[MD] Kahneman

[118]

Hi Steve,
Thanks, I'll give it a read.  While I think that psychology is the
wrong paradigm for "understanding ourselves", it is interesting to see
where it is taking us into the 21st century.  The idea behind
psychology is: that if we can understand why we think of certain
things, then we can control such thoughts.  I suppose it will lead
towards a behavioral or drug approach to thinking good thoughts.
Perhaps we can genetically engineer somebody who has perfect thoughts.
 It is this concept that only a part of our brains is really us, that
I find somewhat naive.  For, where is the control center of the brain,
and what controls that?

On reading the reviews, I was interested in the following:

"We like to see ourselves as a Promethean species, uniquely endowed
with the gift of reason. But Mr. Kahneman’s simple experiments reveal
a very different mind, stuffed full of habits that, in most
situations, lead us astray.” —Jonah Lehrer, The Wall Street Journal

We tend to differentiate between the subconscious and conscious as
that which we have no control over, and that with which we exert
free-will.  If this is the case, then where does the line for
free-will actually exist?  Are there really thoughts that we can
control, and impulses that we can not?  I view the conscious mind as
simply that which we pay attention to.  This attention portion of the
complete workings of our brains is simply the tip of an iceberg of
thoughts.  Thoughts come to the surface; some we ignore while others
we perseverate on.  Many neurosis are the result of not being able to
free oneself from negative thoughts.  I do not believe we can actively
create thoughts, since there is no place in the brain which has the
potential for being the leader (aka The Seat of the Soul).  This may
change, however, as we do more research on sick and troubled people,
or people that have suffered an accident leaving them with a unique
ablation. I doubt it, for how can thinking analyze thinking?  Can an
artist really understand how he creates art?  Can we really understand
why we understand what we read?

What I have been posting for a while now is the notion that we cannot
control our thoughts, our thoughts happen to us.  This becomes evident
through certain meditative practices, and from what I have read,
Buddha recognized our inability to control thoughts.  This is what
lead him to his full blown enlightenment.  Are thoughts are no
different from our heart beats, or our intestines, the brain is an
organ.  However, we do have free-will (imo).  So where does that
freedom lie?  My position has  been that we can control our attitude
toward our thoughts.  In this way we can focus on those thoughts that
are meaningful to us, and dismiss other thoughts that may no be.  Once
we come across a train of thought that we wish to pursue, additional
thoughts are generated whose exact nature we again cannot control
except to choose from.

The trend seems to be, however, that there is a fundamental difference
between rational thought, and subconscious thought.  The latter is
relegated to some instinctual (or animal) part of ourselves, while the
former is somehow separate from the instinctual.  I do not see how
this can be the case.  I do not see what it is about rational thought
that fundamentally makes it different from other arisings from the
brain.  To believe that we do have control over what thoughts we have
is an expression of the ego.  The ego is found in all animals since it
is necessary for survival.

I don't really want to open up the free-will debate, but it seems from
the reviews that this author believes we have a portion of our
thoughts under control, and others which are out of control.  This may
not be the case with this author at all, so I will have to read the
book to find out.  I will have to read it with some skepticism,
however, for that is what my intuition directs me to do.

Cheers,
Mark


On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 3:12 PM, Steven Peterson
<peterson.steve at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Anyone read the Kahneman book yet? If you haven't, I'd highly
> recommend it. If you have, I'd be interested to hear how you think his
> System One/System Two model relates to Pirsig's dynamic/static model.
>
> Best,
> Steve
>
>
> “Profound . . . As Copernicus removed the Earth from the centre of the
> universe and Darwin knocked humans off their biological perch, Mr.
> Kahneman has shown that we are not the paragons of reason we assume
> ourselves to be.” —The Economist
> http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1
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