The modular view of mind says there is no "I", just a contentious "We"

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the being each of us calls "I" didn't really exist, at least not in the way most people think it does, as a coherent unified self? 

I think so, though I realize this is a disturbing thought to those who depend on the "I" hypothesis to give their life meaning. Given my Buddhist proclivities, I view the situation much differently. 

The way I see it, the "I" I've considered myself to be for most of my life is the cause of many problems.

For example, anxiety, because "I" wants things to go the way "I" want them to go, and it worries me when they don't. Dissension, because "I" reacts defensively when my opinions are challenged by someone else. Isolation, because "I" feel like I'm separate and distinct from the world around me.

That's why I've always enjoyed books and teachings that undermine the notion of a unitary self commonly referred to as "I." And why, in line with this, Robert Kurzban's book Why Everyone (Else) is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind is appealing to me so much.

The Amazon listing gives a good overview of the book, whose back cover says that "Robert Kurzban is associate professor of psychology and founder of the Pennsylvania Laboratory for Experimental Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania." 

We're all hypocrites. Why? Hypocrisy is the natural state of the human mind.

Robert Kurzban shows us that the key to understanding our behavioral inconsistencies lies in understanding the mind's design. The human mind consists of many specialized units designed by the process of evolution by natural selection. While these modules sometimes work together seamlessly, they don't always, resulting in impossibly contradictory beliefs, vacillations between patience and impulsiveness, violations of our supposed moral principles, and overinflated views of ourselves.

This modular, evolutionary psychological view of the mind undermines deeply held intuitions about ourselves, as well as a range of scientific theories that require a "self" with consistent beliefs and preferences. Modularity suggests that there is no "I." Instead, each of us is a contentious "we"--a collection of discrete but interacting systems whose constant conflicts shape our interactions with one another and our experience of the world.

In clear language, full of wit and rich in examples, Kurzban explains the roots and implications of our inconsistent minds, and why it is perfectly natural to believe that everyone else is a hypocrite.

Early on, Kurzban addresses the notion of our various selves.

Because of the way evolution operates, the mind consists of many, many parts, and these parts have many different functions. Because they're designed to do different things, they don't always work in perfect harmony.

The large number of parts of the mind can be thought of as, in some sense, being different "selves," designed to accomplish some task. This book is about all these different selves, some of which make you run, some of which make you lazy, some of which make you smart, and some of which keep you ignorant. 

You're unaware of many of them. They just do what they're designed to do, out of sight and, as it were, out of mind.

This book is about how all of these different parts of mental machinery get along or, occasionally, don't get along, and it's about how thinking about the mind this way explains the large number of contradictions in human thought and behavior.

It explains why we are conflicted, inconsistent, and even hypocritical. Understanding the whole of human behavior requires understanding all of the large number of different parts that produce it. These parts are called modules. 

Kurzban relates the familiar story told in many neuroscience books about split-brain patients who had the connection severed between the brain's left and right hemispheres, sometimes to deal with epileptic seizures that couldn't be prevented any other way. 

Various experiments have been done with split-brain patients, one of which is described in the book. I found a summary of the experiment via some Googling.

In Michael Gazzaniga's split-brain research, a patient was shown a chicken claw to their left hemisphere (controlling the right hand) and a snow scene to their right hemisphere (controlling the left hand). The patient correctly pointed to a chicken with their right hand and a shovel with their left hand, but when asked to explain, the left hemisphere, lacking knowledge of the snow scene, fabricated an explanation based on the chicken claw, stating the shovel was for cleaning the chicken shed. 

I liked Kurzban's comment on this experiment, which I've never seen expressed this way before.

What did "the patient" think was going on? Here's the thing. There's no such thing as "the patient." There's no real answer to the question because "the patient" is two more or less disconnected hemispheres. You can only ask about what individual, distinct, and separated parts think. The question asking what "the patient" sees is bad, and the answer is meaningless.

(Questions can be bad in many ways, for example by assuming a condition contrary to fact, like the infamous "Have you stopped beating your wife?") Here, asking what "the patient" believes assumes there's one, unitary patient who can have a belief about something. If I'm right about the ideas here, then a lot of intuitively sound questions like this one will turn out to be at best problematic and at worst incoherent.

Meaning, the modular brain hypothesis, which has a lot of evidence backing it up, is in line with the more dramatic findings regarding split-brain patients. Kurzban writes:

In this book, I present arguments and evidence that the human mind -- your mind -- is modular, that it consists of a large number of specialized parts, and that this has deep and profound implications for understanding human nature and human behavior. 

One important part of this is that modules, because they are separated from one another, can simultaneously hold different, mutually contradictory views, and there is nothing particularly odd or surprising about this. Such an idea is perfectly continuous with the material we've already visited in this chapter, and, indeed, with the rest of the biological world.

...An important consequence of this view is that it makes us think about the "self" in a way that is very different from how people usually understand it. In particular, it makes the very notion of a "self" something of a problem, and perhaps even quite a bit less useful than one might think.

In contrast, one idea that is very useful is the idea that if our mind consists of a large number of modules, then it needs one module to speak for the whole. In chapter 4, I introduce the notion that if you like the metaphor of your mind as a government, then "you" -- the part of your brain that experiences the world and feels like you're in "control" -- is better thought of as a press secretary than as the president.

Comments

[Ron E.]

When it comes to the issue of ‘self’, there is a huge backlog of ancient information (mostly theological) that manipulates our views. Also, and by no means unrelated is our good old, quite natural sense that what we now know as a mental construct, (the illusion that we have a material self) is com-pounded via evolution where our physical survival instincts have evolved to incorporate all the cognitive information that comprises ‘me’, our self or ego.

Since re-reading ‘Why Buddhism is True’, I’ve come across plenty of examples of ‘modules. Psychology Today. June 27, 2016 had one article on ‘Consciousness and the Modularity of Mind.’: - “One characterization of the mind, which generates plenty of debate, is that it is organized in specific “modules” responsible for specific tasks. Theoretically, these modules operate independently of each other in order to perform their designated role in cognition, and many cannot be influenced by other modules or be processes of which we are consciously aware.”

All very enjoyable as such studies enable a window into how the mind works – and how it produces the illusion of a separate self. I’m was also interested in Wright’s take on tribalism – “…the discord and even open conflict along religious, ethnic, national and ideological lines. More and more it seems, groups of people define their identity [self structure] in terms of sharp contrast to other groups of people”

Wright considers tribalism the biggest problem of our time which could undo the movement toward global integration. Many world leaders today seem to be encouraging violence and dissent. Perhaps in understanding the mind through modules, it can enable a better understanding of how such suffering, strife and discord arises. Or, as Brian remarks: - “The way I see it, the "I" I've considered myself to be for most of my life is the cause of many problems.”

Kursban states: - “In this book, I present arguments and evidence that the human mind -- your mind -- is modular, that it consists of a large number of specialized parts, and that this has deep and pro-found implications for understanding human nature and human behaviour.”

Jay Garfield's book (Loosing Ourselves), explains the divisiveness of the unexamined self very well: - “… we have no reality at all outside of the context of the stories in which we figure. This is why we are persons, and not selves.” An interesting statement and one that could cause some confusion. The gist of Jay Garfield's book 'Loosing Ourselves', where he more or less deconstructs every argument for there being a self, is that he replaces 'self' with 'person'. “. . . the word person denotes the complex, constructed socially embedded psychophysical complexes of which we really consist.” “...When we recognize each other in this sense -- a kind of recognition absolutely fundamental to our collective lives -- we recognize our interdependence, not our independence. . .” It’s all very Zen, reiterating Zen’s teachings of no separation.

[William J]

In reference to modules

https://youtu.be/HZ_FLXhGfRI?si=6rArZbbWqjBdt03w

Regards

[Tim Rimmer]

William J
Cool link with a nice integrated approach - subtitles need a spell check. DMN
Thought/Thinker = same thing.
JK was really onto it in imo. However I read somewhere that when he was close to passing on he commented that nobody seemed to 'get it'.
Trick is to identify less and less with thoughts and as Adyashanti says 'rest as awareness'.
That's all there is to it ! ? :-)
Here's to peace inner and outer.

[Ron E.]

Good link William, says a lot about how we mistake mental modules for a self.

And Tim, l 'cut my early enquiring teeth' on J. K. many decades ago. Always pertinent to any enquirer.

[Appreciative Reader]

Cool article, enjoyed reading. We've covered this here before, I believe? Not this book, nor this specific terminology, but the idea of many selves? (But cool, absolutely. Made for a great read.)

That video? Not bad, except: I don't know if you guys noticed, but after bit he veers off straight into woo woo land. Talks of a common consciousness, that sort of thing. And does that as if that too is scientifically validated, like the rest, which it emphatically is not. Not cool, that.

[Ron E.]

Yeah, A. R, noticed that. Brought in a bit of pansyhcisim as well. Can't really go along with consciousness pervading everything - but have more sympathy with matter (including us) that has awareness, awareness in the sense of the ability to respond to it's environment.

As Nisigardata said: - "Consciousness is to be conscious of something, wherea awareness is primordial, there when consciousness is not - as in deep sleep. J.K. refers to it as there being no observer, no observed, only observing.

Have wrote previously about this so will look it out.

[Appreciative Reader]

And what gets my goat, Ron, is how these types often piggyback onto science, and try to gaslight people into thinking that the woo they're flogging is validated by science.

Otherwise, simply someone speculating something, or discussing "philosophy", is cool, why not. As long as they clearly spell out, that thus far was science, and now begins the woo (or speculation, if you like).

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Incidentally, "no observer, nothing observed, just observing" sounds like nonsense to me. That is, I know what he's saying, but seen not as description of subjective experiences (like waxing eloquent about a dream, or a mirage), but as a descriptor of factuality, I think it's nonsense. No matter that it came from Jiddu K, a cool guy generally.

[Appreciative Reader]

To make clearer what I'm saying as far as the latter point:

"There is no observer, there's nothing being observed, there simply is observing" --- that's Deepak-Chopraesque nonsense. But to say, "It feels like there's no observer, nothing observed, just observing" --- that's cool, why not.

That distinction is important, crucial. If JK meant the former, he's peddling woo, no matter he's this otherwise cool guy (that walked away from adulation and "star"-dom). If he meant the latter, even as he said the former, then he was merely inarticulate (which he isn't, usually, he's usually exactly the opposite, extremely articulate, what I've read and heard of him).

Maybe a full perusal of the context he said it in might make clear which it is, in this instance.

[Appreciative Reader]

Also, I agree fully with how you discuss "awareness", Ron. That comforts fully with the science of consciousness. (Coming from you, I'd expect no less! 👍) ...But what N., and JK as well, seem to be saying here, is very different than that. I'd take that latter kind of thing with a pinch of salt.