myelinated (meaning that the connective,
"white matter" of the brain still has room for development). New
research shows that there is more neuroplasticity in people of older ages than
was previously thought, but I do wonder if there is a point of no return for
some behaviors - if you've engaged in them for too long, there's just no
re-organizing, at least not in any natural way. Too much of the original
framework has been destroyed for creating a new pathway - which might be why
James's theory of one mania replacing another holds weight - if a pathway is
too established to be destroyed, one must somehow alter what triggers the
chemicals that travel through it in the first place, because the brain still
craves their release. Perhaps sometimes a flawed belief is the only thing that
can replace a flawed behavior.
You say that we have a choice in our behavior - that we can
choose to own our neurons and explain our actions. But how much? When I walk
into the bright sun from a dark room, I don't choose to shrink my pupils; I
don't choose to squint my eyes, I don't consciously engage my hypothalamus to
regulate my body temperature through my sweat glands.I might, with a lot of
practice, as it's said some monks can do, one day be able to control some of
those normally autonomous functions. But can a person will their heart to stop
beating? I ask these questions because, if we aren't able to trace each and
every behavior back to a physical process in the brain, a reaction to an
outside stimulus, if we allow for some "choice" that comes from
somewhere else (and where? the air?), it seems like a tacit admission that
there is a higher power, a God. And, further, that we are part and parcel of
this higher power (all the allegories of Christianity lend themselves well to
this concept). I'm not opposed to this idea of connection; in fact, I like it a
lot. It's just that so many skeptical arguments I come across debase the idea
of a God, and then exalt the idea of free choice. I have a hard time making
that compute - to me, it seems that accepting the idea of free will means
accepting some kind of spirituality. Oddly though, that wasn't what I was
taught as a child in the church either - my baptist youth minister was very
deterministic, and believed that God already knew which people would wind up in
Heaven and which would end up in Hell. He encouraged all of us to accept Jesus
into our hearts, but also said that it was almost certain some of us would not
be accepted into God's kingdom. It was a paradoxical offering of free will at
best - like, those of us who chose God would have free will, because we had the
free will and good sense to follow the Lord, but those who did not choose God
would never have free will because they had never accepted Him into their lives,
and their fate was sealed. There is no bridge between the believers and the
doubters.
I am sure I'm not alone in recognizing the paradoxical nature of
these debates, and I'm sure that's much of their appeal, but I wonder, why such
a struggle to resolve it?
SB:
Your idea of no-going back behaviors is compelling. I
wonder if this
is the case. There is evidence in the other direction --
the
so-called 'undo effect' -- the idea that certain kinds of
emotional
experiences help to undo the cardiovascular effects of traumatic
experiences -- love, curiosity, anticipation help people get
back to
their physiological baseline. To me the conclusion about
no going
back seems too strong, simply because of the complexity of the
brain.
There are over 100 billion neurons in the brain. A
thought, whatever
else it may be, must involve some kind of connectivity between
neurons, and with so many of them, the possibilities for
thinking (and
unthinking) are staggering. But of course it possible to
blunt,
poison, damage or destroy the brain. Everything alive can
die. But
the pathway-logic you suggest is controversial (thoughtful,
too).
There may be no already established connection that is
(sometimes,
always) more powerful than an as yet established connection.
To me it
seems like wakefulness can always discover a new connection --
this
seems likely
Your hypothesis that flaws (belief) are the only things that can
replace flaws (behavior) seems too pessimistic. I am a
test case for
this proposition. I have actually been wrong or done wrong
and then,
afterwards, seen this and changed -- belief, behavior -- I
believe in
learning. (There is the phrase "failing forward"
-- Karl Popper
argued for this kind of approach -- learning via falsification
--
basically trial and error)
Choice (I would argue) is not about autonomic behavior, as you
suggest, but I like the question because it tries to poke at the
(very
fuzzy) limits of this important idea. The yogis who can
meditate
their way to physiological changes have learned a skill -- thus
learning apparently can reach to some autonomic behavior.
Maybe it's
a matter of degree. I can calm myself down better today
than when I
was an infant, but I still have to register shock before I can
find a
way to deal with it. Autonomic behavior (what is outside
our power)
is not the problem for choice. The problem is taking over
the world
of accidents out of which we emerge in an instant of thinking
and (by
some mysterious appropriation) managing or coping or dealing or
finding a way through -- taking it over and managing to act like
oneself, with one's values, as the real person one is
Your suggestion that the admission of freedom/choice is
equivalent
logically to spirituality or perhaps a God hypothesis is another
good
way to test the limits of choice -- another very good question.
I
would not say (as you suggest) that choice means that we cannot
trace
any causal process back to the brain and earlier brain-states.
I
think we have to acknowledge that there is a one to one
correspondence
between brain-states and mind-states. The body and the
mind are two
aspects of the same being.
Choice does not mean that any weird non-causal process is going
on in
the brain. When we think like this, it makes sense to
compare choice
to some bizarre magical power or supernatural being like Zeus.
I
think the philosopher Daniel Dennett is helpful on this subject
-- I
think he is updating Kant's position which I think does make
sense --
it's something like this:
Choice, freedom is not what tradition generally says it is --
not a
godlike power to exempt oneself from the causal universe --
freedom or
choice is simply our ability to think -- to perceive, mull over,
and
act upon our ideas. Dennett calls this "an evolved
creation of human
activity and beliefs" -- which owes its existence to
language,
culture, social life, human communication -- it's a variable,
not a
binary, value -- it waxes and wanes in individuals and
societies. The
more we see, the more we think, the more we can perceive and act
upon,
the more freedom, free will, choice we have. Freedom is
objectively
real and also completely dependent on what we think about it,
just
like language, money, music and many other human creations
Skeptical arguments that attack the idea of God, and then exalt
the
idea of free choice, tell us that superstition has stood in the
way of
critical thinking -- but this has no bearing on real
spirituality --
or (I would argue, Peter would disagree) on God -- several great
theologians of recent times accepted this -- Bultmann, Tillich,
Bonhoeffer
So: we jump into a realm of paradoxes and we can't see very far.
Maybe you are right that the appeal these problems have has to
do with
their insolvability. Or it could be that philosophy is
another kind
of eros. Eros is a lack. You are trying to find
something you do not
have. Philosophers seek wisdom because they are not wise.
Keep going
with
it and see if it proves its value for you
