Monday, February 19, 2007
Cognitive psychology, Zen and Quantum Physics.
For various reasons that would take to long to explain I have been spending a fair bit of effort in trying to reconcile the above three views with our experience of life and the way we make decisions. Essentially, I have been doing this because my worldview is strongly influenced by aspects of these three approaches to understanding.
Cognitive psychology interests me because it recognizes that our existing schemas (or structures, templates or paradigms) alter many of our perceptions and even memories. Zen interests me because it emphasizes the impermanence of all, the intuitive part of decision-making; as well as the futility of depending on objective judgment. Quantum physics interests me partially because it makes us consider that all possibilities not only will happen but also already have happened and they are all valid. Interesting stuff but what does it have to do with day to day life? Hopefully the following may shed some light on the interactions of all these things – at least in my own mind, which in the final analysis is the only thing I can be even partially sure about and even them I can only be partially sure of my sureness.
I think we can all agree that our perceptions of ourselves is often very different from others perceptions of us; likewise two people can see or hear the same thing and yet have totally different views on what just happened. There is much evidence to support this view. Two people describing a car accident seldom agree on just what happened, they may not later agree even on the color of the car. This discrepancy between the perceptions of people is well known and eyewitness accounts are generally viewed with much less confidence than they were in the past. Some interesting experiments were done involving showing a brief film clip of a well-dressed white male assaulting a Rastafarian – later people were asked to describe what happened. Most people who saw the clip thought the Rastafarian had assaulted the white man - so much for eye witnesses, and so much for our ability to assess reality without taking into account the power of our beliefs, former experiences and existing attitudes.
Our perception structure is necessary because we need it to make sense of the world. If we had to figure out what to do with stairs every time we came in contact with them it would be terribly time consuming; so we have a mental structure of stairs that lets us deal with them unconsciously, which is the good part. The not so good part is that we form these structures or schemas unconsciously and often very early in life. In he process of forming these structures other emotions and experiences often gets mixed up in the formation process.
We end up with a structure that unconsciously filters experience to match our beliefs, our prior experience and our emotional state. An example of this is someone may end up with a fear of falling every time they use stairs and sometimes this fear can influence the choices they make for the rest of their lives. Some people associate height with fear or develop other phobias and biases. People can see themselves as easy going when others perceive them as hot headed, or perceive themselves as weak when others see strength, some see the glass as half-full well others see it as half-empty; the alternative choices and viewpoints are as nearly infinite.
So if we accept that our accumulated life experience influences and filters events it is not a large leap to understand that this same accumulated experience and view of ourselves also influences our memories. How often do we discover that others remember an event or experience differently than we do? We edit memories unconsciously to bring them more into line with our perception of our beliefs about the world around us and ourselves. We now enter a sometimes vicious circle of our present experiences being filtered through our memories of our past experience and our memories are being edited and\or re-interpreted based on our present experience. Confused yet? So how do we arrive at the truth – chances are we don’t. We arrive at our truth for the present but that may change based on future experience. A prime example of this is first impressions.
We form impressions of others based on our first encounter with them. Our impressions are not just based on what they do but are filtered by our past experience with other people and situations that are similar. We then interpret future interactions with the person based on our first impressions, which may or may not be right but are certainly incomplete. Sometimes we have an experience with the same person that helps us get to know them better and then our impression of them is changed. With this new impression we alter our original impression and to some extent we also unconsciously edit our memories of that first encounter to both reflect our new impression and to maintain our self-image of being good at judging people’s character from first impressions. The cycle of new impressions, experience, filtering and editing of memories goes on constantly and usually unconsciously.
So then can we ever truly claim to really know or be in a position to judge another?
? Personally, I think not; and yet we must make decisions based on inaccurate and incomplete and often distorted information. We must make decisions in order to act; otherwise we can become paralyzed by fear that we are making the wrong choice or judgment.
Given all of the above where does that leave us. We must interpret experience and we must make some kind of judgments in order to do so. Yet we know that our decisions, actions and judgments may very well be in error because our perceptions may be distorted. We never have and never will have enough absolutely impartial perceptions to make absolute judgments, so we are always making approximations. The trick is to realize that though we have to make a decision or judgment in order to function in the present we should also be aware that our judgment is not infallible and our decisions may well have to change in the future. If this gives us no certainty in life then we have learned one of the most important lessons –we should not be quick to judge others and we should be open both to the possibility that our original judgment may be incorrect and to the possibility that both we and the other person may change. This brings us full circle back to the incompleteness of knowledge, the impermanence of all experience and our own mutability. Both Zen and quantum physics show the same – there maybe an absolute “Truth” but we are not normally equipped to understand it. Hopefully this makes us a little more humble, less judgmental and more open to both our experiences and to others, and if it does that it is a good start.
Cognitive psychology interests me because it recognizes that our existing schemas (or structures, templates or paradigms) alter many of our perceptions and even memories. Zen interests me because it emphasizes the impermanence of all, the intuitive part of decision-making; as well as the futility of depending on objective judgment. Quantum physics interests me partially because it makes us consider that all possibilities not only will happen but also already have happened and they are all valid. Interesting stuff but what does it have to do with day to day life? Hopefully the following may shed some light on the interactions of all these things – at least in my own mind, which in the final analysis is the only thing I can be even partially sure about and even them I can only be partially sure of my sureness.
I think we can all agree that our perceptions of ourselves is often very different from others perceptions of us; likewise two people can see or hear the same thing and yet have totally different views on what just happened. There is much evidence to support this view. Two people describing a car accident seldom agree on just what happened, they may not later agree even on the color of the car. This discrepancy between the perceptions of people is well known and eyewitness accounts are generally viewed with much less confidence than they were in the past. Some interesting experiments were done involving showing a brief film clip of a well-dressed white male assaulting a Rastafarian – later people were asked to describe what happened. Most people who saw the clip thought the Rastafarian had assaulted the white man - so much for eye witnesses, and so much for our ability to assess reality without taking into account the power of our beliefs, former experiences and existing attitudes.
Our perception structure is necessary because we need it to make sense of the world. If we had to figure out what to do with stairs every time we came in contact with them it would be terribly time consuming; so we have a mental structure of stairs that lets us deal with them unconsciously, which is the good part. The not so good part is that we form these structures or schemas unconsciously and often very early in life. In he process of forming these structures other emotions and experiences often gets mixed up in the formation process.
We end up with a structure that unconsciously filters experience to match our beliefs, our prior experience and our emotional state. An example of this is someone may end up with a fear of falling every time they use stairs and sometimes this fear can influence the choices they make for the rest of their lives. Some people associate height with fear or develop other phobias and biases. People can see themselves as easy going when others perceive them as hot headed, or perceive themselves as weak when others see strength, some see the glass as half-full well others see it as half-empty; the alternative choices and viewpoints are as nearly infinite.
So if we accept that our accumulated life experience influences and filters events it is not a large leap to understand that this same accumulated experience and view of ourselves also influences our memories. How often do we discover that others remember an event or experience differently than we do? We edit memories unconsciously to bring them more into line with our perception of our beliefs about the world around us and ourselves. We now enter a sometimes vicious circle of our present experiences being filtered through our memories of our past experience and our memories are being edited and\or re-interpreted based on our present experience. Confused yet? So how do we arrive at the truth – chances are we don’t. We arrive at our truth for the present but that may change based on future experience. A prime example of this is first impressions.
We form impressions of others based on our first encounter with them. Our impressions are not just based on what they do but are filtered by our past experience with other people and situations that are similar. We then interpret future interactions with the person based on our first impressions, which may or may not be right but are certainly incomplete. Sometimes we have an experience with the same person that helps us get to know them better and then our impression of them is changed. With this new impression we alter our original impression and to some extent we also unconsciously edit our memories of that first encounter to both reflect our new impression and to maintain our self-image of being good at judging people’s character from first impressions. The cycle of new impressions, experience, filtering and editing of memories goes on constantly and usually unconsciously.
So then can we ever truly claim to really know or be in a position to judge another?
? Personally, I think not; and yet we must make decisions based on inaccurate and incomplete and often distorted information. We must make decisions in order to act; otherwise we can become paralyzed by fear that we are making the wrong choice or judgment.
Given all of the above where does that leave us. We must interpret experience and we must make some kind of judgments in order to do so. Yet we know that our decisions, actions and judgments may very well be in error because our perceptions may be distorted. We never have and never will have enough absolutely impartial perceptions to make absolute judgments, so we are always making approximations. The trick is to realize that though we have to make a decision or judgment in order to function in the present we should also be aware that our judgment is not infallible and our decisions may well have to change in the future. If this gives us no certainty in life then we have learned one of the most important lessons –we should not be quick to judge others and we should be open both to the possibility that our original judgment may be incorrect and to the possibility that both we and the other person may change. This brings us full circle back to the incompleteness of knowledge, the impermanence of all experience and our own mutability. Both Zen and quantum physics show the same – there maybe an absolute “Truth” but we are not normally equipped to understand it. Hopefully this makes us a little more humble, less judgmental and more open to both our experiences and to others, and if it does that it is a good start.
