Motive of a mass murderer wrongly assumes conscious will

One of the things that comes through loud and clear in the many modern neuroscience and psychology books I've read is that we humans are lousy at knowing why we act a certain way.

Experiments on split-brain patients, for example, where the connection between the two brain hemispheres has been severed, shows that even when the left side of the brain (which controls language) is unaware of the reason the right side did something, the patient will make up a "why" story that has no basis in fact.

We don't like to admit that we don't know. So the brain makes up reasons in an effort to make sense of the world, even when those reasons lack a connection to reality.

The legal system is behind the times in this regard, as evidenced by the talk after every mass shooting in the United States about it being important to learn the killer's motive.

This assumes a direct link between (1) what we do, and (2) a preceding conscious thought or emotion that impels us to engage in that action. This assumption is highly suspect, since there's a lot of evidence that conscious awareness is a caboose at the end of an Action Train, not the locomotive that leads the way.

After Robert Aaron Long killed eight people in Atlanta, six of them Asian women who worked at massage parlors, many commentators saw the murders as racially motivated. But police reported that after they talked with Long, he said that his killings stemmed from a sex addiction, not racial hatred.

Well, the plain scientific fact seems to be that Long can't accurately say why he killed those people, just as nobody else can accurately say why they did this or that -- except, perhaps, for the simplest of actions.

Here's an excerpt from the book I've been writing about recently, Robert Wright's "Why Buddhism is True."

The split-brain experiments powerfully demonstrated the capacity of the conscious self to convince itself that it's calling the shots when it's not. However, this demonstration was done with people who don't have normal brains. How about the rest of us, whose two hemispheres aren't separated? Do our brains actually make use of this capacity for self-deception?

There is good reason to believe the answer is yes.

In one much-cited experiment, the psychologists Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson asked shoppers to appraise four pairs of pantyhose and choose the best pair. It turned out people had a strong tendency to choose the pair on the far right.

But when asked why they had chosen the pair, they didn't say, "Because it's on the far right." They tended to explain their choices in terms of the quality of the pantyhose, sometimes going into detail about the fabric, the feel, and so on.

Unfortunately for these explanations, the four pairs of pantyhose were identical.

...At a minimum, it seems fair to say that the role of our conscious selves in guiding behavior is not nearly as big as was long thought. And the reason this role was exaggerated is that the conscious mind feels so powerful; in other words, the conscious mind is naturally deluded about its own nature.

...From natural selection's point of view, it's good for you to tell a coherent story about yourself, to depict yourself as a rational self-aware actor. So whenever your actual motivations aren't accessible to the part of your brain that communicates with the world, it would make sense for that part of your brain to generate stories about your motivation.

There's good reason why the terms "implicit bias" and "systemic racism" are used so often in discussions of racial discrimination. People may consciously believe that they aren't racially biased, while actually they are.

Sometimes racism is subtle. Sometimes racism is so much a part of society that it goes unnoticed, being so familiar.

And sometimes, maybe most of the time, a mass shooter who kills a number of people of some race is unaware of why he did this. So I don't think investigators of the Atlanta shootings should put much credence in how Robert Aaron Long explains his murders.

Perhaps the law requires that a conscious motive be present for there to be a hate crime. But neuroscience and psychology don't require this -- quite the opposite, in fact.

Comments

[Ron Krumpos]

Hate crimes today do get a more severe sentence than those due to mental incapacity.

You are right, though, that we often do nor realize fully why we do what we do. Our justification for our actions usually comes when we are questioned about them.

[S]

Luckily we have a conscious mind that is capable of speaking to the subconscious mind through this little thing called logic.

God gave us free will and then we made the mistake of using it.

Time, time, time...

[albert medina]

Thanks, Brian. I am a believer in the prime motivating force called "karma". There are three types: Daily karma, reserve karma to be paid in this life or later and stored karma - those karmas that have accrued from many lives that have yet to be paid. Karmas form the causal seeds which fructify when conditions and time are conducive for their exhaustion. Because of the constancy of karmic motivation it is a fact that very little room for free will is left, but there is a bit of it, thank goodness! One analogy I like is the cow that is tied to a stake: it can eat the grass which is available to it within the radius of the chain but no further. Humans are likewise tied to the chains of karma, which only allows a very small area of experiences and nutriment. Even with the vast range of diversity and plethora of sensations that a human can undergo in one life, it is almost all predetermined and actuated by the force of ripening karma coming due from moment to moment. The amount of free will we do have, according to high rishis, gurus and Saints, is ideally to be used to find the way to FREE ONESELF (moksha) from all karmic debt and to permanently liquidate the entirety of our karmic scroll stored in our subtle causal mind. Admittedly, this is a difficult and bitter pill to swallow if one stolidly believes that one is the sole master and arbiter of one's own fate in every given moment.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Brian
To understand why we do things requires a very calm understanding of what is going on within us. And then the question arises "why am I thinking those thoughts?"

If the culprit had asked that question throughout his life he would have realized he hardly knows what he is thinking in the background most of the time. He only sees the conscious report, full of justifications.

But the fact is, his decision to buy a gun, to choose locations and specific people were all many, many decisions his brain made over a period of time. His conditioning and his genetics, his history and his prejudices all come into play.

To think a mass murder is enlightened on the subject of racism, that he believes we are all brothers and sisters hardly matches his behavior, for which he must be held accountable.

What it may or may not say about the prevalence of racism, systemic and largely subconscious, or readily justified, or just as readily denied, cannot be deduced from one example.

But sadly we have so many examples that to believe the culprit's explanation would be to believe a rare exception.

We all carry prejudices. They are a silent murder, a torturer of innocent human beings. Let us do our part and try to understand and overcome them, first and foremost within ourselves.

Let us look to the culprit and find the part of ourselves in him, that is in us too.

[um]

@ Albert Medina

If i drink coffee and gaze outside the window, i see the trees and some birds preparing their nests for the spring to come.

All that is alive has been brought to life with all it needs to stay alive.

Would it not be the utmost ......xxxxx .....if that would not be the case and these beings were dependent on others for their life and welfare?!

xxxxxx ... lack of good, given by any name and/or the utmost of evil, given by any word.

That being the case why should human beings form and exemption to that rule?

So where is the need of complex theories, that can only be understood by a few on how to live life.?!

[Uchit]

@I am a believer in the prime motivating force called "karma". There are three types: Daily karma, reserve karma to be paid in this life or later and stored karma - those karmas that have accrued from many lives that have yet to be paid.....etc

This is absolute RSSB, GSD, bull that sucks innocent and nieve souls into satans web ( in this case GSD, who is a puppet controlled by kaal) . You have free will, you have the power of choice, and there are consequences - Simple.
Many times I have heard GSD putting the fear of karmic dept into people, so they become insecure, and look for him as the solution to the struggles in their lives. Instead of looking at their choices, they look at the cloaked demon, Gurinder Singh Dhillan, for a plan to escape this hell. But little do they know the reality is that GSD works with these forces to deliberately create a life of suffering so the sangat cling further to the cloaked devil for help in their pain - a vicious cycle. You have free will to think critically and analyse your life so far, in which there are gems lessons, and then you have the absolute free will to take action. Don't listen to a charlatan on a stage that is only interested in projecting an image and hiding his true reality. Just look how GSDs greed, power, pride, have been heightened, these are your clues. Then ask how can this billionaire baba be truly enlightened.

[Karim W. Rahmaa]

These murders of people are senseless. Involving only the left hemisphere of the brain. Not at all like the power that stems from the heroic heart. I've heard of this type of power, like when someone I knew had to free his brother by lifting a car off of him after an accident on the freeway. One died, two injured, five total.

I believe there's a great difference between chaotic violence and the power of heart to achieve great feats. For, I've only heard of these stories, yet there are only two men I've seen who possibly could prove this power at will. The first being a video of Maharaj Ji. The other his top student.