Or maybe you're sleeping now?

How do we develop mental autonomy, given how weakly we are able to control the walks of our mind?

Imagine that you are standing on the bow of a yacht, and watch a flock of dolphins jump on the starboard and port side. When traveling long distances, jumping dolphins save energy, because friction in the air is less than in water. In addition, this method seems more efficient in order to move faster and breathe at the same time. Usually, animals alternate long jumps along a ballistic trajectory and scuba diving close to the surface, overcoming a distance of about two times more than the length of the jump under water - a beautiful, high-speed, piercing water surface.

This acrobatic cetacean is a fruitful metaphor for the process of our thinking. What most of us call “conscious thinking” is more like dolphins jumping in our consciousness, briefly emerging from the ocean of our unconscious, and then again plunging into it. This “dolphin model of reflection” helps us understand the limitations of our self-awareness. For example, the time intervals during which these jumps into consciousness (as well as the subsequent “underwater” processing) take place vary greatly. And just as dolphins penetrate the surface of the water, thoughts often cross the border between the conscious and the unconscious in both directions. Sometimes individual dolphins are so close to the surface that they can be half outside and half in the water; You can learn to see them just before the jump and define subtle, semi-conscious feelings, before they turn into real thoughts and feelings. There can even be more than one dolphin: most likely, there is a race between our thoughts, a constant internal competition for concentration of attention and for what eventually gets control over our behavior.

The bottom line is that the contents of the mind, available for our self-analysis, are nothing more than instant flashes of automatic cognitive processing, most of the time working under the waves of our self-awareness. Hence the strange question arises: who are the “we” standing on the tank and looking behind these dolphins / thoughts jumping past? Mind philosophers often fall into the trap, suggesting that rational thoughts that have certain goals are a model example of conscious thinking. But if we are only partially aware of what is happening in our own minds, then we cannot fully control our thoughts, let alone evoke them? Is it possible to separate the mind work that we can direct and select from the more general category of mental events that just happen to us? In what sense are we really a thinking person who is able to act freely - unlike the one who struggles with forces beyond his control?
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One of the most interesting areas of research in neuroscience and experimental psychology is mind-wandering — the study of spontaneous , non-task-related thoughts. Its results radically influence politics, education, and morality. If we study empirical discoveries, we will come to an unexpected result that has enormous philosophical significance: cognitive mind control is an exception to the rules, and its absence is the rule. Most of the time, we like to describe some basic “I” as the initiator or the cause of our actions, but this is just a common myth . In fact, we only recall something like this about a third of our conscious life. We do not know when and how children learn to do this for the first time, and it is likely that many of us gradually lose this opportunity towards the end of life. From the perspective of our inner life, the science of the wandering mind says that we rarely represent an autonomous person .

The study of the wandering of the mind speaks of the need to get rid of naive, black-and-white oppositions such as “free will versus determinism”, “consciousness versus unconscious”, and what philosophers call “personal and subpersonal” processes (roughly speaking, consciousness assessment, exploring considerations and the beliefs of the person as a whole, as opposed to purely biological or physiological functions). As the story with the dolphins suggests, people do not represent an ego capable of full self-determination. Nor are we primitive automatic robots. Instead, our inner conscious life seems to be connected with the management of spontaneously emerging mental behavior. Most of what happens in our mind happens automatically — like a heartbeat or an autoimmune reaction, but it can be directed, more or less.

The question turns into the following: how do different thoughts and actions come to the surface, and thanks to what mechanism do we direct them and make our own? We need to probe how our body transforms various subpersonal events into thoughts or states that seem to belong to “us” as a whole, and how we learn to control them more effectively and rationally. This opportunity creates what I call “ mental autonomy, ” and I believe that the government and society neglects its duty to help citizens cultivate it.

Mind wanders far more often than most of us think — a few hundred times a day, and about 50% of our waking hours. We pay dearly for these mental wanderings. Studies have shown that spontaneously wandering consciousness has a negative effect on text recognition and school success, as well as on learning, concentration, operational memory, mathematical abilities, and the ability to drive safely. Dreaminess can also make us miserable . A person who loses touch with the present, constantly flees to the future or the past, usually feels worse than a person who is able to maintain concentration on what is happening in the current moment. There are also different types of insomnia, arousal, mild immunity, or disease (feverish delusions or depressive thoughts) in which we are in a helpless twilight state, subject to an invasion of constantly repeating thoughts that we cannot stop.

Not all types of mental absences resemble each other. There is preliminary evidence that spontaneous thoughts play an important part in recovery from negative experiences, as in autobiographical planning, creative problem solving, targeted thinking, and perhaps even in deeper forms of introspection. In fact, the wandering of the mind can often be considered a process of emotional self-regulation. I suggested the idea that it includes semi-automatic juggling or switching between horizons of predictions about what will happen to us next. Wandering consciousness is like a monkey jumping from branch to branch in an inner emotional landscape. She will run away from discomfort and feelings, and try to reach a state in which she feels better. If the current moment is unattractive or boring, then, of course, it will be more pleasant to plan your next vacation or get carried away with a romantic fantasy.

We obviously need to outline the concept of wandering mind more accurately. Let's take a look at what is happening at this time from a neurological point of view. Many empirical studies show that the parts of our brain that are responsible for wandering mostly overlap with the so-called passive brain network (SBP). This is a large network in our brain , which is usually activated during rest, when our attention is directed inward. SPR is activated during dreams, sudden memories, reflections about yourself and the future. However, as soon as we need to perform a specific task, this part of our brain turns off, and we immediately concentrate on solving the current problem.

I believe that the network of wandering mind and JSD in essence serve to support and stability of our self-perception. As an automatic service program, they constantly create new stories, rush here and there between different time horizons, and each mini-story adds the illusion that over time we remain one and the same person. Like a night's sleep , mind wandering seems to be a process by which our brain and body consolidate long-term memory and stabilize certain parts of what I call the “ model of myself ”.

At this point, I need to admit that I do not believe in such an entity as "my self." At best, we have an internal image or an idea of ​​ourselves as a whole, created from a variety of functional modules and layers. At a basic level, this model of self is based on the internal model of the body, including emotional states, and is fixed on sensations within the body, such as feelings in the stomach, heartbeat, breathing, hunger or thirst. At another, higher level, the model of oneself reflects the relationship of a person with other people, ethical and cultural norms, self-esteem. But in order to create a strong link between the social and biological levels, the model itself maintains the illusion of a timeless personality - the belief that we are a whole and persisting personality based on what our brain tells us about our past, present and future.

I think that the impression of the presence of a timeless personality has become one of the central factors in the emergence of large human societies, based on the understanding that I will be rewarded or punished in the future. Only as long as we continue to believe in our ongoing personality, it makes sense for us to honestly deal with other people, since the consequences of our actions will eventually concern us.

But keep in mind that all this modeling is just a handy trick that our bodies use to increase their chances of survival. We should not forget that the area of ​​perception (the way we subjectively perceive ourselves) is only a small part of the neurobiological area (the reality of the existence of such creatures like us). We do not have a little man in our head - just a set of dynamic self-organizing processes working behind the scenes of consciousness. However, it seems that these processes often work through the creation of self-fulfilling prophecies ; in other words, we have a personality, because we have convinced ourselves of its existence. In the course of evolution, people turned into something like actors using the Stanislavsky system, who need to imagine and believe that they are a certain character in order to play convincingly on stage. But just as in reality there is no character of the play, there is no “I”, and probably no immortal soul.

Instead, one of the main functions of self-modeling is to allow the biological organism to predict and control the sensory sensations of our actions. It creates a sense of control. When we move our hand to take a glass or throw a ball, we need to predict the sensations from these actions before they happen in order to achieve success. To implement such a prediction and minimize unpleasant surprises that can kill or harm us, it is necessary to develop a good explanation of the reason for what we feel. But since the real reason — unconscious, subpersonal processes, such as the activation of synapses — cannot be imagined within the framework of the working space of our consciousness, the brain convinces itself of something else: there must be some kind of “me” acting so that all these thoughts and actions! A conscious sense of will and freedom of action is simple and elegant conclusions from the best explanation. So when I wrap my fingers around a glass of wine or feel the rough surface of a tennis ball in my hand, I assume that I am some kind of person capable of spawning, controlling and owning all these events.

The sense of personality includes three main components: the inner subjective feeling that you are the initiator or cause of the thoughts and body movements that you have (what is called the “primary generation”); the constant impression of having control or conducting an action for a certain period of time; a sense of ownership, a firm conviction that these thoughts and actions of the body belong to you. Conversely, a person suffering from schizophrenia may not have all of these characteristics, since he is unable to properly integrate the representations of his thoughts or actions into his own model. Some patients report that other people's ideas are being introduced into their heads, or that they feel like mechanical dolls or robots, and that the movements of their bodies are controlled by alien force.

However, even if you feel yourself as a protagonist, this does not mean that you are such. There is no primary generation in the physical world. Science explains why you think and behave that way, without some kind of acting "me." But just as an actor cannot focus on the fact of his game, our biological organism usually cannot feel that its model itself is a model. We usually seek to identify ourselves with its content, just as an actor identifies himself with a character. The more we are able to predict our behavior, the more I want to say: it was me, and I did it. We tell ourselves a beautiful and prudent causal history, despite the fact that it is false from the point of view of a third person, science. Empirically speaking, “I as the actor” is simply a useful invention or hypothesis, a neural-computing artifact of our evolving model of myself.

At the level of the brain, this process is an amazing phenomenon and one of the greatest achievements of evolution. But if you look at the final conscious experience outside, at the human level, this small history of the brain seems like a distortion, a little smug, a little majestic, but generally delusional. The activity at the level of thoughts is a superficial phenomenon arising from the fact that under water there are unconscious forerunners of this activity, which are inaccessible to us. Even if we sometimes achieve something that resembles a rationalistic ideal, we do it sometimes, and the notion of controlled, effortless thinking is likely to be a very bad model of conscious thinking. Our mental activity usually turns out to be uninvited and unintentional. However, in some way a tourist, who was on the nose of the ship, feels himself an all-powerful wizard, forcing dolphins to appear from the water and jump at his command.

A person may not be an actor, leading to thoughts or actions, but perhaps the organism as a whole has other ways to control its mental life. We can't get off the ship, let alone call dolphins out of nowhere, but maybe we can choose which way to look.

Among other things, this can be equated to: the ability to set the rules for one’s own mental behavior; actively control attention concentration; intentionally choose mental goals; to direct the flow of thoughts in accordance with reason and logic; and, most importantly, deliberately end the ongoing thinking process. These meaningful inner actions belong to a large area of ​​mental behavior or events (although it is not yet clear how they could be explained scientifically). The capacity for such actions is called mental autonomy, and it allows us to achieve a certain degree of self-control.

We are familiar with the idea of ​​independent action in the outside world - when we control the movements and impulses of our body (“Tomorrow I will do the exercises; I will not eat these cookies”). Judging by the subjective experience, these actions relate not only to the body, but also to the mind. These include active redirection of attention to your breath during meditation, deliberate concentration of attention on the face of a person in front of you, attempts to extract visual memories, logical thinking or mental calculations.

I note that in this case, intentional rejection of action is as important as the decision to act. The defining feature of autonomy, in both the inner and outer worlds, is the ability to impose a veto — the ability to suppress, suspend, or complete ongoing actions. A person suffering from logorey , unable to stop the flow of his words, soon will not be able to communicate with other people at all (and this is a disease among philosophers). Similarly, a person who is unable to connect with his inner silence, as a result, loses contact with himself and soon will not be able to think clearly. If you set out to write a complex text or find an answer to a difficult question, you should be able to resist thoughts about lunch, a last conversation with your mother or international news. , , , , , . , , « !» « !», .

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The question of whether the concept of individuality, as claimed by most Western philosophers, is required for such cognitive activity, would have caused many objections in various Eastern cultures. There, the highest levels of mental autonomy are often considered a form of impersonal observation, or (in the words of an Indian-born philosopher Jidda Krishnamurti), “Observations without an observer” (although even in this pure form of global metaconsciousness, there is still implied knowledge that the organism is able to act if necessary). Apparently, there is also an intermediate option: perhaps mental autonomy may be perceived as it is, not in terms of actions, but in terms of simple possibilities. The idea of ​​“mental autonomy” can be a point of contact in which Western and Eastern philosophies reveal common interests.

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On the other hand, if the ideas described here prove to be correct, the modern science of consciousness can actually provide meditators with a new perspective, and perhaps a deeper understanding of their contemplative practices. Even if thoughts like “I have just successfully gotten rid of my thoughts and regained my metaconsciousness!” Are another illusion of control, then the practitioner has just recognized a particularly affectionate and cunning model of himself in his mind.

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On closer examination, the network of the wandering mind, it seems to me, does not lead to the appearance of thought. It is also not conscious - only man as a whole has consciousness. It only creates what I would describe, as a cognitive afforans , opportunities for internal action. In the theory of psychology, developed by J. J. Gibson , , : , , . – , , : , , , , .

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With gentle indifference, the neurobuddist calmly replies: “Let's be intellectually honest. From a scientific point of view on the world, there is no room for a “primary generation”, and this will always be the basis of any philosophically satisfactory theory of what action is. Let's not be deceived by the fairy tale that the conscious brain is trying to tell the rest of the body. I can say: in this world there are only events, and there are no mental actions. ”

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