Digging from both ends
Science finds it hard to decipher the mysteries of the mind largely because we lack efficient tools. Many people, including many scientists, tend to confuse the mind with the brain, but they are really very different things. The brain is a material network of neurons, synapses and biochemicals. The mind is a flow of subjective experiences, such as pain, pleasure, anger and love. Biologists assume that the brain somehow produces the mind, and that biochemical reactions in billions of neurons somehow produce experiences such as pain and love. However, so far we have absolutely no explanation for how the mind emerges from the brain. How come when billions of neurons are firing electrical signals in a particular pattern, I feel pain, and when the neurons fire in a different pattern, I feel love? We haven’t got a clue. Hence even if the mind indeed emerges from the brain, at least for now studying the mind is a different undertaking than studying the brain.
Brain research is progressing in leaps and bounds thanks to the help of microscopes, brain scanners and powerful computers. But we cannot see the mind through a microscope or a brain scanner. These devices enable us to detect biochemical and electrical activities in the brain, but do not give us any access to the subjective experiences associated with these activities. As of 2018, the only mind I can access directly is my own. If I want to know what other sentient beings are experiencing, I can do so only on the basis of second-hand reports, which naturally suffer from numerous distortions and limitations.
We could no doubt collect many second-hand reports from various people, and use statistics to identify recurring patterns. Such methods have enabled psychologists and brain scientists not only to gain a much better understanding of the mind, but also to improve and even save the lives of millions. However, it is hard to go beyond a certain point using only second-hand reports. In science, when you investigate a particular phenomenon, it is best to observe it directly. Anthropologists, for example, make extensive use of secondary sources, but if you really want to understand Samoan culture, sooner or later you will have to pack your bags and visit Samoa.
Of course visiting isn’t enough. A blog written by a backpacker travelling through Samoa would not be considered a scientific anthropological study, because most backpackers lack the necessary tools and training. Their observations are too random and biased. To become trustworthy anthropologists, we must learn how to observe human cultures in a methodical and objective manner, free from preconceptions and prejudices. That’s what you study at the department of anthropology, and that’s what enabled anthropologists to play such a vital role in bridging gaps between different cultures.
The scientific study of mind seldom follows this anthropological model. Whereas anthropologists often report their visits to distant islands and mysterious countries, scholars of consciousness rarely undertake such personal journeys to the realms of mind. For the only mind I can directly observe is my own, and no matter how difficult it is to observe Samoan culture without bias and prejudice, it is even harder to observe my own mind objectively. After more than a century of hard work, anthropologists today have at their disposal powerful procedures for objective observation. In contrast, whereas mind scholars developed many tools for collecting and analysing second-hand reports, when it comes to observing our own minds we have barely scratched the surface.
In the absence of modern methods for direct mind observation, we might try out some of the tools developed by premodern cultures. Several ancient cultures devoted a lot of attention to the study of mind, and they relied not on collecting second-hand reports, but on training people to observe their own minds systematically. The methods they developed are bunched together under the generic term ‘meditation’. Today this term is often associated with religion and mysticism, but in principle meditation is any method for direct observation of one’s own mind. Many religions indeed made extensive use of various meditation techniques, but this doesn’t mean meditation is necessarily religious. Many religions have also made extensive use of books, yet that doesn’t mean using books is a religious practice.
Over the millennia humans have developed hundreds of meditation techniques, which differ in their principles and effectiveness. I have had personal experience with only one technique – Vipassana – so it is the only one about which I can talk with any authority. Like a number of other meditation techniques, Vipassana is said to have been discovered in ancient India by the Buddha. Over the centuries numerous theories and stories have been ascribed to the Buddha, often without any supporting evidence. But you need not believe any of them in order to meditate. The teacher from whom I have learned Vipassana, Goenka, was a very practical kind of guide. He repeatedly instructed students that when they observe the mind they must put aside all second-hand descriptions, religious dogmas and philosophical conjectures, and focus on their own experience and on whatever reality they actually encounter. Every day numerous students would come to his room to seek guidance and ask questions. At the entrance to the room a sign said: ‘Please avoid theoretical and philosophical discussions, and focus your questions on matters related to your actual practice.’
The actual practice means to observe body sensations and mental reactions to sensations in a methodical, continuous and objective manner, thereby uncovering the basic patterns of the mind. People sometimes turn meditation into a pursuit of special experiences of bliss and ecstasy. Yet in truth, consciousness is the greatest mystery in the universe, and mundane feelings of heat and itching are every bit as mysterious as feelings of rapture or cosmic oneness. Vipassana meditators are cautioned never to embark on a search for special experiences, but to concentrate on understanding the reality of their minds whatever this reality might be.
In recent years scholars of both mind and brain have shown increasing interest in such meditation techniques, but most researchers have so far used this tool only indirectly.2 The typical scientist doesn’t actually practise meditation herself. Rather, she invites experienced meditators to her laboratory, covers their heads with electrodes, asks them to meditate, and observes the resulting brain activities. That can teach us many interesting things about the brain, but if the aim is to understand the mind, we are missing some of the most important insights. It’s like someone who tries to understand the structure of matter by observing a stone through a magnifying glass. You come to this person, hand him a microscope, and say: ‘Try this. You could see much better.’ He takes the microscope, picks up his trusted magnifying glass, and carefully observes through the magnifying glass the matter from which the microscope is made … Meditation is a tool for observing the mind directly. You miss most of its potential if instead of meditating yourself, you monitor electrical activities in the brain of some other meditator.
I am certainly not suggesting abandoning the present tools and practices of brain research. Meditation doesn’t replace them, but it might complement them. It’s a bit like engineers excavating a tunnel through a huge mountain. Why dig from only one side? Better dig simultaneously from both. If the brain and the mind are indeed one and the same, the two tunnels are bound to meet. And if the brain and the mind aren’t the same? Then it is all the more important to dig into the mind, and not just into the brain.
Some universities and laboratories have indeed begun using meditation as a research tool rather than as a mere object for brain studies. Yet this process is still in its infancy, partly because it requires extraordinary investment on the part of the researchers. Serious meditation demands a tremendous amount of discipline. If you try to objectively observe your sensations, the first thing you’ll notice is how wild and impatient the mind is. Even if you focus on observing a relatively distinct sensation such as the breath coming in and out of your nostrils, your mind could usually do it for no more than a few seconds before it loses its focus and starts wandering in thoughts, memories and dreams.
When a microscope goes out of focus, we just need to turn a small handle. If the handle is broken, we can call a technician to repa
ir it. But when the mind loses focus we cannot repair it so easily. It usually takes a lot of training to calm down and concentrate the mind so it can start observing itself methodically and objectively. Perhaps in the future we could pop a pill and achieve instant focus. Yet since meditation aims to explore the mind rather than just focus it, such a shortcut might prove counterproductive. The pill may make us very alert and focused, but at the same time it might also prevent us from exploring the entire spectrum of mind. After all, even today we can easily concentrate the mind by watching a good thriller on TV – but the mind is so focused on the movie that it cannot observe its own dynamics.
Yet even if we cannot rely on such technological gadgets, we shouldn’t give up. We can be inspired by the anthropologists, zoologist and astronauts. Anthropologists and zoologists spend years on faraway islands, exposed to a plethora of ailments and dangers. Astronauts devote many years to difficult training regimes, preparing for their hazardous excursions to outer space. If we are willing to make such efforts in order to understand foreign cultures, unknown species and distant planets, it might be worth working just as hard in order to understand our own minds. And we had better understand our minds before the algorithms make our minds up for us.
Notes
1. Disillusionment
1 See, for example, George W. Bush’s inaugural speech in 2005, where he said: ‘We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.’ ‘Bush Pledges to Spread Democracy’, CNN, 20 January 2005. For Obama, see, for example, Katie Reilly, ‘Read Barack Obama’s Final Speech to the United Nations as President’, Time, 20 September 2016.
2 William Neikirk and David S. Cloud, ‘Clinton: Abuses Put China “On Wrong Side of History”’, Chicago Tribune, 30 October 1997.
3 Eric Bradner, ‘Hillary Clinton’s Email Controversy, Explained’, CNN, 28 October 2016.
4 Chris Graham and Robert Midgley, ‘Mexico Border Wall: What is Donald Trump Planning, How Much Will It Cost and Who Will Pay for It?’, Telegraph, 23 August 2017; Michael Schuman, ‘Is China Stealing Jobs? It May Be Losing Them, Instead’, New York Times, 22 July 2016.
5 For several examples from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see: Evgeny Dobrenko and Eric Naiman (eds.), The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003); W. L. Guttsman, Art for the Workers: Ideology and the Visual Arts in Weimar Germany (New York: Manchester University Press, 1997). For a general discussion see for example: Nicholas John Cull, Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500 to the Present (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2003).
6 For this interpretation see: Ishaan Tharoor, ‘Brexit: A modern-day Peasants’ Revolt?’, Washington Post, 25 June 2016; John Curtice, ‘US election 2016: The Trump–Brexit voter revolt’, BBC, 11 November 2016.
7 The most famous of these remains, of course, Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin, 1992).
8 Karen Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014); Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2018); Anne Garrels, Putin Country: A Journey Into the Real Russia (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2016); Steven Lee Myers, The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2016).
9 Credit Suisse, Global Wealth Report 2015, 53; Filip Novokmet, Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman, ‘From Soviets to Oligarchs: Inequality and Property in Russia 1905–2016’, July 2017, World Wealth and Income Database; Shaun Walker, ‘Unequal Russia’, Guardian, 25 April 2017.
10 Ayelet Shani, ‘The Israelis Who Take Rebuilding the Third Temple Very Seriously’, Haaretz, 10 August 2017; ‘Israeli Minister: We Should Rebuild Jerusalem Temple’, Israel Today, 7 July 2013; Yuri Yanover, ‘Dep. Minister Hotovely: The Solution Is Greater Israel without Gaza’, Jewish Press, 25 August 2013; ‘Israeli Minister: The Bible Says West Bank Is Ours’, Al Jazeera, 24 February 2017.
11 Katie Reilly, ‘Read Barack Obama’s Final Speech to the United Nations as President’, Time, 20 September 2016.
2. Work
1 Gregory R. Woirol, The Technological Unemployment and Structural Unemployment Debates (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 18–20; Amy Sue Bix, Inventing Ourselves out of Jobs? America’s Debate over Technological Unemployment, 1929–1981 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 1–8; Joel Mokyr, Chris Vickers and Nicolas L. Ziebarth, ‘The History of Technological Anxiety and the Future of Economic Growth: Is This Time Different?’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 29:3 (2015), 33–42; Joel Mokyr, The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 255–7; David H. Autor, ‘Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and the Future of Workplace Automation’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 29:3 (2015), 3–30; Melanie Arntz, Terry Gregory and Ulrich Zierahn, ‘The Risk of Automation for Jobs in OECD Countries’, OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 89 (2016); Mariacristina Piva and Marco Vivarelli, ‘Technological Change and Employment: Were Ricardo and Marx Right?’, IZA Institute of Labor Economics, Discussion Paper No. 10471 (2017).
2 See, for example, AI outperforming humans in flight, and especially combat flight simulation: Nicholas Ernest et al., ‘Genetic Fuzzy based Artificial Intelligence for Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle Control in Simulated Air Combat Missions’, Journal of Defense Management 6:1 (2016), 1–7; intelligent tutoring and teaching systems: Kurt VanLehn, ‘The Relative Effectiveness of Human Tutoring, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, and Other Tutoring Systems’, Educational Psychologist 46:4 (2011), 197–221; algorithmic trading: Giuseppe Nuti et al., ‘Algorithmic Trading’, Computer 44:11 (2011), 61–9; financial planning, portfolio management etc.: Arash Bahrammirzaee, ‘A comparative Survey of Artificial Intelligence Applications in Finance: Artificial Neural Networks, Expert System and Hybrid Intelligent Systems’, Neural Computing and Applications 19:8 (2010), 1165–95; analysis of complex data in medical systems and production of diagnosis and treatment: Marjorie Glass Zauderer et al., ‘Piloting IBM Watson Oncology within Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Regional Network’, Journal of Clinical Oncology 32:15 (2014), e17653; creation of original texts in natural language from massive amounts of data: Jean-Sébastien Vayre et al., ‘Communication Mediated through Natural Language Generation in Big Data Environments: The Case of Nomao’, Journal of Computer and Communication 5 (2017), 125–48; facial recognition: Florian Schroff, Dmitry Kalenichenko and James Philbin, ‘FaceNet: A Unified Embedding for Face Recognition and Clustering’, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) (2015), 815–23; and driving: Cristiano Premebida, ‘A Lidar and Vision-based Approach for Pedestrian and Vehicle Detection and Tracking’, 2007 IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (2007).
3 Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011); Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational (New York: Harper, 2009); Brian D. Ripley, Pattern Recognition and Neural Networks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Christopher M. Bishop, Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning (New York: Springer, 2007).
4 Seyed Azimi et al., ‘Vehicular Networks for Collision Avoidance at Intersections’, SAE International Journal of Passenger Cars – Mechanical Systems 4 (2011), 406–16; Swarun Kumar et al., ‘CarSpeak: A Content-Centric Network for Autonomous Driving’, SIGCOM Computer Communication Review 42 (2012), 259–70; Mihail L. Sichitiu and Maria Kihl, ‘Inter-Vehicle Communication Systems: A Survey’, IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials (2008), 10; Mario Gerla, Eun-Kyu Lee and Giovanni Pau, ‘Internet of Vehicles: From Intelligent Grid to Autonomous Cars and Vehicular Clouds’, 2014 IEEE World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT) (Piscataway, NJ: IEEE, 2014), 241–6.
5 David D. Luxton et al., ‘mHealth for Mental Health: Integrating
Smartphone Technology in Behavioural Healthcare’, Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 42:6 (2011), 505–12; Abu Saleh Mohammad Mosa, Illhoi Yoo and Lincoln Sheets, ‘A Systematic Review of Healthcare Application for Smartphones’, BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 12:1 (2012), 67; Karl Frederick Braekkan Payne, Heather Wharrad and Kim Watts, ‘Smartphone and Medical Related App Use among Medical Students and Junior Doctors in the United Kingdom (UK): A Regional Survey’, BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 12:1 (2012), 121; Sandeep Kumar Vashist, E. Marion Schneider and John H. T. Loung, ‘Commercial Smartphone-Based Devices and Smart Applications for Personalised Healthcare Monitoring and Management’, Diagnostics 4:3 (2014), 104–28; Maged N. Kamel Boulos et al., ‘How Smartphones Are Changing the Face of Mobile and Participatory Healthcare: An Overview, with Example from eCAALYX’, BioMedical Engineering Online 10:24 (2011); Paul J. F. White, Blake W. Podaima and Marcia R. Friesen, ‘Algorithms for Smartphone and Tablet Image Analysis for Healthcare Applications’, IEEE Access 2 (2014), 831–40.
6 World Health Organization, Global status report on road safety 2015 (Geneva: WHO, 2016); World Health Organization, ‘Estimates for 2000–2015, Cause-Specific Mortality’, http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/estimates/en/index1.html, accessed 6 September 2017.