Author: Luke Page 1 of 2

Reading Time: 14 minutes

nihilism, infinity, ouroboros — Infinite Ouroboros

Anyone who has struggled with existential issues has probably bumped into the problem of nihilism, a philosophy that seems to influence so much these days. Nihilism comes in many forms, but on a zoomed-out level, it more or less states this: against the infinity of the cosmos and the absurd nature of human life, there is no intrinsic meaning or value to be found.

People have various reactions to that claim, ranging from an instinctive flinch away to a full-on agreement. But both ignoring nihilism and succumbing to it are bad solutions. The better path is to fully contend with nihilism—to intellectually give it its due—with the goal of overcoming it and connecting to a deeper instinct of meaning.

Nihilism and Camus’s Question

There is no question that a huge portion of life contains darkness—everyone faces death, suffering, and malevolence. Philosophers like Camus described the human condition as being absurd, going so far as to say the fundamental philosophical question was suicide:

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”
Albert Camus, the myth of sisyphus

That is quite the intense framing, but it cuts right to the core of whether life has meaning, or at least enough to balance the darkness. Many people answer such a question by believing in an eternalist philosophy. Whether through a God, a cosmic plan, or some other abstraction, they make meaning definite by removing it from the unreliable subjectivity of humans.

Others avoid truly questioning the meaning of life through distraction and pretense, tacitly ignoring questions about life, suffering, and meaning. And to be fair, it’s not easy to honestly contend with the dark side of the human condition, especially without some kind of grounding in religion or eternalism. In that case, pulling at the thread of meaning is risky—if the whole thing unravels, you’re left with suffering and meaninglessness.

But can we really avoid Camus’s question? It might feel better in the short term to ignore questions about absurdity and meaning in life or to look at the world through rose-colored glasses. But in my view, we ignore wrestling with nihilism at our own risk, as the nihilistic chickens usually come home to roost.

The Prickly Intellect

Opposite those that ignore the darkness are the “intellectually rigorous” people that take pride in honestly admitting to it. When faced with the question “why is there meaning to human life?”, they stare into the abyss of infinite regression and realize that only a religious answer can create axiomatic meaning. So for them, the only intellectually rigorous conclusion is that there is no inherent meaning to life—many find a sense of comfort in the honesty and consistency of this nihilistic conclusion.

And as we argued in our podcast episode on nihilism and the meaning crisis, an honest person should struggle with nihilism because it gets certain things right. In its cosmic, existential, and moral manifestations, nihilism has valid concerns that you should not carelessly toss aside. One should engage with nihilism and struggle with its arguments, but with a catch: you should do so with the goal of overcoming it, of finding a deeper and more sustaining sense of meaning in the process.

Because at the end of the day—and no matter what nihilism gets right—it seems like suffering only gets worse when nihilistic philosophies propagate. Nihilism might be more intellectually consistent, but perhaps the intellect should not be the only source of truth. As the spiritual teacher Ram Dass said, “the intellect is a beautiful servant, but a terrible master”.

So this article will briefly explore the history and philosophy of nihilism along with how it manifests in today’s society. Following that, it will explore ways to define meaning outside of the religious framework, a meaning that can help you overcome nihilism in an honest and durable way.

What Is Nihilism?

Nihilism, coming from the Latin nihil (meaning nothing), is the philosophy asserting that there is no basis for values and meaning in life. The term became widely popular after its use in Ivan Turgenev’s 1862 novel Father and Sons, and it represented a kind of radical skepticism towards epistemology. If there is no God to give meaning to things, how can we be sure about knowing anything? You can find the same Latin root in the word “annihilate” which helps explain nihilism’s influence on anarchist political groups and revolutionary movements.

For some, annihilation meant terrorism and violent revolution. But the annihilation aspect of nihilism need not be physical—it could also mean extreme skepticism towards knowledge and values. This epistemological nihilism annihilates knowledge structures by pointing out that knowledge and truth have no fundamental grounding—nothing stops you from infinitely asking the question “but why is that true?”. It is reflected in a lot of postmodern philosophies popular today.

But the skepticism inside of nihilism has a long history, one that particularly synced up with the Englightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. Enlightenment concepts and scientific thinking led human beings to question everything, including the fundamental axioms of their culture. Besides epistemology, other popular branches of nihilism include political, moral, and cosmic.

But probably the most common and encompassing definition of nihilism—and the one most relevant to our personal psychology—is existential nihilism.

Existential Nihilism

Existential nihilism asserts that life has no intrinsic meaning or value. It overlaps with cosmic nihilism in pointing out the lack of purpose in the entire cosmos, but existentialist thinkers focused on the human condition and the existential anxiety we feel in our search for meaning and purpose.

And the absurd nature of existential nihilism is that even in a meaningless world, humans still search for meaning. Even those that have discovered the absurdity still can’t help but desire meaning and purpose. Some of my favorite television shows like Bojack Horseman, Rick and Morty, and Mad Men explore this tension beautifully.

Friedrich Nietzsche and Nihilism

“What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; ‘why?’ finds no answer.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

Nihilism has a strong connection to philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In his 1901 work The Will To Power, he warned of the advent of nihilism and the catastrophe that the European culture would encounter because of it. The highest values of the human intellect, in seeking truth and questioning everything, would end up destroying the possibility of value itself.

In Nietzsche’s words, people would discover that there was no “true world” in which to ground any truth claims. This discovery is the endpoint of the extreme skepticism that annihilates knowledge and values. Some cosmic versions of nihilism are passive, but for Nietzsche, this destruction was an active part of nihilism: “nihilism…is not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one’s shoulder to the plow; one destroys.”

When you devalue the foundation from which all other values are rooted, nihilism emerges as the only honest way to view the world. In this view, no value system has a legitimate basis for existing since the foundation of any such system is arbitrary.

Nietzsche’s Solution

Despite his grim diagnosis, Nietzsche did not think of nihilism as an endpoint, and like many existential philosophers, he struggled with how to overcome it. To that end, Nietzsche spoke about becoming unique individuals who create values for themselves:

“We, however, want to become those we are – human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

Nietzsche seemed to believe that we could find meaning within ourselves by aiming at our unique potential. He said that people “fear their higher self because, when it speaks, it speaks demandingly”. But if we have the courage to listen to this higher voice, perhaps it is possible to develop maximally into who we could be. And perhaps this aim creates enough meaning to challenge nihilism.1

Amor Fati

Besides ideas of becoming our unique higher selves, Nietzsche also embraced Amor Fati, the concept of accepting suffering and loving fate. It is an idea that was central to Stoicism, and Nietzsche summed it up as follows:

“That one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backwards, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it….but love it.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

I think amor fati goes a long way towards embracing life and avoiding negative emotions like resentment that can tempt one towards nihilism.

Contending with Nihilism

“The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.”
Albert Camus

I think at one or more points in life, we must all confront the problem of nihilism. And how you approach that confrontation will largely affect the philosophy of life you end up building for yourself.

Embracing nihilism furthers the kind of destruction that Nietzsche warned about. And from what I can tell, ignoring it only pushes those thoughts into the shadows of the mind where they can more deceptively influence behavior.

Embracing Nihilism

You can embrace nihilism actively and passively, and both lead to problems. Passive nihilism is more of the cosmic nihilism gestured at by writers like Kurt Vonnegut—”we are just here to fart around”—and by shows like Rick and Morty.

Passive nihilists do not wish for destruction, but they also struggle to build a proper argument against nihilism. Looking back on my younger self, I could express my passive nihilism as a “what human concerns really matter in this giant universe” kind of attitude. And knowing some astrophysics about the eventual heat death of the universe did not help…

Passive nihilism might be less destructive, and its honesty towards the dark aspects of life can be weirdly comforting. But it created resistance against self-improvement, and as I aged, the comfort was slowly replaced with a sense of existential anxiety.

Active Nihilism

Active nihilism means you actually follow through on the logic of the philosophy to varying degrees. When taken to its extreme, the active nihilist might be resentful towards Being itself—they believe it would be better if nobody existed.2

For most, active nihilism fuels one to question all truth claims with prickly intellectual methods that make everything relative—a “there is no absolute truth” kind of philosophy. Skepticism can be healthy, but the nihilist’s extreme skepticism/relativism can be too easily used to justify immoral behavior.

To use the metaphor of a house, relativists point out that where you put the ground floor—your culture’s axioms—is arbitrary. Adherents to Michel Foucault and other postmodernist thinkers, in claiming that you cannot separate knowledge and power, would say that the ground-floor axioms of knowledge are mostly about those in power maintaining control over others.

There are some legitimate aspects to that way of thinking, but claiming that knowledge is either arbitrary or fundamentally about power misses the most crucial aspect of our reality: either Being continues or it doesn’t—either the house collapses or it doesn’t. So while it is true that you theoretically can put the ground floor of a house anywhere you want, houses built on firm bedrock with a high bearing capacity are more stable than those built on flimsy soil. And the same logic holds true for axiomatic claims and their load-bearing ability to sustain civilization.

But the active nihilism I observe today does not seem to care about how durable the house is, so to speak. It questions and destroys cultural norms and values without concern, perhaps even with a malicious delight. This overly active skepticism—”putting one’s shoulder to the plow” in Nietzsche’s words—destroys value after value without knowing (or maybe even caring) whether human societies can survive the absence of certain load-bearing values.

Certain cultural norms and truths should be questioned and destroyed, but I do not think that relativism and nihilism can ever be proper justifications. And the irony that living by an absolute truth of “there is no absolute truth” seems lost on the relativistic nihilists.

Being

“The knowledge that nothing matters, while accurate, gets you nowhere.”
Dan Harmon

For me, overcoming nihilism comes down to one fundamental assumption that we can find deep within ourselves: Being is good. The light of human consciousness is a mystery and a miracle, and to let that miracle succumb to the darkness would be a tragedy. But since life is filled with suffering and tragedy, we need meaningful reasons to sustain ourselves and our species.

So if we need to believe in meaning to sustain Being, then we should make it our life’s mission to continually seek it—that is justifiable bedrock for me. This kind of meaning, grounded in the belief of Being, does not come from outside ideologies or intellectually clever arguments, but from deep within.

Is Nihilism on the Rise?

Trying to empirically figure out if nihilism is on the rise goes beyond the scope of this article, but I do want to briefly comment on my motivation for writing on this topic. In my experience over the last few years, I began suspecting an implicit/passive nihilism influencing many people’s behavior. It is reflected academically in the postmodern traditions and culturally in the popular political ideologies that casually destroy long-held Western values—Chesterton’s Fence is relevant here.

Changing outdated, non-inclusive, and unfair cultural norms is important for progress. But it is also important to do so thoughtfully, humbly, and with a guiding motivation that Being is good—that we should continue the miracle of human consciousness. I think ideology is dangerous wherever it comes from on the political spectrum, but it is many of the leftist/social justice ideologies that seem to flirt with nihilism these days. While these ideologies claim to be guided by virtue and compassion, under the surface it seems like there is implicit anger, resentment, and even sometimes a nihilistic urge to destroy.

One hypothesis would be that failing to consciously contend with nihilism pushes it into our subconscious, where it can influence our behavior in more deceptive ways. Another hypothesis is that the anxiety of nihilism causes many minds to implicitly seek out its opposite: dogmatic ideology and totalitarian certainty. That second hypothesis explains why many political movements have taken on religious fervor.

I frankly do not know what is going on, and my opinions on this topic are still fairly open and curious. But my instinct tells me that the dogmatic and righteous-sounding ideologies popular today have something to do with nihilism. For some, the ideology might be a cover story for their urge to destroy. But the majority might not realize how self-destructive certain philosophies are—they believe the label on the ideology box without knowing what is inside. Whatever is happening is above my understanding, but my instinct detects growing nihilistic darkness in our societies.

The image of the ouroboros at the top of this article—the mythical serpent that destroys itself—reflects the infinite regression of nihilistic skepticism combined with the desire to destroy, even if subconscious.

Finding the Meaning of Meaning

“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

On the one hand, choosing meaning over nihilism has an easy explanation: nihilism does not help you deal with the suffering in life. It either has no effect on suffering and tragedy or more likely, makes them worse. So for me, the intellectual reason for choosing meaning rests on the assumption that Being is good and that reducing suffering is also good.

But to understand what meaning is, I think we must move beyond the intellect. The intellect craves precision and consistency, but for me, meaning is an instinct that comes from non-intellectual parts of myself, including the body.

What Is Meaning?

The prickly skepticism inside of nihilism wants to prove that meaning is empty if you cannot precisely define it. The intellect seeks to understand the world by boxing things into neat categories, especially when language is involved. A precise definition is great at telling you what something is, but to box something in is also to box it out. When you give something too precise a definition, you box it out of all the other possible manifestations.

And some words are too deep to be precisely one thing. We can still use the word, but we should know that the word is merely a label for an experience. It gestures at a concept that originates from places deeper than the intellect, including the body. The body is our primary connection to the world, and its signals are more honest than the deceptive nature of words and intellectual prickliness.

Our ancestors connected to meaning and Being through their bodies long before language existed, as did we during development. As Iain McGilchrist says in his book about our divided brain structure:

“The very words which form the building blocks of explicit thought are themselves all originally metaphors, grounded in the human body and its experience”
Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary

So if epistemological nihilism would assert that there is no ultimate meaning because all explicit knowledge must be defined in relation to other knowledge—like defining words with other words—then a good retort is that we can ground meaning in the human body and its experience.

To find meaning, then, we should not be tempted by the intellect to think of ourselves as abstract biological machines that happen to have an intellect. We are instead an embodied consciousness, and it is okay to be guided by the deeper embodied instinct towards meaning.

Meaning Is Surrender

“We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.”
Carl Jung

Another way to express meaning is to say that meaning is surrender, specifically surrender of the intellect. Meaning created by the intellect is misguided, and it tends to flirt with dogma and ideology. But the sense of meaning that comes primarily from our bodies is deeper and implicit. It manifests itself to us from outside of our conscious awareness, such as when something triggers goosebumps or tears. Meaningful signals from the body also convince me in crucial moments that love is a deeper value than anything else, even truth.

To believe in meaning, therefore, is to surrender to the signals of meaning that come from our entire nervous system. The instinct for meaning might be an evolutionarily adaptive guiding system that kept our ancestors properly oriented. In this evolutionary view, the instinct to do meaningful things, something we feel rather than think, might be what keeps us on a balanced path that sustains Being.

Meaning Is Pointing

For those whose intellect is still holding on, there is one other concept that might help you choose meaning over nihilism. I first encountered it in Kevin Simler’s article titled A Nihilist’s Guide to Meaning, which tries to more explicitly define meaning.

After similarly describing the implicit sense of meaning outlined above—meaning as a bodily feeling/perception—Simler tries to more precisely define meaning to be pointing:

“A thing X will be perceived as meaningful in context C to the extent that it’s connected to other meaningful things in C.”

In this formulation, meaning is all about connectedness. Something is meaningful if other meaningful things depend on it. Your life has meaning because other meaningful people and things depend on you. And in such an environment filled with meaning, having more connections pointing outward makes your life more meaningful.

This meaning-as-pointing concept is a narrative tool used in many movies, perhaps most famously in It’s a Wonderful Life. In it, we understand the interconnectedness of meaning by observing the effects of removing points from the meaning web.

“Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”

This conceptualization does not solve the infinite regression problem—you still have to assume some inherent meaning somewhere to get the meaning web up and running. But for me, appreciating this interconnectedness makes life more meaningful, and it’s far better than focusing on the dark abyss.

Nihilism: Brilliant Outrage

“Famously, there’s not really anywhere to go after nihilism. It’s not progressing toward anything, it’s a statement of outrage, however brilliant”
Alan Moore

The intellectual arguments for nihilism are strong, and emotions of fatigue and resentment towards life can make it all the more tempting. Especially if we think belief in some eternal/religious entity is the only alternative, nihilism appears to at least come with some intellectual honesty and consistency.

But I think the nihilist/eternalist dichotomy is false, and it is okay to find yourself somewhere in between those two poles. You can contend with nihilism and understand where it’s right without becoming a nihilist, and you can also connect to a more nebulous and mysterious source of meaning without being religious. Staying on a middle path like this creates a true-to-yourself meaning, one that will make you less tempted by the comfort of dogmatism or ideology.

To be clear, I am not pretending to have solved the meaning crisis by intellectually beating nihilism’s arguments. I am purposefully bypassing the intellect to ground meaning in personal experience. The nihilist might call this an intellectual foul that in no way proves an objective or ultimate case for meaning. But when you compare such intellectual skepticism with the undeniable meaning of things like crying at a wedding, crying at a funeral, getting goosebumps at the climax of a symphony, holding a baby, having an uncontrollable belly laugh with someone you love, wistfully reminiscing about a cherished memory—the list could go on and on—the prickly/brilliantly sharp arguments for nihilism seem pathetically small.

So don’t be afraid of nihilism—contend with it and intellectually understand it. But to overcome it, surrender your intellect, go home to your body, and connect to the obvious truth of meaning.

Metacognition: The Bird’s Eye View of the Mind

By Luke

On December 4, 2021

In Meditation, Mental Frameworks, Self-Improvement

Reading Time: 10 minutes

Metacognition is, in the words of the man who coined the term John H. Flavel, “cognition about cognitive phenomena”. The prefix meta means “beyond” or “above”, and metacognition happens anytime we have awareness about our learning, thinking, and other cognitive processes. But on a deeper level, metacognition involves meta-awareness—truly detaching from the mind to get the bird’s eye view from above.

Metacognition is a scientific term coined by the American developmental psychologist John H. Flavell in 1979. Since then, many scientists have researched how it works. They explored how to define it and ways to exploit it in education, therapy, and other areas of life.

For example, metacognitive therapy—similar to Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)—uses metacognitive strategies to detach from thoughts and emotions. In one of the founders John D. Teasdale’s words, “thoughts are seen as passing events in the mind rather than as inherent aspects of self or as necessarily valid reflections of reality”.

But more generally, the metacognitive view of the mind is the ability to step back and watch your mind with curiosity. Mathematician Eric Weinstein calls this view from above the metacognitive perch, revealing our minds to be more like a collection of modules rather than a unified and consistent operation. In this sense, metacognition plays in the same ballpark as meditation and mindfulness.

And as a mental framework, metacognition will be one of the more crucial concepts for Exploring Kodawari. On the practical level, metacognitive thinking makes us better learners and teachers. But on a deeper level, it gives us the chance to more honestly understand ourselves so that we can lead better lives.

Metacognition Definition

In its most encompassing definition, metacognition is the ability to think about thinking. One need not have a zoomed-out awareness of the entire mind to be metacognitive, and they can still be lost in thought. Metacognition is, therefore, any level of cognition above other cognitive processes. It can even occur subconsciously when you implicitly strategize about how to learn, think, or solve a problem.

In this sense, metacognitive knowledge refers to all of the data points and patterns that we learn about the workings of our minds. It can be in the moment or a reflection about how the mind worked in the past. But as an umbrella term, metacognition is having thoughts about thoughts. And metacognitive skills allow us to strategize based on this information.

But there are levels to metacognition, and as you build more awareness, you get into the territory of mindfulness and meta-awareness. While metacognition is in many cases synonymous with self-awareness—something like knowing you are a good visual learner—meta-awareness is the explicit and conscious monitoring of the contents and processes of your mind in the present moment.

So metacognition can involve meta-awareness, but it isn’t strictly necessary. But before getting into meta-awareness, let’s first explore the relationship between metacognition and learning.

Metacognition And Learning

Through metacognition, you can evaluate your thinking and learning processes. You can develop insight and awareness into the strategies that foster optimal learning and use it to your advantage. But without metacognition, many people reflexively use popular learning strategies and assume they will work.

But the famous Dunning-Kruger Effect shows that people who perform most poorly on exams tend to have the most confidence in their knowledge. Put differently, the most incompetent people paradoxically feel the most competent—they lack the metacognitive ability to see their incompetence. But metacognition allows you to take a more honest inventory of your mind, and you will learn to feel the difference between shallow knowledge and deep knowledge—you will have a more accurate awareness of what you know.

And this skill is also critical for teachers. When teaching, you can get your students to use metacognitive strategies with self-reflective questions. You can ask them to explain how they solved a problem or give them a survey to assess how well they know something.

Metacognition And Language Learning

As one personal and basic example, I always thought I was horrible at learning new languages. Five years of Spanish throughout middle and high school left me with almost no ability to speak the language. I got high scores on the exams, but they only proved that I could hack the memorization process. But I couldn’t hold a conversation in Spanish, and the knowledge quickly disappeared.

But eight years later, when I first met my now wife Yankı, I began learning her native language of Turkish. Coming from English, learning Turkish is significantly harder than learning Spanish. But I was extremely successful in learning Turkish. And I think the biggest factor was having a deeper understanding of metacognition.

On top of having eight years to become more self-aware, I was also more conscious about learning processes. My younger learning was more implicit. But years later, I could more consciously strategize from the metacognitive perch.

So I did research and tried many different methods, watching my mind as it attempted to absorb the language. I used Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, Babel, Pimsleur, and found pdfs of old textbooks.

And being metacognitive during this process revealed to me that the textbook “school” approach to language learning did not work for me—at least not if I wanted to use the language in the real world. Instead of spending the majority of my time on grammar rules, I let my brain learn the rules more implicitly through conversations and audio methods like Pimsleur. And I could feel the structure of Turkish forming in my brain.

And for me, once I have a structure/framework for something, I can add new information to it quickly. Specifics aside, the point is that I used metacognitive awareness to design a learning method for myself. Everyone learns differently, and with metacognition, you can find your ideal approach.

Meta-Awareness And Mindfulness

If a proper metacognition definition needs multiple layers of awareness, the higher levels would include meta-awareness. With meta-awareness, we aren’t just implicitly aware of thoughts, sounds, sensations, etc—we consciously notice our awareness in the present moment.

If you imagine arriving at meta-awareness in layers, the first layer is to get control of your attention—to no longer be lost in thought all the time. Mindfulness practices like focusing on the breath can help you to stabilize your attention.

But this kind of awareness, while focused, is not yet meta-awareness. Focusing on the breath or another meditation anchor is the metaphorical flashlight of our attention. It is narrow and focused on one thing. But true meta-awareness is switching our attention from a flashlight into a floodlight. We open up our awareness to be above awareness itself, to light up, with attention, all aspects of present moment awareness.

In this state, which is synonymous with many definitions of mindfulness, we can explicitly note the current contents of consciousness. When you notice that you might be lost in thought or swept up in a chain reaction of emotions, you can become meta-aware by taking a short mindful pause. You can even do this when you are overly focused on one thing—being deep in focus is not the same as being meta-aware.

With meta-awareness, you can regularly check in with yourself by asking a question like “is my attention where it needs to be right now?”.

Metacognitive Therapy

Metacognitive therapy, which is similar to mindfulness-based therapies, relies on the concept of cognitive detachment to change how a client relates to their thoughts and emotions. Someone who is suffering from depression, for example, would learn to shift from thinking “I am depressed” to thinking “I am aware of my depressive thoughts”.

Like mindfulness, the first stage is to step back a layer to become aware of our minds. Jon Kabat-Zinn, who developed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in the 1970s, defined mindfulness as “paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, without judgment”. So besides being aware of the mind, one must also find a way to view it without judgment.

And both metacognitive therapy and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) rely on a similar shift in cognition. By being aware of thought patterns as they arise—instead of lost in them—you can interrupt the automatic processes that usually lead to negative states like depressive episodes.

Such a shift is not a magical cure, but it can make a world of difference in how severely negative thoughts affect us.

Modular Model of Mind

In our article on the modular model of the mind, we explored the idea that the unified feeling of our minds is an illusion. We might feel like one personality—especially when we’re not paying attention—but it is more like we have multiple subpersonalities. These modules are not clear-cut and physical like a computer but are, instead, domain-specific cognitive systems that evolved through natural selection. Evolutionary psychologist Douglas Kenrick says:

“A key assumption of the evolutionary perspective is that the human brain contains not one monolithic ‘rational decision-making device’, but rather a number of different decision-systems, each operating according to different rules.”
douglas kenrick, The Evolutionary Economics of Decision Making

Messy Modules

The science of mental modules is fascinating, and knowing it can help with metacognitively recognizing thought patterns. But from the perspective of self-awareness and self-improvement, you don’t have to study your modules as precisely as a cognitive scientist or evolutionary psychologist does. Applying the evolutionary lens of adaptation and domain-specific motivations will certainly help, but a less strict model of messy modules is sufficient.

When you detach into metacognitive space, you can watch your mind from the bird’s eye view and develop a personalized system for naming modules. Like metacognitive therapy, you relinquish identification with these modules—these patterns of thoughts and motivations—and learn to just watch them.

Our inner modules can be selfish, dishonest, and contradictory to other modules, and if we are lost in their thought patterns, we risk blindly acting them out. And without metacognition and self-awareness, we will find ourselves lying and misleading others to explain away our behavior—after all, we are more like the press secretary of our minds than we are the president.

So taking evolution by natural selection seriously should make us more humble towards the workings of the mind. When we have humility and curiosity towards systems within our bodies and minds, we can assume that we are supposed to have competing modules in our brains that try to bid for our attention. The bird’s eye view allows us to become familiar with our modules so we are not ruled by them as much.

Mental Sandboxes

There is a concept in cybersecurity and software testing known as a sandbox, and it syncs up well with metacognition. A software sandbox is an isolated environment where you can safely open a file or run a program without affecting the system. Even malicious code can safely execute in the confines of a sandbox, avoiding damage to the host device or network.

Similarly, there is a metacognitive strategy of building a mental sandbox as a testing environment for ideas. You can maintain your beliefs, values, and opinions while still genuinely giving other ideas—even contradictory ones—the chance to be correct. You can even steel-man your opposition (the opposite of a straw man) by making the ideas stronger than when they arrived.

When we identify too strongly with our thoughts and opinions, emotion takes over, and we reflexively reject opposing ideas. But with metacognition and a mental sandbox, we can learn how to more gracefully play with ideas. With this approach, intellectual honesty and curiosity are more important than being right or avoiding embarrassment. And a bonus to absorbing opposing ideas is that you more quickly realize when you are wrong.

People who do not know how to play with ideas like this—who cannot entertain multiple opinions at once—risk becoming ideological puppets, lacking the metacognition to see what is pulling the strings. As Carl Jung said:

“People don’t have ideas. Ideas have people.”
Carl jung

Camping And De-Camping

Once we learn that we can safely and gracefully test out ideas in the mind, we can embrace the metacognitive strategy of camping and de-camping. I first heard the concept from mathematician Eric Weinstein, and for me, it takes the concept of the sandbox one step further. In addition to entertaining another idea or opinion, we also camp in that perspective.

In politics, for example, we can camp in the opposing perspective for enough time to truly see the world from that viewpoint. Camping in a different perspective temporarily changes our values, prior assumptions, and what information we consider relevant. It also helps cancel out bias, which is not just bad thinking—bias is how the brain processes too much information. We cannot see without ignoring, and where we camp determines what we highlight and ignore.

So the metacognitive strategy of camping and de-camping between multiple perspectives is crucial for maintaining intellectual honesty. It will give you a greater understanding of other people and a more skillful approach to communicating ideas. It also makes me more humble—I have fewer opinions and make sure to test any strong ones from opposing camps.

Gooey vs. Prickly

We tend to be strict about other people being intellectually consistent. We easily spot their flaws and contradictions—especially in political topics—with a “gotcha” type of motivation and pleasure. But when someone points out our hypocrisy—or that of someone on our “team”—we flinch away and deny or excuse it. We allow more gooey thinking in our blind spots while being prickly about other people’s blind spots.

But practicing metacognition with an emphasis on intellectual honesty and flexible thinking induces humility. You are more graceful towards inconsistencies in other people’s thinking because you regularly see them in yourself.

So metacognition has taught me to value gooey and prickly thinking. Prickly thinking means that we make sure our thoughts and opinions are logical and consistent. It helps us build accurate models of the world and have opinions that make sense, fit together, and stand the test of time.

But a gooey thinker embraces tension and inconsistencies in the mind. Valuing gooey thinking means that we don’t view our mind’s ability to contradict itself purely as a design flaw—perhaps it is a feature. Being gooey and embracing contradictions might be the key to how we can solve problems, be creative, empathize with others, and camp/de-camp.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind and still retain the ability to function.”
F. Scott FITZGERALD

Gooey Prickles And Prickly Goo

Of course, this concept depends on the situation. I tend to be stricter about logical consistency for simple truths. But it is often with the deepest truths in life that we have to embrace a more gooey approach to thinking. It also brings to mind a quote by the famous physicist Neils Bohr:

“ There are trivial truths and there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.”
Neils bohr

Watching your mind will show you when you are being prickly and when you are being gooey. And you will spot the same shifts in other people, hopefully in a less judgemental way.

Prickly philosophy is intellectually rigorous and likes everything chopped up into neat categories. It readily reduces phenomena into smaller components and hates logical contradictions. But gooey philosophy embraces vagueness and does not mind blurring categories together. And the truth is that we all contain and need both of these approaches.

As Alan Watts says, in talking about how both prickles and goo are mutually dependent: “life is not either prickles or goo—it is gooey prickles and prickly goo.”

And when we shift our awareness to watch the mind from the metacognitive perch—the bird’s eye view—it is much easier to embrace and work with our messy minds.

Metacognition: Final Thoughts

Hopefully, this article gave you a solid introduction to the psychology of metacognition and how it can be useful. On the scientific side of this topic, there is much to learn about the brain’s attention systems, self-awareness, and optimal learning. It also shows more rigorously the existence of metacognitive levels. As psychologist Tomasz Jankowski puts it, “one meta-level can become object level for a higher next level and so on”.

And on the meditation side of things, the topic intersects well with mindfulness and self-improvement. When we spend more time observing from the bird’s eye view, we become familiar with our mind and its messy way of functioning—as Susan Greenland puts it, “minds are a bundle of multifaceted and sometimes contradictory, thoughts, feelings, and beliefs”. Metacognitively recognizing this truth of the mind makes us more graceful towards ourselves and others.

And finally, if we use metacognitive strategies to cultivate meta-awareness, we have the chance to live a more consistent and present life.

Scientific Resources

Metacognitive Model of Mindfulness (Tomasz Jankowski)
Meta-Cognition in Mindfulness: A Conceptual Analysis (Dilwar Hussain)
Metacognitive Awareness and Prevention of Relapse in Depression: Empirical Evidence (Teasdale, J. D. et al.)
Peak Mind: Find Your Focus, Own Your Attention, Invest 12 Minutes a Day by Amishi P. Jha
Mindful Games by Susan Kaiser Greenland

Stoicism as a Philosophy of Life

By Luke

On July 28, 2021

In Philosophy, Self-Improvement, Stoicism

Reading Time: 12 minutes

definition of stoicism and stoic beliefs

The definition of Stoicism as a philosophy is not the same as being lowercase s stoical—it is not being immune to feelings and emotions. Rather, Stoicism beliefs guide us to down-regulate negative emotions and promote well-being. Stoicism is a philosophy of life that brings you into harmony with nature, with what is.

Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, in his Meditations, says “nothing can happen to me that isn’t natural” and later that “nothing natural is evil”. And in Stoic philosophy, this harmony with reality is the source of wisdom and tranquility in life, something much more valuable than even happiness.

**Click here to listen to the podcast episode that corresponds to this article**

Stoicism, founded in the 3rd century BC by Zeno of Citium, is one of the most influential philosophies from the Hellenistic period of ancient Greece. And since the end of the 20th century, it has been undergoing an impressive revival.

The name comes from the “stoa” or porch in Athens where Zeno gave his lectures. Following Zeno’s death, Stoicism would continue to develop first under Zeno’s pupil Cleanthes and later under Cleanthes’s pupil Chrysippus. They and other Greek philosophers provided the more academic underpinnings of Stoicism, but only fragments survive from their writings.

Luckily, Stoic philosophy spread to other areas after Chrysippus’s death, most notably to Rome. Stoicism particularly resonated with the Roman aristocracy and according to Gregory Hays became “the real religion of upper-class Romans”. The most notable Roman Stoics were Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.

But what is Stoicism?

This article will answer that less from the academic and historical perspective and more from the personal and practical wisdom of Roman Stoicism. The Roman Stoics had specific techniques for avoiding negative emotions and improving one’s life. Stoicism as a philosophy of self-improvement also fits in well with Exploring Kodawari’s approach to life.

But before giving the definition of Stoicism, let’s first highlight the importance of having any kind of philosophy of life to guide you.

A Philosophy of Life

In modern times, the word philosopher usually induces the image of a university department. University philosophers specialize in metaphysics, politics, logic, etc, and usually study those topics in a theoretical way. They might teach certain ethics and principles in their lectures, but it’s not obvious that they would actually live by them.

But the thinkers of ancient philosophy—especially Roman and Greek philosophy—had a different conception of the endeavor. They too had academic motivations for being philosophical—such as epistemology, logic, rhetoric, and physics—but they pursued those interests in the service of something else: a philosophy of life.

For them, developing a philosophy of life—a doctrine for living a virtuous and good life—was the entire reason for studying philosophy. Such a philosophy wasn’t purely abstract and theoretical but also practical and hands-on. A human being ought to live out their chosen philosophy to be a wise man and live with virtue.

And Ancient philosophers formed schools to teach their various wisdom to others. The Cynic school, developed by a student of Socrates named Antisthenes, promoted a monastic life of discipline and abstinence from pleasure. On the other end of the spectrum, the Cyrenaic school—one of the first Socratic schools— pushed for a hedonistic lifestyle. For them, the only truth they could know for sure was their direct sense-experience, making physical pleasure the ultimate good in life.

Epicurus had a similarly hedonistic school of philosophy that challenged the moderation of Platonic thinkers, although with more sophistication than the Cyrenaic school. Epicurean beliefs stated that one ought to extract as much pleasure as possible in life, but Epicureanism also taught enough self-control to avoid the pitfalls of overindulgence.

But most relevant to this article—and a rival to Epicurus—was the Stoic school of philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium. Stoicism began as a Greek philosophy but later evolved from these Athenian roots to become a life doctrine for upper-class Romans, including the emperor Marcus Aurelius. It is this Roman Stoicism that is most suitable to the modern individual looking to improve their well-being.

A Grand Goal in Life

The key to a philosophy of life is having a hierarchy of values and goals. What is worth pursuing in life? What do you most want out of your life?

And it turns out that answering these questions is much harder than it appears. Setting daily or monthly goals is easier, but stating your big life goals and putting them into a hierarchy is intimidating.

Why do your goals need to be in a hierarchy? Because if two or more goals conflict, then you have to know which one prevails. And at the top of such a hierarchy is your grand goal, or as William Irvine, author of the Stoic book A Guide to the Good Life puts it, “the goal that we should be unwilling to sacrifice to attain other goals”.

So there are two main components to a philosophy of life:

In the most zoomed-out perspective, what do you want out of life? Of all the goals both short and long term, which one is the most valuable?
What strategy will you implement in order to attain that goal?

Most people will freeze at the first question. While they have probably made a plan for their life—career, house, family, etc—they probably haven’t made a plan for how to live. And modern life makes this aimless life far too easy. As Irvine says at the opening of his book:

“Our culture doesn’t encourage people to think about such things; indeed, it provides them with an endless stream of distractions so they won’t ever have to. But a grand goal in living is the first component of a philosophy of life. This means that if you lack a grand goal in living, you lack a coherent philosophy of life.”
william ırvine, A guide to the good lıfe

Luckily, Stoicism has answers to both of those questions. But even if Stoicism does not become your philosophy of life, hopefully, you can see the value of having some kind of philosophy to guide you.

The Definition of Stoicism

The definition of Stoicism, at least the Roman version most applicable to ordinary people, is more ethical and personal. It helps an individual live a better life. The motivation for adopting it is nicely expressed by a series of questions posed by Gregory Hays in his introduction to Marcus Aurelius:

“The questions that the Meditations tries to answer are primarily metaphysical and ethical ones: Why are we here? How should we live our lives? How can we ensure that what we do is right? How can we protect ourselves against the stresses and pressures of daily life? How should we deal with pain and misfortune? How can we live with the knowledge that someday we will no longer exist?”
Gregory hays

These ethical questions especially express the definition of Stoicism from the Roman perspective. While the Greeks like Chrysippus spent more time on theoretical concepts such as logic and physics, these were not the focus for Roman Stoics like Marcus Aurelius. At the end of Book 1, Marcus even gives thanks to the gods that he “didn’t get bogged down in writing treatises, or become absorbed by logic-chopping, or preoccupied with physics”.

Tranquility

“Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’ “
Marcus Aurelius, Medıtatıons

With the philosophy of life framing, the definition of Stoicism can be summed up by stating its grand goal for living, tranquility.

Tranquility, or ataraxia in Greek, is a state of equanimity similar to the goal of Buddhist mindfulness meditation. It does not mean being immune to emotions (like the modern word stoical) or having neutral emotions. Instead, it means a kind of framing that contains the whole range of emotional experiences, one that puts you at peace with the world. A Stoic will observe their own life carefully and practice specific techniques for avoiding negative emotions and maintaining tranquility.

So the goal of Stoicism is not happiness—tranquility is something more subtle. A state of constant happiness, even though it’s probably not psychologically attainable, is also not something you would want. Life will have external challenges and setbacks. But Stoic principles provide an internal framing for these setbacks that prevents suffering and promotes joy. As Marcus Aurelius said:

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
marcus aurelius, Medıtatıons

Stoic wisdom tells us that it is usually our reaction to a setback in life, not the setback itself, that causes suffering. Aiming at the goal of tranquility, especially of accepting what we cannot control, will provide a deeper sense of well-being amid life’s challenges. Stoics believe—and you can try their techniques for yourself—that positive emotion will automatically follow the acceptance of Stoic principles.

Stoicism Beliefs

In addition to the goal of tranquility, the definition of Stoicism can also be expressed through some of the fundamental Stoic beliefs. If you internalize the logic and connection between these Stoic beliefs, it will help you to understand the philosophy.

I do not think one has to become irrational or unscientific to become a Stoic, but accepting the premise and logic of these Stoicism beliefs seems a necessary prerequisite for attaining Stoic tranquility.

Determinism & Logos

Like all philosophies, Stoicism requires some underlying assumptions to make sense. The first is that the universe follows a rational and predetermined chain of cause and effect. This is supported by the concept of determinism in modern physics, which states that all matter in the universe—from the beginning of time until now—follows a chain reaction according to the laws of physics.

The Stoics thought of this determinism as a cosmic force that they called the Logos. Logos on the universal scale is synonymous with nature or God, and it organized the world in a coherent way. The universal Logos determined fate in Stoic philosophy, but on the personal scale, logos was the ability for the individual to think and reason.

“It was for the best. So Nature had no choice but to do it.”
marcus aurelıus

A second crucial assumption was that the Logos is good. To find tranquility against the challenges of life, one has to assume that the overall design, nature as a whole, is harmonious and good (not indifferent). In this view, bad fate is ultimately good if it advances the overall design of the Logos.3

Does that mean that we don’t have free will? The Stoics worked this out by emphasizing the control we had over our internal psychology. As Gregory Hays writes, the Stoics defined free will as “a voluntary accommodation to what is in any case inevitable”.2

Everything Changes

“Whatever the nature of the whole does, and whatever serves to maintain it, is good for every part of nature. The world is maintained by change—in the elements and in the things they compose. That should be enough for you; treat it as an axiom.”
marcus aurelıus

In sync with the determinism of the Logos, another Stoicism belief is the concept that everything is always changing. This echoes the famous words of Heraclitus that “the only thing constant is change”, including ourselves.

Marcus says that “there is nothing nature loves more than to alter what exists and make new things like it”. The emphasis on accepting change in Stoicism echoes Buddhist teachings that warn against getting attached to the externals.

That is because the externals are always changing, and it is unwise to anchor our well-being to something unreliable. Like Zen Buddhism, Stoicism emphasizes the transitory nature of everything so that we can learn to overcome our insatiable desires.

As we will see later, the concept of change also leads to the logical realization that we must accept our own change and eventual death.

The Dichotomy of Control

The first two Stoicism beliefs emphasize the overall design of the universe, the constant change of cause and effect. And in the face of that, Epictetus opens his Handbook with the following:

“Some things are up to us and some are not up to us.”
Epıctetus

This concept is known as the dichotomy of control. It states that we should understand what we do and do not have self-control over. If we spend time worrying about external events that we can’t control, we will suffer. So it is much wiser to spend time on affecting what we can definitely control, namely our internal goals and desires.

William Irvine avoids the potential false dichotomy by reworking this into the trichotomy of control:

Things for which we have complete control
Things for which we have no control
Things for which we have partial control

Understanding the dichotomy of control is key to understanding the definition of Stoicism. It is the wisdom to know when we should fight and when we should surrender. When we struggle for something that we have no control over, we are wasting our time and do not have tranquility.

This Stoic wisdom echoes the Christian serenity prayer, which asks for courage to change what one can change, serenity to accept what one cannot change, and wisdom to know the difference.

Stoic beliefs and techniques logically conclude that we should focus our energy on things we do have control over, namely our goals, values, and character.

Framing & The Art of Acquiescence

If I were pressed to give a one-phrase definition of Stoicism, it might be “the art of acquiescence”. The Stoic beliefs are all interdependent, but this one specifically follows from the dichotomy of control.

The art of acquiescence is the wisdom—the skill—to gracefully accept that which you cannot control. If you can change the externals, then go ahead and do it. But if you can’t, you should focus your energy on accepting reality and framing it to prevent negative emotions.

And the Stoics did this by separating our perception into two functions. First is phantasia, the initial mental impression received by our senses. We don’t have control over this. But the perception of this, the hypolepsis, is the value judgment that we place on our mental impressions. And we do have self-control over this, even in extreme circumstances. The mindful pause is a relevant skill here as it will help prevent your automatic judgments.3

So framing is this discipline of how we interpret our life circumstances. You might not be able to prevent something bad from happening to you, but you always have freedom in how you interpret it. As Marcus says: “Choose not to be harmed —and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed —and you haven’t been.”

Even when you have partial control over external events, the fact remains that you will always have more control over your internal framing.

And a good framing is one in which we acquiesce to reality while also safeguarding what is under our control: our psychology, our soul. Marcus regularly reminds us to protect our spirit within from negativity and false beliefs. Framing ourselves as a victim or becoming resentful will always stain our character and make us suffer more.

This points at the most powerful reframing technique in the Stoic toolbox: viewing everything that happens to you, even bad things, as a blessing instead of a curse. It is summed up beautifully by Marcus at the end of Book 4:

“So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.”
marcus aurelius

Said differently—in fact, this might also be a concise definition of Stoicism—you should believe that things happen for you and not to you.

Mortality

All of these Stoic beliefs logically lead to the most difficult acquiescence: our own mortality.

If everything is always changing, as determined by Logos, then we must apply this understanding to ourselves. We must accept the small role we play in the larger design and the brief time that we have to play it. Marcus reminds us that death is the great equalizer—that after death, Alexander the Great and his mule driver became the same, “absorbed alike into the life force of the world, or dissolved alike into atoms”.

The Stoics also believed that people fear death because they are disturbed at how they mislived. Without a philosophy of life, they probably wandered aimlessly and didn’t attain valuable goals. But with Stoicism as a guide, one can be sure to have an aim, and they will almost definitely attain virtue and tranquility. And as Marcus says, doing so will ensure that our mind “accepts death in a cheerful spirit, as nothing but the dissolution of the elements from which each living thing is composed.”

This means that the definition of Stoicism becomes personal to you and your conscience. Even if others don’t recognize it, you won’t fear death because you will know that you lived a good life.

“And if the others don’t acknowledge it—this life lived with simplicity, humility, cheerfulness —he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of life. An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful unity with what must be.”
marcus aurelıus

Stoicism Beliefs vs. Enlightened Hedonism

In some sense, the definition of Stoicism is really framing your life to be a hero and not a victim. As a philosophy of life, it is a way of understanding your mind and the world so that you can increase your gratitude and tranquility.

The Stoics even had specific techniques to induce these emotions, which we will cover in a future article. But the zoomed-out message from this article is that even if Stoicism is not for you, you need something to guide your life. Because without any philosophy, you will probably default to what William Irvine calls enlightened hedonism, the smarter and more planned version of hedonism.

“Furthermore, whatever philosophy of life a person ends up adopting, she will probably have a better life than if she tried to live—as many people do—without a coherent philosophy of life.”
william ırvıne, a guıde to the good lıfe

And lastly, you don’t have to fully convert to Stoicism to benefit from its wisdom. Like all religions and philosophies, I think you can dine à la carte and only take the bits that work for you.

So consider Stoicism as your philosophy of life. Or simply read about Stoicism from time to time—even this is enough to find nuggets of wisdom that will change your perspective on life.

Mental Models And Critical Thinking

By Luke

On May 13, 2021

In Mental Frameworks, Self-Improvement

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Critical thinking is using mental models

More important than learning what to think is learning how to think ( critical thinking). So in this article, we will examine one approach that’s been useful to us—that critical thinking is learning how to use mental models. Mental models are the frameworks that we use to simplify and understand the world. And building a robust toolbox of these is a great way to think more clearly and make better decisions.

At his trial, Socrates apparently uttered the famous words that “the unexamined life is not worth living”. It means that we should strive to understand ourselves in order to have a deep and meaningful life. This includes examining and being critical of our thinking.

And one way to get better at critical thinking is to build up a database of mental models.

Mental models help us by reducing complexity in the world. We can’t pay attention to everything, and models help show us what is important—they block out the noise and boost the signal. At Exploring Kodawari, we refer to them as mental frameworks, and you can view our growing list of them here.

But in order to improve our critical thinking, we must first understand how mental models work. So this article is a kind of “meta” mental framework explaining what models are and why we need so many of them.

Mental Models And How They Help With Critical Thinking

Mental models are representations of how human beings think. They can be loose concepts with a wide utility or very narrow concepts for specific applications. But in all cases, they help us understand the world by highlighting certain information within it.

Mental models also highlight the connections we see in the world. For all intents and purposes, the world is infinitely complex, and mental models allow us to let go of most of that complexity so that we can pay attention to the relevant bits.

Without mental models, we would be completely overwhelmed—we wouldn’t have a hierarchy of what to pay attention to. With them, though, we have a better chance at figuring out what’s important and how to act.

While each model by itself is biased, critical thinking is having multiple models that compete against each other. This helps us to cancel out that bias by seeing reality from as many perspectives as possible.

Heuristics

One way of understanding mental models is to understand heuristics. A heuristic is a fancy term for what is commonly called a rule of thumb. These are rules or models of reality that are easily learned and broadly accurate. By definition, they are not completely accurate and they do not work all of the time.

So heuristics are approximations of reality that allow us to be more efficient with our thinking. They lower our cognitive demand by blocking out the complexity of each individual situation and focusing on the broadly true pattern.

For a heuristic to be good, it either has to be true most of the time or has to have a bias in the direction of safety. For example, the rule of thumb to treat every gun as if it’s loaded might be literally false most of the time, but still pragmatically true enough to prevent horrible gun accidents.

And mental models are like heuristics in that they don’t have to be completely right—they just need utility. As British statistician George Box once said, “All models are wrong, some are useful.”

As long as we are aware that heuristics can bias our thinking, they are safe to use. And when we have to make fast decisions, they are really our only choice.

Compressing Reality

When an image or sound file is digitally compressed, information is strategically removed in order to create a smaller file. Due to redundant information and limitations in human perception, compressed files can be many times smaller while retaining almost the same fidelity.

And a good mental model is similar—it simplifies reality by removing unnecessary information and focusing on what is useful. This overlaps with the psychological concept of cognitive schema. Schemas are how our brains interpret and categorize information in the world. For example, a chair and a beanbag have little in common objectively, yet our brains see them both through the same schema of “something to sit on”.

Like heuristics, schemas/frameworks/models are about utility. Our brains did not evolve to objectively understand the world—to find the ultimate truth. Instead, they evolved to build models that are true enough. Like digital compression, successful cognitive models simplify reality by maintaining sufficient complexity—that is, they are true/accurate enough to remain useful.

As soon as they are not useful, we either have to use a different model or update our model to accommodate new information.

Your Toolbox For Critical Thinking

We’ve already said that because of bias, critical thinking requires you to have multiple models (or categories of models) that see reality from different perspectives. For example, a biologist might rely too heavily on evolutionary models (incentives, hierarchies, niches, etc) while an engineer might rely too heavily on systems thinking (feedback loops, emergence, critical mass, etc).

So having a toolbox of multiple models, including those outside your specialization, helps you find the right tool for the right job. Or at least, because different models highlight different patterns, you’ll find a model that best fits your goals.

Plus, having more schemas/models also means that you can learn and retain information more quickly. This is why I prefer the term framework. Like Charlie Munger says, frameworks give you a place to hang information:

“Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ’em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form. You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience—both vicarious and direct—on this latticework of models.”
Charlie Munger, A Lesson on Elementary Worldly Wisdom

Just like your skeleton gives your body a structure, mental frameworks structure your knowledge in an organized way. And the more frameworks you have, the more organized and useful your knowledge will be.

Making Them Personal

Just because you read about a mental model, it doesn’t make it “yours”. To really own a model, you have to integrate it into your mind through personal experience. Otherwise, the model is just a shell—a name without enough depth. But this changes once you make it personal.

Personal models become deeply rooted in your mind. It evolves from a name to a complex network of connections and examples.

For example, I use the mental framework of the modular mind almost every day. This model says that, even though we feel like a unified mind, we are actually comprised of multiple “modules” competing for our conscious attention. It has a long and complicated scientific history, but the main takeaway is simpler: you have subpersonalities inside your head and many of them are shortsighted and selfish.

So with this model, critical thinking is realizing that certain thoughts are not even your thinking at all. Yes, they come from your brain, but the modular mind reminds us that evolution makes us think things that we don’t have to believe.

But just understanding the psychology of it is not enough. You have to also sit down and notice this mental framework in your own life. You have to subjectively feel how your modules try to control you. And this is true of all models—if you don’t make them personal their utility will be mostly limited.

Categories of Mental Models

As a person just looking to think more critically, make better decisions, and generally improve themselves, I’ve found that broader categories of models are often more useful than specific ones. You can use specific frameworks, but sometimes the larger category gives you enough perspective.

So here are some broad categories of mental models and a short description of how that framework can be useful.

Evolutionary Framework

It’s easy for human beings to feel like they are somehow separate from nature. But the evolutionary framework reminds us that we are a product of nature—gradual change due to evolution by natural selection. And this applies not just to our bodies but also to parts of our psychology.

Psychological traits that occur universally across cultures are good candidates for being adaptations. Certain cultural practices work this way too—you can think of culture as “idea software” that evolved to run on the hardware of the brain. When we learn to view ourselves through the evolutionary lens, a lot of our behavior and motivation make way more sense.

This doesn’t mean that evolved behavior is good just because it’s natural (the naturalistic fallacy). Instead, it’s a way to understand ourselves so that we can be more consistently moral.

Hedonic adaptation, the modular mind, and consciousness are all mental models that fit into this category.

Logical Fallacies

Logical fallacies are the classic thinking traps that our brains can fall into. We are especially susceptible to these in arguments and debates. While fallacious arguments might appear legit and persuasive on the surface, they contain logical errors that invalidate whatever is being argued.

A logical fallacy may be committed on purpose (deceptive) or on accident (just sloppy thinking). But the point is that either way, an argument based on a logical fallacy is false—although a claim can still be true even if its reasoning is false.

So logical fallacies are great mental models to learn about and notice in your thinking. They highlight the common patterns of how we tend to be sloppy with our thinking, and being familiar with them will improve your critical thinking skills.

Some popular examples of logical fallacies are ad hominem, the slippery slope, and the straw man. Aim to learn them and notice them in yourself and others. This will definitely improve your critical thinking skills.

Physics

This category refers to general laws or concepts from physics that we can personify in our human lives. One example is inertia. Inertia states that an object will resist changes in velocity and direction unless acted on by an outside force. And this principle of motion also applies to individuals and organizations.

Relativity is another powerful physics concept that we can export into our thinking. You don’t have to understand Einstein to realize that our frame of reference biases us. For example, if we’re in a plane at cruising altitude, we don’t realize that we’re going nearly 600 mph. But an outside observer would notice this immediately. And this effect occurs in our social lives as well. Critical thinking requires that we be aware of how relativity biases us.

Engineering Frameworks

Engineering frameworks are similar to physics (because engineers rely on physics to build things). But they tend to involve concepts that reveal themselves in more complex systems.

For example, emergence says that sometimes lower-level parts create unexpected higher-level phenomena. And often we can’t even reduce that higher-level emergence to truths from the lower-level domain.

Another engineering principle is feedback loops (A causes B which loops back to A). A classic example of this is when you place a microphone next to its speaker, quickly resulting in a high pitch screech (positive feedback). Positive feedback loops run out of control whereas negative loops (like a thermostat) maintain equilibrium.

These types of frameworks apply not just to engineering systems but also to ourselves and the organizations we create.

Conclusion: Critical Thinking Is Critical

Critical thinking is not just knowing what to think but knowing how to think. It is understanding more consciously how the human mind learns and makes sense of the world. And because mental models are how we do this, learning them more consciously will allow you to think more clearly and make better decisions.

So if you want to get better at critical thinking, consider adding more and more mental models to your toolbox. Study them and make them personal. Over time, they will help you to live a more balanced and consistent life.

Mental Model Resources

The Mindful Pause

By Luke

On March 31, 2021

In Meditation, Self-Improvement

Reading Time: 5 minutes

While mindfulness and meditation can sound great in theory, it often feels impossible to implement them into real-world situations. So in this article, I want to put forth a simple framework that will help with this: mindfulness is pausing. Known as the mindful pause or the sacred pause, this concept will give you a practical way to bring mindfulness into your everyday life.

In an earlier article—What is Meditation—I tried to clear up some misconceptions about meditation, such as why it’s different from mindfulness. You can read that for the full details, but in short, meditation is a method or process while mindfulness is a state of being—a quality of mind.

And how you achieve that quality of mind depends on your specific meditation practice. I personally do a practice known as vipassana, but whatever you do, the point is to achieve non-judgemental awareness of your mind. Known scientifically as meta-awareness, this state of mind removes our identification with thoughts and allows us to have a detached bird’s eye view of the mind.

It sounds simple, but don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s easy. It takes a lot of practice (aka failure) to build up the stability and concentration needed to sustain mindfulness. And while this is already challenging on the meditation cushion, it’s even harder in the fast-paced hustle of life. This is because much of our life is spent in a zombie-like state—our minds acting on auto-pilot.

But this framework—thinking of mindfulness as pausing —allows us to stop the auto-pilot and create some space. And in that space, we have a much better chance of connecting with our best intentions.

Mindfulness Is Pausing

“In a moment of stopping, we break the spell between past result and automatic reaction. When we pause, we can notice the actual experience, the pain or pleasure, fear or excitement. In the stillness before our habits arise, we become free to act wisely.”
jack kornfıeld, The Sacred Pause

One of the difficulties of starting a mindfulness practice is that we don’t magically get really good at it. At best, we can only notice just how mindless most of our behavior is. And not only do we do and say things out of habit, we then dig ourselves into deeper and deeper holes by defending whatever we did.

I guess we prefer the post hoc rationalization route over admitting that we didn’t really mean something. Even worse, our brains evolved to be so good at lying that we often believe our own lies/rationalizations.

So yes, our minds are a mess. And mindfulness isn’t some simple cure—you have to accept that you will still behave in regretful ways. But building the habit of mindful pausing should slowly increase your success rate.

Respond, Not React

Unless I happen to crack a funny joke with just the right timing, it’s rare that my immediate reaction to something is the ideal one. Such reactions seem to come from a small and ego-centered sense of self—they are often triggered by anger or fear, and they almost always lack the bigger picture.

But there’s a popular concept in meditation to counter this: respond, don’t react.

A reaction is automatic and fast—a stimuli input leads quickly to an output. These can be useful in certain situations, but they also get us into so much trouble. A response, however, implies that we run the input-output calculation many times in the privacy of our own minds before deciding what to do.

And when you’re in a stressful situation, avoiding immediate reactions like this can feel like a superpower. Almost always it is the wiser path. But it only works when you first pause long enough to recognize what is happening. In pausing, you step back and just allow the reaction (like a difficult emotion) to make itself known. You might not fully understand it, but with mindfulness, you won’t be lost in it, allowing you to more wisely contemplate a response.

Our Best Intentions

“In this pause, we can examine our intention. If we have set a long-term intention or dedication for our life, we can remember our vows. Or we can simply check our motivation. Are we caught up, upset, angry, trying to get even, win at any cost?”
jack kornfıeld

Think about how many times you check your smartphone every day. Some of those checks are legitimate, but how many are just a distraction from boredom? (I literally just checked my phone for no reason while writing this paragraph.)

What if every time we felt the urge to check our phones, we paused and had a check-in with our hearts instead?

By this I mean you take a moment—30 seconds to 1 minute—to close your eyes and go home to your body. For one mindful minute, you pause the automatic thinking and instead have a conversation with your deepest intentions. What is my goal for the day? What impression do I most want to leave with people?

This is not so much a conversation in language—it’s not the logical part of our brains or the voice in our heads that loves to blabber on. It’s a felt sense of intention that’s deeper than language. It’s about pausing and listening more than it is about thinking. The phrase “listen to your heart” really just means listen to a deeper and wiser part of yourself.

What are the deepest/best intentions that we have? Ultimately—deep down and underneath our short-term or selfish goals—I think we just want to connect with people. We want to contribute positive energy to the world and help others. We want to love and be loved. Pausing to regularly connect with your heart and remember this is one of the best ways to bring mindful wisdom into your life.

After connecting like this, we can integrate those more noble intentions into our behavior. Even if we still go forward with a confrontation of some kind, it will be a much wiser (and ultimately more effective) response.

Tara Brach’s RAIN

Tara Brach is an amazing meditation teacher, and she has an acronym for bringing mindfulness into difficult situations. It’s known as RAIN, and according to her website, the letters stand for the following:

R: Recognize What’s Going On
A: Allow the Experience to be There, Just as It Is
I: Investigate with Interest and Care
N: Nurture with Self-Compassion

It’s a great way to systematically work through a difficult emotion like anger, but it’s worth noting that before you can even start the process you must pause. By definition, you cannot recognize a difficult emotion when you are lost in it. So while adding a P to this acronym would ruin its catchy name, I think all of those letters are ultimately downstream of the mindful pause.

Yes, pausing is often the hardest part. But it’s the only way to even remember that you have an acronym like that in your toolbox.

One can define mindfulness in many ways, but this is why I prefer to remember that mindfulness is pausing. If we are to implement the wisdom of mindfulness into our life, we will always have to pause first.

And you don’t have to wait for a difficult situation—you can create mindful pauses regularly throughout the day. Just a few times, instead of checking your phone, have a mindful minute to pause and check-in with yourself.

On days when I forget to do this—even if I don’t have a conflict—I usually feel scattered and distant from my body. But when I remember to pause, I almost always have a more pleasant, present, and connected experience of the day.

Mindfulness Resources

Simply Begin Again, a guided meditation by Joseph Goldstein
Duncan Trussell Family Hour with Jack Kornfield
The Sacred Pause by Jack Kornfield (aka why mindfulness is pausing)
The Happiness Lab: Reconnect With The Moment
RAIN: A Practice of Radical Compassion by Tara Brach

The Power of Begin Again

By Luke

On January 31, 2021

In Meditation, Self-Improvement

Reading Time: 7 minutes

It’s far too easy to get stuck in life. We can get stuck in mental stories of the past or in old patterns of behavior. We can also get stuck in anger and resentment at ourselves, others, and reality itself. And this attachment to the past makes self-improvement in the future way more difficult. But there is a practice in meditation that will help you to let go and begin again anytime you want. As meditation teacher Jack Kornfield says: “No matter how hard the past is, you can always begin again.”

January 2021 is almost over, and statistically speaking that means many of you have already bailed on your New Year’s Resolutions—in fact, January 17th is known as “National Quitter’s Day”. It seems as if the new year gives people far more faith in their discipline than is deserved.

So what is it about the new year that motivates people like this?

I think the obvious answer is that the new year is like a reset, a way to begin again with a clean slate. But this reasoning risks being shallow—just because an important element of the calendar has changed doesn’t mean that your slate is actually clean.

Deciding that January 1st will be the start of the “new you” is fine, but it requires that you first put in the work towards forgiving the “old you”—this is what cleaning one’s slate really means. To ignore or suppress the past is a recipe for failure.

But this isn’t to say that forgiving your past has to be some complicated feat. Meditation has taught me that there is a way—often a really simple way—to let go of the past without suppressing it. Through a combination of attention, compassion, and forgiveness, one can learn how to leave the “old you” in the past in order to truly begin again.

And it’s the key to changing yourself, your habits, and your relationships in a way that will last.

**Note: You can listen to our corresponding podcast episode on the psychology of new year’s resolutions here.**

How To Begin Again

In theory, the concept of beginning again is actually quite simple. The directions could be something like this:

Take a few deep breaths so that you can clear the mind a bit and bring your attention into the present. Breathe long enough to feel some stability.
Allow whatever thoughts to arise, especially negative ones, and just notice them.
Take note of the thoughts that make you mad or resentful towards yourself and others, and take special note of shameful emotions related to your past behavior.
Understand that they’re all in the past, a place you can’t change. Let them all go and begin again.

You could even simplify it into one sentence: forgive yourself and others, let go of the past, and start your life over today. When you connect to the concept in the right way, it feels this simple. But like many aspects of life, just because it’s simple does not mean it’s easy.

And it’s not a one time move. You will mess up, and so it’s not about purity. Beginning again—as one does countless times during a single session of mindfulness meditation—is beautiful precisely because you can do it over and over.

Yes, like anything, it risks being abused. This is not forgetting the past as in pretending it never happened or suppressing it. Instead, it’s realizing that reality is what it is and you can’t change the past. Plus holding onto the past in an unhealthy way will only mess up the thing you can change, the future.

Personally, I think learning some basic mindfulness meditation—sitting down to familiarize yourself with the mind—is one of the best ways to help simplify your ability to begin again.

Mindfulness Meditation: Simply Begin Again

“The three most important words in mindfulness meditation are simply begin again”
Joseph Goldstein

Many people start meditating with some kind of basic mindfulness practice, like this guided one by Joseph Goldstein. The goal is to settle one’s attention on an object like the breath in order to avoid being lost in thought. They assume it will be a peaceful time and their mind will eventually become cleared of thoughts.

But when they sit down and close their eyes, they collide with the chaos of the mind—the constant waterfall of thoughts on various trains of association. In one moment the mind brings up trauma from your past and in the next, it’s imagining the pizza it wants for dinner. A beginning meditator probably won’t stay with the breath for more than a few seconds at a time—they have to regularly “wake up” to discover that they’ve been lost in thought.

This is how my first attempts at meditation went, and it almost made me give up. I assumed that my mind must be too busy—or at least my focus too dull and scattered—and that I was doomed to be a failed meditator. But early on, I thankfully heard this amazing advice from meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg:

“The healing is in the return, not in never having wandered to begin with.”

After hearing her lecture on this, I realized that I had misunderstood the whole point of the practice. It wasn’t about tightly gripping one’s attention onto the breath and rarely getting lost in thought. It was actually about getting lost, after which you notice it, come back to the breath, and start over. In the framing of Joseph Goldstein, you could summarize the practice in two steps:

Sit comfortably and gently rest your attention on the breath, wherever you feel it most clearly.
When you notice that you’ve been lost in thought, take note of the thought and then simply begin again.

So without realizing it, I was already on the right path. In fact, the most important moment in meditation is not when you’re succeeding—when you’re up on the waterskis of mindfulness. More important is the moment when you notice that you’ve fallen. Such a moment brings a beautiful clarity and a genuine opportunity for change.

Nonjudgmentally Letting Go

So on a micro-scale, meditation is all about messing up, nonjudgmentally realizing you messed up, and finding the compassion and will to begin again. In a ten minute meditation, you might do this over a hundred times. But you don’t judge that as failing—you realize that you’ve had over a hundred times to practice the skill of letting go and starting over. And it gets easier each time.

Why shouldn’t we judge ourselves? I can think of three answers to this. First is that even highly skilled meditators regularly get lost in thought—it’s just how the mind works. The second is that the temptation to judge yourself means you aren’t lost in that moment—you’re in the clarity phase of the practice. And lastly, judgment is a form of gripping onto the past and it will block your ability to let go. You cannot begin again if the mind is filled with resentment towards the past.

After letting go, it takes just a few logical steps to realize that you can scale this practice up into a philosophy of life. Again, even though the idea might be simple, implementing it might not be easy. Depending on your mind, it might take a lot of work to view the past with enough compassion to just let go of it. But it’s the only way to achieve real forgiveness towards yourself and others.

Forgiveness

“This ability to begin again has ethical force as well—it’s actually the foundation of forgiveness. The only way to truly forgive another person, or oneself, is to restart the clock in the present.”
Sam Harris

There are countless ways to define forgiveness, and ultimately it’s an individual process. But I want to give one framing of forgiveness that I picked up from spiritual teachers Byron Katie and Stephen Mitchell. The basic idea is to reframe your view of the world: things don’t happen to you but rather for you.

Stephen Mitchell, with paradoxical language typical of spirituality, says “forgiveness is realizing that there isn’t anything to forgive”. His wife Katie defines it in a slightly different way: “forgiveness is realizing that what you thought happened didn’t.”

This echoes the teachings of Franciscan friar Richard Roar who defines love as “accepting what is”. When he talks about forgiveness, he says that the first step is to forgive reality itself. Our egos can get so wrapped up in the specifics of our lives, but when we zoom out in a spiritual way we remember that we are just one note in the symphony of reality.

So we first forgive reality—we let go of our grip on how reality could’ve been. Or as the popular quote says, “Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.” This does not mean that we just “forgive and forget” in a shallow sense. We seek to understand unjust actions of the past and we don’t take our wrongdoings lightly. As Jack Kornfield says:

“We may resolve to never again permit such harm to come to ourselves or another. And at the same time we can also resolve to release the past and not carry bitterness and hate in our heart.”
jack kornfield, The Practıce of forgıveness

Forgiveness is a release from the past. It takes compassion towards yourself and others. It also takes courage: even though we all have our inner demons, we find the strength and faith for redemption and a fresh start.

So this ability to let go of the past and begin again, no matter how difficult, is the foundation for real forgiveness. And you will strengthen this “letting go muscle” every time you sit to meditate. Even if anger and resentment towards the past still arise, mindfulness will help you to no longer identify yourself with these emotions. You can let go of them quickly and when they’re gone, they’re really gone.

The Purity Trap of Resolutions

“Always remember: If you’re alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who’s going to know?”
Julia child

So how does this ability to begin again work for resolutions? Basically, it fixes the delusion of purity that enticed us into a new year’s resolution in the first place.

We love purity for its simplicity. There are no messy exceptions—things are neat, categorized, and easy. The new year can feel like a chance to reset, to live life the way that you know you should. A new year’s resolution is like finishing the mountain of dishes that have been piled for a week—the kitchen is now sparkling clean— and vowing to never fall into that trap again.

But let’s be honest, you’re likely to let the dishes pile up again. Reality is messy, it’s not the orderly neatness that our minds crave. Sure, it’d be nice if you stick to your new diet every single day, but we must realize that purity is not the point. The point of setting a new year’s resolution is not to be a pure person but to be a better person. And if the purity of a clean slate is what motivates you, then what will be your motivation once you mess up?

Keep in mind that we’re talking about the ability to begin again, not just the action. Sometimes you should hold onto the past in order to learn some lessons. Begin again doesn’t say that we should let everything go, but that we should be able to let anything go.

So consider practicing this. Sometimes it will be simple and sometimes it will take time and work. But it is a practice, and the more you do it the easier it will get.

The Modular Theory of Mind

By Luke

On November 9, 2020

In Meditation, Mental Frameworks, Self-Improvement

Reading Time: 8 minutes

According to the modular theory of mind, we have numerous subpersonalities inside our heads that compete for our attention. While learning about them can be disturbing, it also provides greater freedom. As science writer Robert Wright says: “Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.”

For most of us, consciousness feels like one unified experience moving through time. Yes, our minds and personalities have different sides—and they can change over time—but the whole time it’s still us.

But if we accept the famous words by Heraclitus—that “the only thing constant is change”—then what about us endures through time?

This problem of pinning down one’s identity—or for that matter any object’s identity— is fascinating and can take you in many directions. For me, it brings to mind the ship of Theseus thought puzzle or the paper “Personal Identity” by philosopher Derek Parfit.

But for this article, I want to challenge the concept of “us” from a different perspective. Specifically, I want to challenge our felt sense of unity with the modular theory of mind—the idea that your one mind is actually multiple minds. As the psychologist, Douglas T. Kenrick puts it: “We are all multiple personalities, with several different selves insides our heads.”

And many of our subpersonalities are foolish, selfish, and even evil sometimes. Worse than that, we often mindlessly act out their desires. But it doesn’t have to be this way, at least not all of the time. Paired with mindfulness and meditation, this theory of mind allows us to become more familiar with our inner modules. And familiarity leads to more psychological freedom—we can observe our inner selves instead of blindly following them.

It sounds crazy to our common sense, but this modular theory of mind is both grounded in science and observable through introspection. And while we probably can’t control what thoughts we have, adopting this modular model allows us to at least upgrade the relationship between thoughts and actions.

The Modular Theory of Mind

The general hypothesis that the mind is made of modules—distinct structures with specialized functions—goes back to the 1870s when scientists correlated specific brain damage with specific speech disabilities. For example, damage to the Broca’s area meant that one could not form words but could still understand them. And damage to the Wernicke’s area created the opposite problem.

But many of the ideas from that period went too far and have since been debunked. While the brain does localize some functions, it does not have clear-cut physical modules and there is not a precise one-one relationship between locations in the brain and cognitive abilities.4

Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung

But modularity can still exist in a looser psychological sense, and here it found some support from the psychoanalytic traditions. For example, Sigmund Freud, who synthesized and popularized concepts of the unconscious, thought of the individual as an integrated collection of subpersonalities. For Freud, the mind was like an iceberg: the tip above the water is conscious awareness while the majority below the water is the unconscious. And our subpersonalities—centered around memories, emotions, and motivations—live in this unconscious realm and try to influence our behavior.

Carl Jung took this further by splitting up the unconscious into two categories—the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. This realm of the collective unconscious, filled with instincts and archetypes, is a kind of ancestral wisdom universal to all humans. The cross-cultural similarities of mythology and religious imagery are considered evidence for the collective unconscious.2

In a subjective sense (and in their own psychoanalytic realm) the theories of Freud and Jung are quite powerful. But because of the technical limitations of their time, they lack some of the rigor and empirical evidence required by modern cognitive psychology.

Cognitive Modules

But by the 1960s, the idea of a unified consciousness was more successfully challenged by Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga in their split-brain experiments. And by the 1980s, the modular theory of mind officially returned with philosopher Jerry Fodor’s The Modularity of Mind. He emphasized that the brain does not have distinct physical modules like a computer but instead has what he calls cognitive modules. As Fodor puts it:

“Roughly, modular cognitive systems are domain
specific, innately specified, hardwired, autonomous, and not
assembled.”
Jerry Fodor, The Modularity of Mind

The modular theory of mind is also compatible with evolutionary psychology, which approaches human psychology with the framework of adaptations and natural selection. So just like our bodies and physiology evolved as a collection of domain-specific adaptations, so too did our emotional and cognitive abilities.

Douglas Kenrick also thinks that cognitive modules go hand in hand with an evolutionary approach to psychology:

“A key assumption of the evolutionary perspective is that the human brain contains not one monolithic ‘rational decision-making device,’ but rather a number of different decision-systems, each operating according to different rules.”
Douglas kenrick, The Evolutionary Economics of Decision Making

And even if those rules might not seem rational on the surface, Kenrick says that they “demonstrate rationality at a deeper evolutionary level”. For him, cognitive modules are “domain-specific decision-rules that, on average, would have resulted in fitness benefits”.

Kenrick’s study showed that people’s decision making changed in predictable ways depending on which cognitive module he triggered. Some of the modules he names in the study are social status, self-protection, mate acquisition, mate retention, friendship, and kin-care.

Messy Modules

It’s important to emphasize that even these cognitive modules are not precisely distinct. Our bodies and minds were not designed by engineers but rather evolved naturally over time to fit our environments.

“Often, admittedly, these domain-specific systems may emerge by utilizing, co-opting, and linking together resources which were antecedently available; and hence they may appear quite inelegant when seen in engineering terms.”
Peter Carruthers, The Innate Mind: structure and content

So the safe way to view the modular theory of mind is as a system of messy modules—a loose collection of overlapping inner selves. Evolution takes advantage of already existing structures so it makes sense that the physical brain—and our psychology—evolved in a messy way like this.

Plus thinking of modules as messy will make it easier to adopt this mental framework as a means to self-improvement. For me, the purpose here is not to be on the cutting edge of science. Rather, it is to ground the subjective activity of introspection into something more solid.

Because introspection and meditation can roam too freely when not framed by science. And having a sense of the mind’s modularity—and the natural selection that drove its evolution—gives us a head start in understanding the subconscious motivations that influence us.

Mindfulness: We are not our modules

Even though contemplative traditions often use pseudoscientific language, it doesn’t mean that they can’t play nicely with science. And I’ve found that the evolutionary lens—and specifically this modular theory of mind—gets along particularly well with meditation.

This is because meditation is all about becoming wiser towards the patterns and contents of consciousness. And while it is possible to change those patterns—to control the thoughts and emotions that arise—for most of us that’s not on the menu. Instead, the goal is to realize that we are not identical to them. We can maintain psychological freedom in their presence.

Emotions and Modules

In his book Why Buddhism is True, Robert Wright devotes a whole chapter to mental modules. He talks about the adaptive modules and how they evolved to improve our Darwinian fitness. He also cites the work of Leda Cosmides and John Tooby to describe how our modules are triggered by emotions and feelings (which themselves are triggered by the environment).

And unfortunately, the takeaway is that we are not the CEO of our minds. Our sense of unification is an illusion, and we do not have the control we think we do.3

But again, we can learn the patterns. We can learn to subjectively feel when certain emotions are activating certain modules. For example when we are feeling jealous in a relationship—triggering what Kenrick calls the “mate-retention module”—we can know ahead of time that our judgment is being biased. We are not seeing clearly and should wait before we act out our thoughts.

And if modules are too dry of a concept, you can think of them more in the psychoanalytic term of subpersonalities. In this sense, getting to know your inner array of personalities allows you to familiarize yourself with them like you would a person—actually the Tibetan word for meditation means “familiarization”. And as you do this, they will have less and less power over you.

“Here there be dragons”

Cartographers in medieval times had a practice of writing “here there be dragons” to designate unknown areas on their maps. This is because in mythology dragons commonly represent the unknown—death, destruction, and chaos. And fitting in with Jung’s collective unconscious, they would even draw illustrations of serpent-like mythological creatures on their maps.

So it doesn’t surprise me that meditation teacher Jack Kornfield also uses the language of dragons to describe some of our inner modules. They are often triggered by fear, fly into our minds suddenly, and can take control of our thoughts. And without mindfulness, we might not even realize that this is happening.

But another common theme in mythology is that if you can name the dragon—what is referred to as something’s “true name”—it loses its power over you. And there is a technique in meditation, called noting or naming, that does just this. The goal is to observe the mind and find appropriate labels for the dragons that arise.

And since we’re not doing science, we can name these dragons whatever we want. As you sit and meditate, you can notice the constant array of thoughts bidding for your attention—“do this, eat that, put that person in their place”, etc—without getting lost in any of them.

“In non-identification we stop taking the experience as me or mine. We see how our identification creates dependence, anxiety, and inauthenticity. In practicing non-identification, we inquire of every state, experience, and story, is this who we really are?”
jack kornfield, Non-Identification

Because according to Jack, the very act of naming something by definition means that we are not identical to it. Strong feelings of jealousy, desire, anxiety, or anger can arise in the mind—sometimes even in the body—and we can watch them from somewhere else. With names, we recognize them quickly, bow to them, and thank them for their opinion. After all, from an evolutionary perspective, they exist to protect us. But with naming and space, we can decide with wisdom how to act.

Sometimes the opinions of these inner modules are valid and require action. For example, if you’re in the forest and fear of a possible predator triggers the self-protection module, it’s probably worth acting on. But these situations are rare in our modern world, and too often the modules are triggered by the type II error of a false positive. They are specialized for specific tasks and have limited views.

This means that most of the time the modules don’t need action—they just need acknowledgment. So get to know your mental modules. Even if you decide to act on them, at least you won’t be ruled by them.

Additional Resources

Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1994). Origins of Domain Specificity: The Evolution of Functional Organization.
“The mind is a system of modules shaped by natural selection” by Peter Carruthers
“Consciousness and the Modularity of Mind” by Harry Haroutioun Haladjian
A collection of articles on mental architecture
Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright
How to Begin Naming by Jack Kornfield

The Value of Beginner’s Mind

By Luke

On August 26, 2020

In Meditation, Mental Frameworks, Self-Improvement

Reading Time: 6 minutes

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few”
Shunryu Suzuki

Aging, like many things in life, is a double-edged sword. No, I do not mean the physical aspects of aging, as frustrating as that can be. Instead, I mean that the psychology of aging—how the brain’s pattern recognition systems evolve—comes with pros and cons.

These are the categories and heuristics that we form and continually update in order to understand reality. We need these, and the positive thing is that we can sharpen them up as we age—we can make them more encompassing, consistent, and reliable.

It is as if we create a conceptual map of reality—a map of categories, personality types, expectations, intuitions about danger, etc.—which we use to offload our thinking and quickly analyze the world.

But there is a downside to this process. As we gain life experience and wisdom, we also lose something else: novelty.

In the presence of novelty, we are open to many possibilities. We have humility and awe at the uniqueness of what’s in front of us, and we don’t assume that it will fit into an already formed category. Novelty captures our attention to be fully in the present moment.

It gives us what the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki calls beginner’s mind.

Beginner’s Mind

Finding freedom is a recurring theme in meditation. This freedom can be expressed in many ways, but I think the most encompassing framing is a freedom from attachment.

It is our clinging to things—to views, desires, states of emotion, etc.—that begins the feedback loops of suffering. We wish for the external world to be a certain way, and we suffer when it is not. Or when we actually get what we want, we quickly realize that we are still clinging to yet more desire.

But as we let go of attachments, we find more freedom and less suffering. We see and accept reality as it is.

And beginner’s mind is such freedom—freedom from the past. It is the quality of seeing something as if for the first time. It means we no longer cling to our knowledge, experiences, opinions, or expectations. We have fresh awe and appreciation at the miracle of what’s in front of us.

“A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.”
Rachel Carson

As we age we learn and adapt. We form heuristics—rules of thumb—in order to more quickly analyze reality. We notice various causes and effects, and we expect the same patterns to continue. We also learn about different personality types and what to expect from them. And perhaps most important to our evolutionary past, we learn what assumptions will keep us out of danger.

This knowledge is not necessarily wrong, but it is also not free. In our clinging to mental models and assumptions, we often overlook the genuine uniqueness of the present moment. The mind wanders because it assumes that the present is probably more of the same old stuff.

But by definition, the present moment is always novel. It of course resembles patterns from the past, but every moment is still a brand new coming together of matter, energy, and consciousness. Beginner’s mind—and the meditation practices that cultivate it—help us to truly connect to this fact. We don’t allow the past to cloud the present. All of our past knowledge could be wrong, so we choose to see things as they are in the present with fresh eyes.

And when we see the present moment as a novelty, we give it our full attention. We cultivate a state of open-mindedness and appreciation toward reality.

Solving Problems

There is also a practical aspect to beginner’s mind. This is to say that even if the meditation/spiritual approach isn’t for you, beginner’s mind is a fantastic tool for solving problems.

We’ve all experienced the feeling of being stuck on a problem. This could be a life decision—do I take that new job or not—or it could be something creative like writing an article. Either way, a difficult problem will often leave us stuck in the weeds. The harder we push on it the less it budges.

So we might just give up for the night and get some rest. When we do this, something mysterious can happen the next day—as we dive back in, the solution often jumps out at us right away. How does this work?

“It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.”
John Steinbeck

The neuroscience of spindle events, bursts of fast brain activity during non-REM sleep, is one explanation for how this works. It also explains why Einstein is said to have taken many short naps throughout the day. Supposedly, he would fall asleep with a spoon in his hand and a metal plate underneath him to avoid deep sleep—as soon as his hand relaxed too much, the spoon hitting the plate would wake him up, hopefully to fresh ideas.

But subjectively speaking, the solution still arrives mysteriously. And often it’s a very simple solution that we just didn’t see before, something that was being blocked by our previous assumptions. While sleeping works for many people, for me ideas come most often while I’m walking outside.

In the spaciousness of walking and loosening my grip on the problem, a novel solution often comes to me. The wandering of the mind brought about a beginner’s mind that didn’t get stuck in the same ways. A lot of our past rules and knowledge are probably useful, but just one wrong assumption could be what keeps you stuck.

“When we are free from views, we are willing to learn. What we know for sure in this great turning universe is actually very limited.”
Jack Kornfield

This type of beginner’s mind is very similar to first-principles thinking, and it’s also why it can be so useful to ask someone else for help. They aren’t clouded and biased from spending hours on the problem, and as such solutions often come very quickly. Our previously published mental framework, The Null Hypothesis, is a similar tool for getting rid of these biases in order to properly solve a problem.

To practice beginner’s mind is to practice seeing a problem like your friend would. View the problem as if for the first time, because maybe you missed something the first time. When you aren’t boxed in, there will be many more possible solutions, and one of them might just be the right one.

Gratitude

Gratitude is another recurring theme in meditation, and it also intersects perfectly with beginner’s mind. This is because beginner’s mind cultivates a fresh and unique outlook on things, instead of taking them for granted.

Whether we are looking at our significant other or out in nature looking at a tree, beginner’s mind reminds us to slow down and see the details. We bring freshness to how we see, and that freshness invokes gratitude for the delicate intricacies of all things.

But this is not the default mode for our brains. The default mode is what is known in psychology as hedonic adaptation. Also known as the hedonic treadmill, it means that our bodies and minds always return to base levels of excitement and happiness. The first encounter with something pleasurable excites us the most, but in each subsequent encounter, the emotional impact on our nervous system is reduced.4

Hedonic adaptation is an especially easy trap to fall into in long-term relationships. In the beginning, you look deeply into a person’s eyes and can’t believe how special the moment is. It’s like time has stopped and you see the entire universe in their eyes. But then life happens—the body adapts, the mind adapts—and you stop seeing those moments with beginner’s mind. You tend to forget how precious it is.

So hedonic adaptation is a kind of glitch in our mind that robs us of our happiness and gratitude. But with a mindfulness practice, by specifically trying to cultivate beginner’s mind, we can get ahead of this glitch.

This is because gratitude is less about external reality and more about our internal framing. And with mindfulness, we can actually have some control over that internal framing. It’s a practice that we can get better at—breathing in the present moment and cultivating gratitude for where we are.

In a sense, beginner’s mind is learning to forget so that you can appreciate. Even if something is around you all of the time, you can always slow down and appreciate how special and temporary it is.

None of this is to say we should have beginner’s mind all of the time. We couldn’t survive if we always saw the world with such childlike innocence—often we should trust our knowledge and instincts.

Beginner’s mind is just a mental framework, a reminder, that encourages us to see the world with fresh eyes—to be present and allow time to slow down. Because sometimes you should be—and deserve to be—in awe and appreciation at the novelty of the present moment, whatever it is.

The Null Hypothesis: Why we should all have fewer opinions

By Luke

On August 1, 2020

In Mental Frameworks, Philosophy, Self-Improvement

Reading Time: 8 minutes

The null hypothesis of having fewer opinions.

“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment”
Rumi

In the age of social media, sharing our opinions with others is easier than ever. And emotionally charged subjects, such as politics, fuel our desire to get those opinions out there. We want to join in and give our take on things—we want to feel relevant.

But opinions are tricky things, and we have to be careful. We don’t always understand how they formed and why we want to share them. And once we do share them, our instinct is to stubbornly defend them, even in the face of contrary evidence. But how sure should we be? How much about the complex world do we really understand?

In this article, I want to convince you of one opinion that I’ve grown to be most confident in over the last year: we should all have fewer opinions. This is a mental framework that I label as the null hypothesis, and it’s been a game-changer for me.

On a personal level, it will relieve the psychological burden of needing to signal—or have—an opinion. On a practical level, you’ll actually be right more of the time, since the few opinions that you allow yourself to have will be more robust. And on the societal level, maybe humility like this will create healthier and more productive conversations.

The Null Hypothesis

The null hypothesis is a concept from inferential statistics, and it’s a way to avoid experimental bias. The null hypothesis is a default assumption stating that there is no effect or relationship between two phenomena—in other words, having no preconceived opinion. If there does turn out to be some causal relationship, then the evidence will indicate that, and you’ll know that your null hypothesis is false.

Approaching epistemology in this way is known as falsifiability, and it’s a concept in the philosophy of science introduced by Karl Popper. The opposite of falsificationism is verificationism, which is a problem because of confirmation bias. If you set out to prove your theory true, you might believe it to be true for the wrong reasons. So the null hypothesis is a safety mechanism that defaults you to having an “empty” hypothesis, that is until the evidence clearly indicates otherwise. 2

In more general terms as a mental framework, the null hypothesis is the space between two (or more) opinions. It’s the quality of saying “I have not yet formed an opinion on that topic”. And perhaps you shouldn’t ever form an opinion on that topic, that is unless you are willing to put in the requisite research.

Even with a falsification approach to research, the strength of your opinion should depend on the depth of that research.

Because part of this mental framework is recognizing—becoming mindful of—the relationship between your knowledge and your opinions. The more robust your knowledge is the stronger your opinions can be. Too often, though, the strength of our opinions is more informed by the emotional charge of the subject. When we vocalize opinions from this place, we are only a few probing questions away from looking foolish.

So the null hypothesis is also a reminder that you should have a high threshold of knowledge and research—again research where you try to prove your preconceived notions to be false—before ever codifying a strong opinion on something.

But people rarely do this. Mindfully watch yourself next time you’re in an argument and you want to prove your point. You begin researching something, something you’re sure will make your opponent look foolish. Is your instinct to verify the position you’ve taken—verificationism and the problem of confirmation bias—or is it to try and falsify your already held opinion?

Especially during political disagreements, I too often catch myself being a verificationist. You might win in the short term, but it doesn’t mean you’re right.

Having the mental framework of the null hypothesis avoids this by keeping us in a space between conclusions. It is remaining agnostic until the data truly lead you to a conclusion. You will have fewer fights because you will vocalize fewer opinions. And the opinions that you do vocalize will be carefully researched, or at least their strength will be properly calibrated.

Bias

“Bias is the brain’s strategy for dealing with too much information”
MOLLY CROCKET ON VERY BAD WIZARDS

I think about bias in a few different ways. One version is the more obvious and conscious bias that we all have. For example, you might have a bias towards or away from certain foods and music genres. You might hate classical music, which would clearly bias you against writing a fair review of a newly released classical music album. These kinds of preference biases are easier to admit, and we usually don’t demand reasons for having them.

From these more explicit biases of preference, we can slide into a more implicit type of bias. These can still be conscious, but we tend to mask their existence—to ourselves and to others. The most obvious example of this is political bias. People mask their political bias by asserting “I am being completely objective”. To the extent that this is even possible, it’s rarely what people are actually being. And such a person must know on some level that they are more critical of one side than of the other.

But there is a more disturbing layer to bias, even more implicit, that should induce humility. This is a completely subconscious bias in which your brain decides what data to promote into your conscious awareness. This type of bias is what Assistant Professor of Psychology at Yale University Molly Crocket has called “the brain’s strategy for dealing with too much information”.

There’s so much data around us at any moment, and if we consciously received it all we would be overwhelmed. The brain decides for us—not surprising since 95% of our brains processing is subconscious—what information we become aware of. This is a kind of signal to noise relationship, and only certain information—useful information—passes the test.

And on top of that, there’s also the problem of interpreting that data. There is an infinite number of ways to interpret information, and the brain largely decides on that interpretation without us. So you should realize that you might literally see a different world than the person you disagree with.

The Laurel-Yanny and the Gold Dress-Blue Dress internet sensations were a perfect example of this kind of subconscious bias, but unfortunately, most people didn’t get the humbling message that we are not in control of our brains.

Hidden Motives: Why we share our opinions.

Speaking of not being in control of our brains, there is a book that I want to point you toward that further develops this concept. In fact, one of the authors of this book, during the Q&A section of a Sam Harris podcast, gave the same advice of having fewer opinions.

The author was Robin Hanson, and the podcast was about his recent book The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life.2

**Click here to listen to our podcast interview with Robin from 2021.**

“In summary, our minds are built to sabotage information in order to come out ahead in social games. When big parts of our minds are unaware of how we try to violate social norms, it’s more difficult for others to detect and prosecute those violations. This also makes it harder for us to calculate optimal behaviors, but overall, the trade-off is worth it. Of all the things we might be self-deceived about, the most important are our own motives.”
The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

What is the elephant in the brain? Similar to the elephant in the room, it is the often unacknowledged and awkward truth about how our brains really work.

We might feel like we are transparent to ourselves, like we are in charge and understand ourselves. Putting the question of free will aside, we feel this way because we tell others—and ourselves—why we do certain things. But if 95 percent of our brain’s activity is subconscious, how can we be sure that we know ourselves?

The relevant take-away from the book is that our brains hide information from us and manipulate the reality we experience. We—that is the conscious/speaking version of ourselves—might feel like the president in charge of our brains, but in reality, we are more like the press secretary. And your job as the press secretary is to give acceptable reasons for why you do things. As Robin Hanson said on the Making Sense Podcast, “You don’t actually know why you do things, but your job is to make up a good excuse”.

You give these excuses to other people in your social circles, but you’re also giving them to yourself.

And we are rarely giving the real or primary reasons for why we do things. We self-deceive because it makes it easier to manipulate others—to send a signal of our prestige or dominance.

And we don’t only hide our motives—we also invent counterfeit reasons. This post hoc rationalization is illustrated in experiments by Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga on split-brain patients, but the same process happens more subtly in a normal whole-brain person. Our ego, our press secretary, evolved not to give the most truthful explanations for our actions, but rather the most plausible and prosocial ones.

The psychology highlighted by this book is honestly disturbing, and I personally interact with it in small doses in order to maintain my grip on reality. For me, the takeaway is to watch myself more closely when I want to vocalize an opinion. What are my real motives: solving a problem or signaling prestige? Telling the truth or signaling group membership?

The Relief of Not Knowing

“When we understand the truth of uncertainty and relax, we become free.”
Jack kornfield

Much like a press secretary always has an answer, our egos always want to say something, even if we don’t have relevant knowledge. It will dodge questions, change subjects, and pretend to know things. The motive, largely hidden to ourselves, is often to signal our intelligence and prestige to our social group.

Evolutionarily this makes sense—we don’t have time to research everything, and it’s safer to go along with groupthink rather than stand alone as an individual.

Another motive might be to reduce anxiety. The world is so complex, mysterious, and unpredictable. We don’t like this insecurity, and pretending to know things helps us to ignore it, to fool ourselves into feeling more secure. But being uncomfortable with uncertainty is a bad reason to have an opinion on something.

Before having a meditation practice, I was doing that all of the time. I had trouble saying “I don’t know” or “I guess I got that wrong”. I still catch myself being too confident or pretending to know, but I now aim at what Jack Kornfield calls “the wisdom of insecurity”. This is accepting the fact that life is chaotic and insecure—we can’t control things and we don’t know enough.

And it turns out that admitting this—not just verbally but really feeling it deep down—is a tremendous relief. It’s a relief because it’s the truth, and truth makes our minds more harmonious.

None of this is to say that we shouldn’t have any opinions. The null hypothesis mental framework is simply a reminder to form opinions in a slow and thoughtful way—to stay uncommitted while you research and to be truly guided by the evidence.

Don’t confuse emotional charge with reasoned evidence. Maintain your curiosity and be open to changing your mind. Learn, as Oscar Wilde said about the value of a university degree, to “play gracefully with ideas”.

You do know things, and you might even be an expert in certain areas. The key is to have self-awareness about the depth of your knowledge and to calibrate the strength of your opinions accordingly.

Have a few strong opinions in a select few areas. Form many weak opinions, but be willing to let go of them easily. And on the rest, enjoy the relief of not needing to have any opinion at all.

What is Consciousness?

By Luke

On July 9, 2020

In Meditation, Mental Frameworks, Philosophy

Reading Time: 11 minutes

“First, as far as consciousness is concerned, there is nothing, and then suddenly, magically, at just the right moment . . . something. However minimal that initial something is, experience apparently ignites in the inanimate world, materializing out of the darkness.”
Annaka Harris, Conscious

How do you know if something is real?

It may seem like a silly question, an academic game for philosophers. But when you contend with the question more rigorously, the intuitive answers quickly evaporate leaving you wondering what is real and important in life.

We know that we do not see the world as it truly is because the fundamental constituents of matter are subatomic particles—quarks and electrons from which our macroscopic world emerges.

But is our view of the world even an accurate estimate of reality? It might be, but there’s no guarantee. Reality could even be an advanced computer simulation. According to Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom, there is in fact a high probability that we are in a simulation.

If that’s the case, then your consciousness—every aspect of your life—emerges from the computer processing of ones and zeros.3 The experience of mourning someone’s death, falling in love, or biting into a delicious piece of fruit would be emerging from the complex computer code of such a simulation. But we can’t yet prove this one way or the other.

The fact is that it’s hard to prove the reality of anything. But there is one thing in this universe that you can know to be real, no matter its true nature or where it exists in space: your consciousness.

“Consciousness is the one thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion.”
Sam harris, The mystery of consciousness

Your consciousness could be code running on some advanced human (or perhaps alien) hard drive. Or it could be, as most modern neuroscientists would assert, some mysterious result of the complex information processing of your neurons. After all, humans have roughly 100 billion neurons that each make thousands of connections—there are up to a trillion synapses in an adult human brain.

But even if reality is a simulation, it wouldn’t affect the reality of your consciousness. This is because, by definition, consciousness is the first-person subjective experience of being you. No matter how consciousness is ultimately grounded in reality, your having an experience is the definition of consciousness. And it is also the basis for caring about anything in this life.

Consciousness

Like so many words today, the word “conscious” has a variety of meanings and can be easily misunderstood. And as we will see later, our intuitions towards it are not to be trusted either. Consciousness is not synonymous with wakefulness, alertness, or the ability to self-reflect. And it does not require complex thought—we can agree that a dog is conscious but probably does not reflect deeply on the nature of its experience.

As a base definition, consciousness is simply experience. This experience, no matter how simple, just needs to exist. This definition, famously given by the philosopher Thomas Nagel is his essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, is the most encompassing and sensical one:

“An organism is conscious if there is something that it is like to be that organism.”
thomas nagel

If we have experience at this moment, then we are conscious—this we can know for sure. There are some theories, such as solipsism, which posit that you could be the only mind that exists. But there are better reasons to assume that other creatures with similar neural arrangements are also conscious.

And following that logic, we also have little reason to suspect that your kitchen table has consciousness. It does not have the same complexity as a brain and therefore probably does not have subjective experience. But in all cases except ourselves, we cannot know for sure.

Yes, consciousness does provide outward signs of its existence. People and animals show emotions while tables do not. And we can scientifically correlate damage to the brain with outward changes in consciousness. But from the outside, this is still not proof that someone or something else has consciousness.2

“The problem is that both conscious and nonconscious states seem to be compatible with any behavior, even those associated with emotion, so a behavior itself doesn’t necessarily signal the presence of consciousness.”
annaka harris, CONSCIOUS

An advanced robot could give every outward sign of consciousness—words, facial expressions, intense emotion—without actually having an inner experience. The complex programming of such a robot could mirror every detail of being a human, but the lights of consciousness could still be off. The philosopher David Chalmers calls this a “philosophical zombie”.3

But you know that you’re not a zombie. Even if everything else in your reality is not what it seems, you still have your subjective experience.

This definition of consciousness may seem vague, and it may seem to be lifting itself up by its own bootstraps. But experience is the most solid reference point for defining consciousness, and our confusion towards it merely reflects how mysterious this topic is. We simply do not know how an experiencing mind emerges out of the wetware of biology. But if you’re having an experience of reading this sentence, then you know it happened at least once.

Intuitions

Similar to many other scientific pursuits, our intuitions largely fail us when studying consciousness. These intuitions—shaped by natural selection— are fast and effective, and we need them to survive. We often experience them as a gut feeling, and they allow us to decide things without a complete understanding. For example, we often assess danger based on information that our brain acquires and processes subconsciously. These intuitions are life-saving, and it would be foolish to abandon them.

But we must also realize their limitations. Natural selection could not have anticipated the modern human philosophizing about the nature of mind. In certain domains, we have to let go of intuitions in order to think more flexibly.

In her book Conscious, Annaka Harris asks us to test our intuitions with the following proposition:

“People are conscious; plants are not conscious.”

It seems safe to say that this is a true statement, right? It certainly feels true. But upon deeper reflection, even this statement gets complicated.

We assume that people are conscious because they have a brain and a central nervous system, and plants do not. But as we said already, this is technically not evidence of consciousness. Still, our intuitions don’t really come from this scientific fact anyways—they come more from observing the behavior of an organism, such as its ability to react and communicate with other things in its environment.

But there are examples that challenge this. Locked-in syndrome is a terrifying condition in which everything except a person’s eyes becomes paralyzed, yet they still have full conscious awareness. Sometimes even the eyes are paralyzed. French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby suffered from this and was able to tell his story through blinking only his left eye.

Imagine if his left eye had also been paralyzed—to the outside observer he would appear to be in a coma, even though he would be having a fully conscious experience on the inside.

There is a similar example, perhaps even more terrifying, known as “anesthesia awareness”. This is a complication with the general anesthesia given before surgery in which a patient fails to lose consciousness. Their body could still be paralyzed while some amount of awareness remains. Imagine being awake and feeling every aspect of surgery without being able to communicate anything.

The point with both of these examples is that consciousness can exist on the inside without any signs of it showing on the outside.

And on the plant side of things, there are behaviors that challenge our intuitions as well. There are examples of plants reacting to their environment, communicating with other plants, and even sharing resources with each other.

Do plants have memories? According to plant geneticist Daniel Chamovitz, plants such as the Venus Fly Trap definitely have a form of memory:

“Plants definitely have several different forms of memory, just like people do. They have short term memory, immune memory and even transgenerational memory! I know this is a hard concept to grasp for some people, but if memory entails forming the memory (encoding information), retaining the memory (storing information), and recalling the memory (retrieving information), then plants definitely remember.”
Daniel Chamovitz, Do plants think?

And the ecologist Suzanne Simard, in studying forest ecology, has shown that trees have complex communication networks. In a 2016 TED talk, she described how two tree species use underground networks of fungi to communicate and share resources.

On top of this, Simard showed that mother trees were able to recognize their own kin. They provided more resources to their kin and curbed their own root growth in order to leave more room for the younger trees.

Does this mean that plants are conscious? It would be a far stretch to say that it does, but it’s less of a crazy idea after learning about their complexity. And it does challenge our intuitions about why we grant consciousness to some things and not to others.

Somewhere along the spectrum of increasing complexity (rocks, bacteria, plants, insects, snakes, mammals, etc.), there has to be a moment when the lights go on—when there is suddenly something that it is like to be that thing.

I don’t know where that moment is, and maybe it’s nowhere close to plants. Or maybe the premise is wrong. But the point of these examples is that we must be wary about trusting our intuitions on this matter so that we give the problem its due diligence.

Mind-Body Problem

To be a proper scientist, one must subscribe to the materialist perspective. This is the perspective of physicalism, meaning the universe is made up of matter which follows the laws of physics. This is the objective perspective of the universe. It’s extremely powerful, and it serves as the foundation for scientific advancement.

But studying consciousness objectively—mapping neurons and brain structures—will always miss something. Even if we learn next to everything about how the brain works, there would still be a gap between those facts and the first-person subjective experience. Seeing the color blue is not just a particular firing of neurons—there is also your experience of seeing the color blue. And you can’t reduce that experience to outside observations. This tension is known as the mind-body problem.

Epistemologically speaking, the mind-body problem highlights an impassable gap between the subjective and the objective. No matter how much we learn about neurons and brain networks, it still doesn’t explain how or why conscious awareness hovers above them.

This was the main takeaway from Nagel’s essay:

“If physicalism is to be defended, the phenomenological features must themselves be given a physical account. But when we examine their subjective character it seems that such a result is impossible. The reason is that every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view.”
Thomas nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”

The scientific method is designed to remove subjective bias. It is about shifting the perspective to be more objective—something is true no matter who is observing it. It assumes that the universe is made up of matter that follows rules, and if we follow the epistemology of science then we can slowly but surely uncover those rules.

So the scientific method can study consciousness, and neuroscience has in fact learned a lot about how the brain works. David Chalmers calls this mapping of the brain the easy problem of consciousness—not because it’s easy, but because its easier. But it still leaves us with the mind-body problem, what he calls the hard problem. Even if we completely map the brain, down to every last neuron, we still have not bridged the gap between objective and subjective.

“Unlike the “easy problems” of explaining animal behavior or understanding which processes in the brain give rise to which functions, the hard problem lies in understanding why some of these physical processes have an experience associated with them at all.”
ANNAKA HARRIS, CONSCIOUS

This explanatory gap is perplexing, and it’s no surprise that most religions have a different view of consciousness. Most of these are dualistic and involve some sense of a soul that is separate from the brain and survives the body. It might not be scientific, but reflecting on the mind-body problem does give one a greater understanding and compassion for the religious perspective.

But it doesn’t have to be one or the other. There are other theories that attempt to do away with this problem by approaching it in completely different ways.

Panpsychism and Other Theories

Plenty of alternative theories for consciousness are wild and unscientific, but some are more rigorous and plausible than they seem. And when you consider some of the wild ideas that are now accepted truths in physics, like quantum mechanics, keeping an open mind is essential.

We wondered earlier about where to draw a line for consciousness—how much complexity is required for consciousness to emerge? And if you can recognize the distinction between strong emergence and weak emergence, then you realize that having to draw such a line creates the hard problem of consciousness—why does one side of the line have experience while the other does not.4

Philosopher Joseph Levine coined the phrase “the explanatory gap” as a way to showcase strong emergence and the hard problem of consciousness:

“The explanatory gap argument doesn’t demonstrate a gap in nature, but a gap in our understanding of nature.”
Joseph Levine, “Materialism and qualia: the explanatory gap”

But some theories, such as panpsychism, do away with having to draw such a line in the first place. Panpsychism is the hypothesis that all matter, even atoms, contain some amount of consciousness.

There are definitely unscientific versions of panpsychism, but in theory, the hypothesis is plausible. Imagine if consciousness were a fundamental force in the universe such as gravity. Science values simplicity, and making consciousness fundamental removes the complexity around how it emerges.

The British philosopher Galen Strawson would assert that panpsychism is actually the most plausible theory if one wants to be a strict physicalist/materialist/naturalist. Because even though science has not figured out the details of panpsychism, epistemologically it solves the explanatory gap, the hard problem.

And panpsychism doesn’t claim that atoms or rocks think like humans—complexity is still a factor. Just like the gravitational force is proportional to mass, the experience of consciousness could be proportional to the complexity of a system. The “lights of consciousness” could become brighter and brighter as complexity increases.

And if you want to go further down the rabbit hole of alternative theories, then you can check out the work of cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman. This TED talk introduces his user interface theory of consciousness—the idea that our sense of reality is merely an evolved interface. In addition, Sam and Annaka Harris did an extensive interview with him in this podcast conversation.

Consciousness Is Everything

For the layperson who just wants to live a good life, why does any of this matter? I personally find the philosophical details surrounding consciousness endlessly fascinating, but probably they are not all crucial.

What is crucial, though, is to understand that consciousness is experience. And the utility of meditation is relevant here. It allows one to sit down and nakedly experience consciousness—to fully experience “experience”.

And it is the experiencing of life—in yourself and others—that serves as the foundation for all of your concerns. It motivates your moral and ethical positions in this life. You could say that a good life mission is to maximize the well-being of consciousness, wherever we find it.