Hello, welcome to another week of Office hours. This is the star of the show, Frasier. He says hello. There is his sidekick Milo. Hello Milo [LAUGH] and then there's me. And I will come into view shortly anyway speaking of Frasier and Milo we have a, we want to start with a, with a comment that came from the discussion forum. From Luigi Luise Marcon, who suggested after watching Office hours that perhaps cats display a Buddha nature that is even superior to the Buddha nature of dogs. Now Luigi, I understand that you're kidding, and I thought it was funny, I just want you to know that Frasier and Milo were not amused; they did not find the humor in that. and, you know, in discussing that with them a possibility came up that maybe it's not so much a question of which species has the superior Buddha nature, but which species has the more deeply hidden Buddha nature. I've long acknowledged that Frasier's Buddha nature, very deeply hidden, and Milo's for that matter, isn't exactly always on shimmering display, but we think it's in there somewhere. Even in the case of Frasier. Speaking of Frasier and Milo the you're probably wondering, you know, what kind of week did they have and more specifically what kind of week did their modules have? I would say a good one, I mean first of all as usual, the status modules were on pretty effective display Milo continued to try to unseat Frasier as the alpha and continued to fail. [SOUND]. Interestingly this week, we also saw the appearance of their affiliative modules. Which kind of, you know, come and go. But there was, there was an opportunity for them to really be front and center. When the younger of my two daughters dropped by briefly from college to pick some stuff up, and the dogs had not seen her in in a few weeks, and and so their affiliated modules decided to affiliate with her. >> [SOUND] Oh hi. I know. Let's calm down. Let's calm down. [SOUND] >> Okay, so that is affiliated modules doing their job and I actually want to get back to making a serious point about my dog's modules and relating them to human. The, the, the modular view of the human mind and, and I want to make an actual serious point. But first, I would like to kind of celebrate the fact that after quite a bit of kind of talking about this modular view of the human mind; in this week's lecture, we actually saw some potential application of the model to meditation. And I'm happy to report that in discussion forum and on Facebook some people picked up on this. So Lee Douglas, for example, in the discussion forum, summarized the segment of this lecture where we had Joseph Goldstein kind of describing meditative experience and me trying to related that to the modular view Lee says, basically you think your thoughts come from you, in quotes, so you listen to them. But by rejecting this and seeing them as semi-independent actors in your brain, you can listen to them more objectively and feel okay about allowing or dismissing their value, just as you might allow or dismiss the spoken thoughts coming from your neighbor. Remember, Joseph did that little comparison that, that little kind of thought experiment or exercise of like imagine all your thoughts are really coming from neighbors. Anyway yeah, and, and the key thing here I think is you know, when when Lee says you know, you see your, your, your thought as semi-independent actors in your brain, you might say, wait a second, how can like, you know, what's behind the thoughts? I mean you know, and, and, and that's one thing the module, model I think offers. The ideas, there, there are these, as, as Lee puts it, semi-independent kind of modules, generating thoughts and that would help explain the claim by serious mediators, such as Joseph that upon close inspection, the thoughts appear not to, in fact, becoming kind of from you, but more, more like towards you. Lee goes on to let's see Lee had a kind of a metaphor from what I understand about modules, there isn't a controling who. It decides which module gets to put its thought in the conscious part of your mind; it's more like whichever modules cup fills up first, wins the prize. Yeah, that's a, not a bad metaphor. I guess the more you use a module the less that module's cup needs filling to spill into consciousness. Right so you can actively change the parameters of module activation and therefore, potentially change the outcome. In other words, by, by choosing which kinds of modules carry today, day by day, you choose which modules get stronger and which get weaker. Which kinds of thoughts you are empowering on a regular basis. Of course, this brings up the question, who is this you who's doing the choosing? Didn't we say that there was no self? Well this is a paradox that I am, I think, incapable of resolving. [LAUGH] It's, and it's embedded in a whole lot of Buddhist discourse I, I, you know, but, but first I would like to dwell on the irony, right, that by recognizing, the irony is by recognizing that you're not the one normally in control, you actually gain more control, right? By recognizing, hey, these thoughts are not coming from me, so actually I can pick and choose among them you wind up getting empowered. Again, who are you, who's this you that's being empowered? I don't know. I would emphasize that you know again for me, I think for much of the meditated path, this not self teaching doesn't need to be confronted head on, and I haven't, personally, gotten to the point where I really need to confront it head on. I'm thinking of it in a more instrumental way, where the idea is just that hey, there's no one thing you have to think of as part of yourself. and, and I should add, you know Buddhists affirm the value of talking about you and and me and him and her, you know, that, that the, the, the the idea is that those, it is a conventional or relative truth that the self exists but in an ultimate, in some ultimate sense, it does not exist. If you're wondering like, what would it be like to perceive it, as not existing even in an ultimate sense Maybe Jonathan Miller knows. Jonathan Miller said in the discussion forum you know, people Joseph Goldstein and others had used this movie metaphor. You realize that your thoughts are just like a movie. You know? And you break 'em down. And frame by frame, pixel by pixel, you realize it's not real. Johnathon says, I heard it put much better many years ago when the speaker compared the screen itself to the mind and the images to thoughts cast upon it. Okay, so, he's saying, don't do what Joseph was suggesting that like, put yourself in the viewer, in the, in the shoes of the viewer in the movie. Put yourself in the shoes of the screen. Okay. This is all this is all above my pay grade. These kinds of distinctions. [LAUGH] My, my main point would be and you know, I don't doubt that I could get far along on the, far enough on the path that I would go, yeah, screen is the way to think of it. But my main emphasis now would be like, the question is wait a second, who is directing the movie? Who is directing this part of the movie? And I think by saying, wait a second. That's just a module who was directing that part, you know, I can rewrite the plot. That for me is the current take home. Jamie West asks in the discussion forum says, I'm not sure the modular theory of the mind necessarily means that there is no self. Isn't our self basically the combination of the modules inside us? yes, at different times, different modules might be in charge. But surely those are just different aspects of ourselves. You can certainly think of it that way if you want. again, the whole Buddhist argument about the self applies to a particular definition of self that was being used by early Buddhists, and scholars argue about exactly the finer contours, the finest contours of that, but of what the conception of the self was, but you know, we, we've talked about a couple properties in this. In any event, yeah, suit yourself. But I, I think there, there some people value in doing, you know, it would be perfectly reasonable to say, I want to define the self as the whole thing, all of my modules, the whole show. But there are people, I think, you can make the case that there is value in thinking of it in a different way. And in thinking, hey, that, not all of that stuff is necessarily me. Now, back to my dogs and modules. Here's the kind of serious point,; I touched on this a little bit in the context of chimpanzees, but in a previous Office Hours, but I want to, I want to revisit this a little. Here's the thing about dogs. You know, dogs, when you think about it, are a pretty compelling case for a modular view of the mind because it's like, it does usually seem, they're just like on one channel, and then they change the channel. Right? It's like there is the status thing. There is the affiliate with my daughter thing, you know? [LAUGH] And you take him for a walk, and the thing is, like, decide where to urinate. That's, like, that's the focus. There's, there's, it's, like, there's a module for that. [LAUGH] They may get distracted; they see another dog. And then you see them. They, you gotta figure it out. Is it an enemy, is it a friend, is a dog they can mate with, you know? These are the, the three three basic questions that seem to be on their mind, and then, they, they react appropriately. But then if the dog leaves, back on track, where should I urinate, you know? It very, it seems very simple; it's like just switching the channels for a dog, okay? And what I want to say is that although, of course, we are not descended from dogs, we are descended from a creature roughly as cognitively complex as dogs, right? Somewhere in our evolutionary past, maybe in the early primate phase, who knows, 20, 30 million years ago, I have no idea. There's a creature about as complex as a dog, that's our direct ancestor. Then you have a series of amendments to our brain, getting chosen by natural selection, and then here we are. And if you accept that at this earlier level of complexity, yeah, there's just these kind of a finite number of functionally kind of specialized modes. Then you got to ask yourself, well, why would that basic architecture change? I mean in the course of subsequent evolution, in between the, these creatures and us? Right? I mean, obviously things get a lot more complex and subtle, and there's, there's, there, and, and, you know, there's more and more things you could call modules or networks, whatever. But more and more like little kind of specialized things that kick in here and there, and now they can kick in in various combinations. It gets very complex. It gets very subtle, but still the way natural selection works since that species, I'm positing, is the same way it worked to get to that species, which is brains evolve to solve specific problems, and and, and there's no reason for that to change granted they're, they're are also some general purpose things that have evolved like complex language. But something's gotta determine what are the contents of the language, right? And there the argument would be that depends on which kind of mode you're in. Which, which mode has been triggered, which problem is being confronted. And many of the problems that would have been confronted since the existence of this dog level complexity creature would still be in the domains I mentioned with the dogs, right? It's like you see another member of your species. Friend? Enemy? The possible mate, you know what's the relative status? That's, that's like, that would cont, because we have good reason to believe those things were correlated with getting genes into the next generation, how you handle those questions, how you, how you handle friends, you know, how you, you know, the extent to which undermine your rivals, neutralize your enemies, maximize the value of your friendships and so on. There's every reason to believe that a lot of subsequent machinery that evolved after this dog level creature would have served those ends. Yes, it all gets so complex that you start wondering, well, is module a misleading metaphor? And, and I'm open to the possibility that, that yeah, that a word like network or some network systems whatever But the key think is, the key thing from, from the point of of the, of the, of this course is that, you know, you're, you're in some sense shifting from self to self to self. In other words, different, you're becoming a slightly different person as you confront the different situations, and you're not really, usually consciously choosing to make the shift, okay? and, and it just isn't different situations; it's a lot of other things it can change exactly the, the, the modality, but that is the fact that I think is the thing that's easy to overlook, the fact that there are these again, kind of in some sense semi-autonomous agents. That are that are generating thoughts, maybe in some sense trying to inject them into your consciousness. Although, to dispel one misconception that arose in a discussion forum that doesn't mean we're saying they're conscious. It's not impossible through conscious. It's just that I'm not, I'm not really rendering a view on that. okay. Sorry if I went on a bit long about that but, you know, how I get when I think about dogs in modules. okay. Simona Holstein. Or Holstein says on Facebook, I found another modular mind approach by the psychologist Paul Gilbert in his book The Compassionate Mind. Paul Gilbert describes these. There, there are three modules. One for vitality and action, one for anger and anxiety, one for content and connection. He has a Buddhist approach as well. As a psychologist, he's using meditation to help his patients. This underscores a point, which is that not all modular views of the minds are Darwinian; this is one that I would call not especially Darwinian because, because he seems, I mean I haven't read the book, but he seems not to be thinking in terms of kind of specific functional machinery that's designed to respond to adaptive problems that this, the organisms, you know, face in the course of history. By the same token not all Darwinian views of the mind are modular. I do think pretty much any Darwinian view of the mind does, does does acknowledge a certain amount of functional specificity in the brain. But you can imagine a Darwinian model that is very CEO oriented and isn't as decentralized as a modular view I've been describing. Jennifer Hawkins, says you mentioned that you don't necessarily subscribe to the specific modular mind view that I mentioned in the lecture. Well, which one do you subscribe to? Well again, I don't think there is yet a super well, super well-developed version of this; it's super complex, so it's not like there's one I subscribe to. Jennifer would love some professor endorsed versions of a modular view. Well I, I would say that there, there are two authors or co-authors, whose work I respect very much. One of the, this two person team, one member was in, has, has appeared in my lectures. That's Leda Cosmides. Her husband John Tooby and she have written a lot of stuff. Lately, Leda has not been using the word module because, well, it's a whole issue about. There's a versu of, version of it that's been kind of popularized by other people that, that does not have all the features she wants to see in it. She, she now thinks there's some confusion. And I should say, popularized by some kind of non-Darwinian thinkers. So she, I don't know if she's using the term system or what. But anyway, much of their writing uses the term, module, especially their early writing. They I would not say, you know? They're not professional writers or popularizers. So it's not for the layperson. The most accessible stuff I would call it you know, pretty reliably well bought out. And a certain amount is on the, on the web. So Cosmides, C-O-S-M-I-D-E-S, Tooby, T-O-O-B-Y, throwing in those two words with the word module, or modular and, and you'll probably get led to some stuff. Let's see what else do we have here? Homericgeek asked on Twitter very same question, could you offer a few more suggestions for reading on the evolutionary psychology side please? You know. I would say, Tooby and Cosmides are very good and I'm just not aware of a lot of recent kind of actual popularization but there are a number of, you know, Paul Bloom is an evolutionary psychologist and writes accessibly. And I wouldn't say he's kind of been confronting head on lately, but it informs his view of whatever he's writing about. Steven Pinker's books are from the evolution of psychology point of view; Martin Daly and Margo Wilson's work; Margot is unfortunately deceased, but there's a lot of their work lying around. Again, they are scholars, not not kind of popularizers, but they're very good. Okay, what else? Manjeet Jindal, a name I may be mispronouncing, asks via Twitter natural selection designed as for an environment. Environments, environment changed, will it not do the same thing again? Change us, our minds? Meaning, I think, can natural, can natural selection kind of catch up with our new environment and shape our minds to be suitable for the environment we're living in? because we talked, after all, about ways in which our mind does not seem to be well-suited to a modern environment. It seems to kind of misfire in some respects at least, in a modern environment. And I would say, unfortunately, natural selection seems to take a while to work. And given how fast things are changing now the chances of it kind of catching up are pretty slim, so the main adapted mechanism needs to be what's called cultural evolution, and technically, cultural evolution is defined as basically all non-genetic evolution, I mean, there's two ways humans can transmit information through the generations, one is in the genes, and one is every other way, you know? [COUGH] The accumulation of scientific knowledge, technical knowledge, the evolution of religion, spiritual traditions, philosophy, you know, all non-genetic transfer of information comes under the, the rubric of cultural evolution. and, and that's what you know, this course is about a, a, a, particular kind of culturally-evolved approach to solving problems that the human mind faces. Partly by virtue by being in an environment it wasn't designed for, but not only for that reason, okay, because remember, it isn't just a natural selection didn't design our minds for this environment; natural selection also doesn't care in quotes whether we're happy enduringly to begin with. So, it, it, cares about our interests only in a narrow sense of getting our genes into the next generation. And when you, when you think about it, it's no reason we should share that emphasis. It's up to us whether we want to focus on getting genes into the next generation or, or just being happy, or being happy and helping people who, who don't share our genes, you know, it's all, it's all up to us and you know, my point here is just even if we we're living in a hunter-gather environment, the environment we were kind of designed for by natural selection, more or less. I would say there would still be a place for, for meditation of the kind we've been talking about because it in any event can help liberate you from evolution's agenda, should you decide you don't share it. Dana Saron, S-A-R-O-N Salnic asks via Facebook, how does the modular or model of the mind explain altruism that is neither can care quote nor affiliation, also how does it relate to a drive towards spirituality or faith? [SOUND] It's a lot of a lot of questions there. Milo seems interested in in those. How are you doing, Milo? He's doing okay. The first of all in the last part, I mean, first of all I would say broadly in a way, this is a question for evolutionary psychology. Not just for the specific modular model of the mind we've been talking about. And as for the second part, hi Milo. How does it relate to a drive towards spirituality or faith? if, if, if the question is why is it that humans everywhere seek religious in all cultures, you know, there's a, there, there, there seems to, the religious impulse or spiritual impulse seems to manifest itself. I tackle that in the appendix of my book, The Evolution of God and that, that part of the book is available online for free if you go to evolutionofgod.net, you will see there's excerpts from every chapter. You click on appendix. And it will say here's an excerpt from the appendix. But between you and me, it's not an excerpt from the appendix; it's the whole appendix. It' my whole kind of chapter linked account. [SOUND] Of where the religious impulse comes from. On the question of altruism that is neither can care or affiliation. In other words, as, as an evolutionary psychologist would put it, explained either by kin selection or by reciprocal altruism; in other words, it's, it's not a matter of us just forming friendships, kind of reciprocal, reciprocal altruistic loops. it's, interesting question. I think certain things can be explained in principle by the fact that remember, we, we evolved in a context. A hunter-gatherer society, in which everyone that we saw would have been, would have been somebody we would be seeing again pretty much. So if, for example, you see a some, a homeless person on the street Milo, are you trying to get on camera? I'm sorry, but there's more important things then that, still. So if you know, if, if if we, if you see somebody, a homeless person on the street, you may notice, you know, you have trouble especially if you make eye contact with them Okay, Milo, enough, enough. Nice seeing you, though. It's hard, it's hard to turn them down. And, you know, when you think about it, in, in a hunter-gather environment any, any person if in a, if they were really, really needy it would have made sense in a somewhat cynical calculus of Darwinism to extend them a favor, if they really needed it. That would leave them eternally indebted to you. That's one possible explanation. But the larger point is just that, look, as we reflect, you know, we can choose to redeploy our basic impulses. We can, we can you know? We don't have to follow the strict agenda of natural selection. You can send money to people on the other side of the world who need your help. And it's great that you can. Milo. Oh. sorry. Milo led me to misplace my script as it were. okay, so. Cathy Crochet asked, do modules mature or develop with age? Yeah. I, I would say. I mean, the whole mind does. So if the modular model is accurate, sure. An interesting thing about maturing and developing with age is, makes it hard to tell like, whether mediation's helping you. In the sense that, you know, I've had people say to me, well, since you started meditating, I think you've become like, you know, a nicer or, or gentler person or something and, you know I say, well yeah, but I've also been getting older, you know, and [LAUGH] you know, that kind of happens. You know, people calm down a little bit. So it's hard to control your variables, but I, I don't personally have any doubt that meditation helps because they notice the effects on a day to day basis, the difference between I meditate and a day I don't meditate, I think, is tangible. But anyway, yes, someone else had asked, I wish I took down the name about plasticity. They said they had heard modular views of the mind criticized as not accommodating, you know, change in the mind basically. Plasticity. That, I think, is a, is a bad rap. And it's kind of a bad rap against evolutionary psychology generally. Ev psych can totally in principle account for highly plastic mind, okay. And, and, and, and I want to, you know, dispel one common misconception is, is that evolutionary psychology is the view that when you see two people behaving differently, it must be because they have different genes. No, that's not inherent at all. I mean you know different evolutionary psychologists have different views on the extent to which genetic difference between individuals matter. But certainly evolutionary psychology could, in principle, explain how mechanisms evolve that will translate certain kinds of environments into certain kinds of behavioral tendencies. And, in fact, Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, whom I mentioned earlier one of the great virtues of their work was they showed how for example, seeming tendencies toward violence among inner city youth could be the product of a kind of evolved mechanisms that, that's designed to assess the environment you're in. And generate behavioral tendencies that are appropriate to that environment, so if you're in an environment that, that where, where you know, life expectancy is lower than in other environments and a whole host of other things, as they pointed out, it might make sense for the brain to steer your behavior towards a less risk averse strategy. And so anyways, yes, plasticity is what's being called neuroplasticity now is fully compatible with a Darwinian view of the mind and a modular view of the mind. Speaking of modular views, I want to revisit, the thing I said, you know, when I referred to the Paul Gilbert book, I think that was the name that somebody brought up I want to emphasize, you know, the book could be, you know have a different view from my own modular view of the mind and still be a very valuable and helpful book. You know you know, you know, you could take a non-Darwinian modular view and say, well, there are you know, and it might be productive in, in various senses. Certainly including a kind of, what you might call a therapeutic one. Joseph Everly started a thread in the discussion forum, called, if there is no self, how are we supposed to complete the self evaluation portion of the writing assignment. Joseph was joking. And it was funny; it was good. I think Joseph should team up with Luigi, whom we started this Office Hours with and maybe form like a Buddhist comedy team or something. Tour the retreat, tour the retreat centers, it's a great audience at the retreat center. You know, captive audience, they got nothing to do. They're dying for a reason to laugh um; but speaking of the evaluations, this is the reference to the mid-term evaluation, the mid-term assignment evaluations. Katya, or Kathya Prokina, or some other pronunciation of P-R-O-K-I-N-A, who is in Moscow tweets that, that have, have just finished evaluating, you know, and, and, and, and says, some essays with personal examples are really touching. I think that's really cool that here she is in Moscow reading these, these things that are, that are generated by people presumably all the over world. And and, you know, getting in, you know, having a very personal form of contact with them. And it's a reminder that as much as all of this technology complicates our lives and, and, and gives us reason to pursue meditation, there is tremendous potential in it. And, and I think maybe, maybe meditation can help us realize the potential more fully and, and be less, be less kind of victimized by the downside of technology. That reminded me of something but it just slipped my mind. Okay so, kind of finally, Kyle Findley wait, is this Kyle Findley or Carol Schott? It's one of the two. It's one responding to the other. anyways, picking up on the theme that I touched on, the question had been raised, well, does, does, does meditation possibly dampen your, kind of what you might call moralistic or moral fervor, whatever kind of the passion of your moral judgments, such that your, any impulse toward activism might be dampened. It's an interesting question; I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this. the, but in any event, this person, Kyle or Carol, as the case may be alerts us to a YouTube video, in which Ram Dass, famous, contemplative, asked Thich Nhat Hanh, another famous contemplative, Said, apparently said, many activists whose heart hurts because of the pain of injustice or pain to the environment often say to me that the attempt to be mindful of one's anger and hold it tenderly will dissipate the anger that they use for social action. Would you talk about that issue? I have to admit I have not watched this YouTube video. But I encourage people to, to, and since you don't have the URL, maybe I should promise that in the email where I, that I send out to alert you to this Office Hours, I will, as a p.s include the link to that. I'd love to hear more discussion of that. Okay, I've gone on too long. Fine. I can't believe it, but the final lecture is coming up, this week. It's happened fast. I have to apologize. The final lecture's a little longer than the others. There was a lot of stuff that I wanted to, I tried, tried to fit in to kind of pull things all together. I don't know if I succeeded in pulling things together. I did succeed in generating a longer lecture than usual. But I hope you'll stick with it, let me know what you think. As always, in the discussion forum, on the Facebook page, tweet to me @darwindharma. Thank you, that scratching sound is Milo tearing up the carpet and suggesting there's time for a walk. So that's what we'll going to do. Thanks, and I'll see you next time.
