The Quest for the Inner Human

“I wanted to study psychology because I want to know what’s going on deep inside us―what it is that causes us to turn out the way we do? Why is it that one person turns out to be a Nobel-Prize-winning surgeon, and another becomes a drunk, or a child molester? Why does one child in a particular family grow up healthy and well-adjusted, while another child in the same family turns murderously psychotic, and has to be criminally institutionalized? … that’s why nearly all of this ‘cognitive research’ they make us learn about in class just leaves me yawning―I mean, who really cares how many milliseconds it takes the eye to perceive a flashing light at different ages, or which portion of the brain it is that controls us raising our eyebrows?” 

“[O]ne critical fallacy that I see in Skinner is that, since he rejects the notion of human freedom and autonomy, this presumably applies to himself, as well; but he also expects us to believe that he is somehow capable of dreaming up a system that will bring about a utopian society… But if Skinner himself is coming from within the current system―and, therefore, his opinions are simply the product of the particular ‘contingencies of reinforcement’ to which he was subjected―why should we accept those opinions as being valid?... You have to believe that people are capable of thinking and reasoning, and coming up with independent opinions, to make a perspective like Skinner’s worth accepting. If all he’s doing… is to just repeat back whatever was ‘conditioned’ into him by his environment, then his ideas lose all their potential power to convince!” 

“Some people trace that notion [that we only use 10% of our brains] to the great American psychologist and philosopher William James, but all that James said was that he doubted that the average person achieves more than 10% of their fullest intellectual potential―which is probably true, in a general sense. … lots of hucksters perpetuate this myth, to try and sell you their ‘Subliminal Audio Learning Program’ or ‘Mind Expansion Video Course’ under false pretenses… believe me, everything in our brain does something! In fact, things such as memories and stored emotions are apparently retained in multiple, cross-linked locations, connected by incredibly complex neural networks. The notion that 90% of our brain is unused was only possible to maintain back in the days when we didn’t understand most of what the brain is doing, and which parts were doing what. But now that we are beginning to grasp what is actually going on in the brain, the idea that 90% of this awe-inspiringly complicated structure inside our heads is essentially wasted is just… well, ludicrous!”

“Most people have wildly inaccurate ideas about hypnosis because TV and movies used to present these ridiculous stories about people supposedly being hypnotized, or being given ‘Post-Hypnotic Suggestions,’ that made it seem like a hypnotist could make a person do just about anything via hypnosis… Look at it this way: think of all the people whose job performance depends heavily on their level of confidence: athletes, politicians, salesmen; even people just going on job interviews, or taking their SAT test. If they could overcome their fears and feel more confident by just being hypnotized, don’t you think they would all be doing that, and that their performances would be significantly better than unhypnotized people?... The myths about hypnotism are similar to the myths about so-called ‘subliminal messages,’ whereby a hidden message that’s flashed on a television or movie screen can supposedly make you go out and buy somebody’s product. …But again: If this subliminal technique really worked, don’t you think all kinds of people would be regularly using it?” 

“That kind of ‘Evolutionary Psychology’ depends on an extreme form of biological determinism that I just can’t accept: namely, that essentially everything about us is determined by our genes―the notion that if a given creature behaves in an altruistic manner, for example, this behavior was somehow ‘encoded’ in the creature’s genes. The fact is, we don’t have any scientific evidence whatsoever that our behavior is thereby determined by our genes, much less than it was ‘selected’ in that particular evolutionary sense; and still less, that consciousness arose because it was thus ‘selected.’ I mean, who even knows that there is a genetic basis for such characteristics, which can be passed on to a descendant? Since we know that acquired characteristics are not heritable… wouldn’t it be the same for much of our own behavior? In other words, although we might develop certain behaviors over the course of our lives―we weren’t therefore born with them, and those acquired behaviors can’t be passed on to our descendants through our genes!” 

“I would probably have replied, ‘No, I can’t define consciousness: but that’s because consciousness isn’t just a concept―consciousness is an experience! … Ultimately, all ‘basic’ experiences―smell, taste, vision, hearing, touch―are indefinable: if you didn’t know what salt, or chocolate, or peanut butter tasted like from your own experience, you could never adequately describe it to anyone. And in fact, you can only use experiential terms to communicate to someone who’s had a similar experience; can you imagine trying to explain the taste of chocolate, to someone who’s never tasted candy of any kind? That’s why when you’re at a restaurant, and someone asks you what escargot, or squid, or abalone tastes like, you ultimately have to just tell them, ‘Try some, and see.’” 

He exhaled slowly, and then summarized, “To me, it’s clear that we will never be able to sit down with an ape―like we can with a member of the opposite sex; or a Buddhist; or a homosexual; or a criminal; or even a schizophrenic―and ask them, ‘What is it like to be you?’, and receive an intelligible answer; the ape simply isn’t intellectually capable of understanding such a question, any more than a two- or three-year old child can… we as humans are amazingly different from other animals: We build cathedrals, compose symphonies, and write books; we create sculptures, recite poetry, and invent computers; we play football, attend fashion shows, and go on fad diets; we study other animals, create zoos, and keep some animals as pets; we build schools, write Constitutions, and establish a judicial system; we form political parties, condemn our ideological enemies in ‘show trials,’ and burn people at the stake for not believing in the Trinity; we document, record, and sometimes fabricate our own history; we study, speculate, and fantasize about things like space exploration, time travel, and alternate universes; and above all else, we wonder about the meaning of life, and may choose to dull our own consciousness with drugs, or even to take our own lives… when the pressures and responsibility of our own self-awareness become too much for us to take!” 

“[W]e know that our conscious awareness reflects only a very small portion of what’s actually going on in our brains, and that there is an absolutely amazing amount of extremely complex behavior that is probably ‘encoded’ or ‘hardwired’ into our brains and nervous systems...