BREAKING NEWS: Psychology Comes To Halt As Weary Researchers Say The Mind Cannot Possibly Study Itself

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Psychology Comes To Halt As Weary Researchers Say The Mind Cannot Possibly Study Itself

ISSUE 50•30 • Jul 31, 2014

Psychologists caution that it is a grave folly to believe anything objective can be learned about the human mind given that the object of observation is, by its nature, also the observer.

NEW YORK—The field of psychology was brought to an immediate halt this week as disillusioned and weary practitioners of the discipline reportedly concluded that the mind could never possibly hope to study itself.

Abandoning more than a century of clinical research, theoretical developments, and observational studies, psychologists worldwide announced that their entire professional lives had been utterly worthless, as the human brain could never comprehend its own workings, let alone understand its own understanding.

“We’ve spent years trying to discern how the mind functions, but today I am forced to admit that this so-called research was nothing more than a fool’s errand—and that we people of learning were the greatest fools of all,” said American Psychological Association president Nadine Kaslow at a press conference Thursday, flanked by leading figures from all major psychology subfields. “Can the eye watch itself? Can a book read its own pages? No. It’s now clear to us that despite all the painstakingly conducted studies and all the data we have meticulously gathered since the late 19th century, we have, in essence, been nothing more than the snake that devours its own tail.”

“All that we thought we understood was merely a mirage crafted by the very unfathomable minds we once so stubbornly insisted we could know,” added Kaslow, before declaring the APA, with its 134,000 members and 54 academic divisions, forever disbanded.

In the wake of the development, sources confirmed that thousands of researchers at top academic institutions had resigned from their posts effective immediately and had been seen packing decades’ worth of academic journals—as well as seminal works such as Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation Of Dreams, Jean Piaget’s The Psychology Of Intelligence, and Alfred Adler’s Understanding Human Nature—into boxes that will be placed in storage indefinitely or disposed of at nearby landfills.

According to reports from one prominent university, visitors to the psychology department found the chair’s office locked, but with a note on the door that simply read, “It was all an illusion.”

Over the past few days, researchers across the psychology spectrum have reportedly discontinued their experiments and returned their funding to its original sources, stating that further investigations had been rendered irrelevant by the completely unreliable and fatally subjective nature of the human mind.

“If only we could step outside these imperfect intellects for but one moment and observe our mental functions as they truly are,” said clinical psychologist Deborah Yamada, who explained that the discipline was inherently and fatally corrupted by the inescapable reality that the examiner and the examined are one and the same. “And yet, when we honestly appraise the human condition, what can the mind truly know that is not a mere waking dream?”

“And even that dream, can it genuinely be said to exist? For is not the moment I grasp the limits of my consciousness the very moment it becomes unknowable?” Yamada continued. “More to the point: What is this ‘I’ that supposedly speaks in the first place? And why do I—whatever that may be—so childishly cling to it?”

Reached for comment, many from the now-dissolved psychology community told reporters that they hoped to redirect their efforts toward other sciences such as physics, chemistry, and geology, fields they hoped would be untainted by the “inescapable enigma” of consciousness.

“If I can no longer study myself, then so be it: I will pursue that which is concrete and measurable,” said Harvard University experimental psychologist Steven Pinker, holding up a quartz crystal before his eyes. “Look at it: Irrefutable. Solid. So unlike the elusive mind.”

“Only this I can truly know,” Pinker added. “That is, if I can know anything at all.”

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation - Jesus Lived Contemplation, More Than Formally Teaching It

Image: The Incredulity of Saint Thomas (detail), c. 1601-1602, by Caravaggio

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

Seven Themes of an Alternative Orthodoxy
Seventh Theme: Reality is paradoxical and complementary. Non-dual thinking is the highest level of consciousness. Divine union, not private perfection, is the goal of all religion (Goal).

Jesus Lived Contemplation, More Than Formally Teaching It

Meditation 47 of 52

The non-dual paradox and mystery was for Christians a living person, an icon we could gaze upon and fall in love with. Jesus became “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2), “the Mediator,” “very God and very human” at the same time, who consistently said, “Follow me.” He is the living paradox, calling us to imitate him, as we realize that “[he] and the Father are one” (John 10:30). In him, the great gaps are all overcome; all cosmic opposites are reconciled in him, as the author of Colossians (1:15-20) so poetically says in an early Christian hymn.

The dualistic mind gives us sanity and safety, and that is good enough. But to address our religious and social problems in any creative or finally helpful way, we also need something more, something bigger, and something much better. We need “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16). Jesus in his life and ministry modeled and exemplified the non-dual or contemplative mind, more than academically teaching it. The very fact that the disciples had to ask him for a prayer like the disciples of the Baptist had (Luke 11:1), probably reveals that spoken or recited prayer was not his practice. Why else would he go apart and alone for such long periods, except that his prayer was the prayer of quiet more than synagogue or temple services?

Adapted from The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, pp. 154, 133

The Daily Meditations for 2013 are now available
in Fr. Richard’s new book Yes, And . . .

ALVA NOË - Where Did We Go Wrong?

From NPR's 13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog, Alva Noë argues that "we really don't understand the connection between neural activity and experience any way." Further, we have no clear way to understand the mind's of others, yet we know others have minds (this is known as theory of mind) and we can, with practice, intuit the minds of others through empathy in its various forms.

Nice article, adapted from his most popular book.

Where Did We Go Wrong?

by ALVA NOË
June 14, 2013

This text is adapted from Alva's book Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness (2009) - read a review Scientific American Mind.

Who, or what, is conscious? How can we decide? Where in nature do we find consciousness? This can seem like the hardest problem in this whole field: the question of the consciousness of others. I am aware. So are you. We think, we feel, the world shows up for us. But what about an ant, or a snail, or a paramecium? What about a well-engineered robot? Could it be conscious? Is there a way of telling, for sure?

It's looking at you. But is it conscious? How do we know? 

iStockphoto.com

The start of almost all reflection on this problem is the idea that our knowledge of how others think and feel, indeed, our knowledge that they think and feel and are not mere automata, is based on what we can see and hear and measure. We observe behavior, or, as in the case of patients with persistent vegetative state or locked-in syndrome, we measure neural activity. It can seem, then, that the closest we can come to knowing other minds, in a theoretically respectable way, is having some account according to which behavior and neural activity provide reliable criteria of a person's psychological state.

But this is really to concede that we don't have knowledge of other minds, at least not in a respectable way. For observations of behavior (what people say and do) and measurements of neural activity, don't yield knowledge of other minds. Surely this is an important lesson from persistent vegetative states and locked-in syndrome. Mere behavior is at best an unreliable guide to how things are for a person. And moreover, we really don't understand the connection between neural activity and experience any way.

Would the results of a brain scan ever convince us that our daughter was no longer a living person, especially when she continues to appear to respond to us, to our words, sounds, touch? If what people say and do, and measurements of what their brain is doing, are the best we have to go on, then it would seem that our commitment to the minds of others is epistemically ungrounded, a mere act of faith.

There is another piece of the puzzle about our knowledge of other minds. It is this: No sane person can take seriously the suggestion that our knowledge of other minds is merely hypothetical. However weak our evidence that others have minds may be, it is plainly outrageous to suggest that we might, for this reason, give up our commitment to the minds of others. That my friends and children and parents are thinking, feeling beings, that a world shows up for them, that they are not mere automata, is something that only insanity could ever allow one to question.

So we face a paradox: Although we lack sufficient reason to believe in the minds of others, it would be plainly unreasonable for us to give up this commitment.

Paradox is a dead giveaway that we've made a mistake in our thinking somewhere along the line. There must be something amiss in the way we have framed the question at the outset.

Our challenge: Where did we go wrong?


~ You can keep up with more of what Alva Noë is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe

All Living Things Are Part of a System

This short excerpt is from an article by Louis W. Sander, a psychoanalyst, former Professor of Psychiatry (Boston University School of Medicine), and currently is Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus (University of Colorado School of Medicine). The article is Thinking Differently: Principles of Process in Living Systems and the Specificity of Being Known [Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 12(1):11–42, 2002].

His writings have been collected in Living Systems, Evolving Consciousness, and the Emerging Person: A Selection of Papers from the Life Work of Louis Sander (Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series).

I really like his perspective in this section - it has become increasingly impossible not to take a systems approach in understanding how individuals (from amoebas to human beings) interact and and participate in the "ever-ongoing exchange with its surround." He seems to be offering here another take on complex adaptive systems, from the perspective of psychoanalysis.

Life Process and Paradox

Immediately we begin to think about life and the mystery of life process, we begin to confront paradox, actually a list of paradoxes. For example, we cannot think of any organism, down to the smallest microbe, that lives without having to think of an environment within which it must be in an ever-ongoing interaction. Thus, if we begin with life, we begin not with the living organism itself, but with a “system”—the organism and its environment. But, if we begin with a system—the organism always within an ever-ongoing exchange with its surround—we are thinking of process, a continuing process with many levels of complexity occurring together. A process with many levels of complexity occurring together immediately becomes paradoxical since life process requires both ongoing continuity and ongoing change. What appears to have the stability of the material structure of the body is found to be, itself, within a flow of change. The molecules that make up the body today are not the same molecules that constructed it a month ago. This flow of change, paradoxically, must maintain the organized wholeness of the organism, while its components move through disorganization, removal, and replacement, all the while maintaining the vital coherence of the organism, essential for the continuity of its life. How can all this be done? How can continuity, discontinuity, and wholeness go on together? What we have been accustomed to thinking of as having the permanence of “structure” we now seek to understand as an ongoing process, a process “organizing complexity.” Later we will come to a way of thinking about this by taking a glimpse at chaos (or complexity) theory, but first let us return to paradox—that, by thinking of life as process, we must think of the organism actively and continuously engaged with its ecology at a complex hierarchy of levels—that is, we must think of the functioning of a system, not of life as the property of the organism alone.

Let us start with the meaning Webster gives to the word system: an assemblage of objects united by some form of regular interaction or interdependence or “a group of diverse units so combined as to form an integral whole.” For life to continue over time, the combining of diverse units to form an “integral whole” also must be continuous over time. If a coherently organized wholeness stops, life begins to fail; if process stops, life stops. We know that in living systems life does stop, but we know also that the new keeps appearing. Thus we must think of process as a flow of input and output in the system through an ever-moving, overarching, organizing process that, through ongoing interaction between organism and surround, is constantly achieving continuity in the face of discontinuity—rather than thinking of the continuity of life as having a kind of given permanence. It is process at all levels of complexity, from the molecular to our ecology within our solar system, that is required to keep the almost unimaginable diversity of parts combining to achieve the “integral whole” that the living system represents.[1]

NOTE:
1. Beebe and Lachmann (1996) have been on a similar search for principles of process in living systems at the human level, coming up with their “three principles of salience”: Regulation, Disruption and Repair, and Heightened Affective Moments. The experience of “heightened affective moments” provides the essential positive affects in our experiencing that accompany being “together-with” another. At the psychological level, then, events that generate the experiencing of positive affects become the source of the essential motivating impetus that pushes us to restore connection when it has become disrupted. Without something of this positive dimension as part of our framework of expectancy, we become vulnerable to a lapse into the dis-organization of depression or illness.

RSA Animate - Choice w/ Professor Renata Salecl

A new RSA Animate! This one is about the anxiety and paralysis that we can experience with choice, especially when there are too many choices. Back in 2005, psychologist Barry Schwartz published a book on this same topic, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, for those who might want a more in-depth examination of this topic.


At the bottom, I am including the video of her entire talk on the Paradox of Choice.




RSA Animate - Choice w/ Professor Renata Salecl

In this new RSAnimate, Professor Renata Salecl explores the paralysing anxiety and dissatisfaction surrounding limitless choice. Does the freedom to be the architects of our own lives actually hinder rather than help us? Does our preoccupation with choosing and consuming actually obstruct social change?

Download video (MP4)

Taken from the RSA's free public events programme www.thersa.org/events

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The Paradox of Choice

Fusing sociology, psychoanalysis and philosophy, Professor Renata Salecl shows that individual choice is rarely based on a simple rational decision with a predictable outcome.