more thinking on the addiction to belief

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