WEBVTT 00:00.340 --> 00:00.770 All right. 00:00.770 --> 00:04.780 So today's lecture is a lecture about the 00:04.780 --> 00:07.000 parts of the soul. 00:07.000 --> 00:13.530 And I want to begin with some passages, two from the ancient 00:13.530 --> 00:18.880 Greek literary tradition, and two from contemporary mass 00:18.880 --> 00:24.360 culture, which bring out the extent to which it is part of 00:24.360 --> 00:29.600 the common understanding of human nature that we are often 00:29.600 --> 00:32.970 conflicted within ourselves. 00:32.970 --> 00:35.840 So in The Republic, the book from which we have been 00:35.840 --> 00:42.600 reading excerpts, Plato's Socrates tells a story about a 00:42.600 --> 00:47.320 man who is tempted to act against his better judgment. 00:47.320 --> 00:49.650 And this is the story of Leontius, 00:49.650 --> 00:51.360 and it goes as follows. 00:51.360 --> 00:55.350 "Leontius, the son of Aglaion, was coming up from the Piraeus 00:55.350 --> 00:59.460 along the outside of the north wall of the city when he saw 00:59.458 --> 01:04.138 some corpses lying at the executioner's feet. 01:04.140 --> 01:05.390 He had-- 01:05.391 --> 01:08.911 Socrates using Plato's terminology of appetite-- 01:08.910 --> 01:12.260 "He had an appetite to look at them. 01:12.260 --> 01:17.460 But at the same time, he was disgusted and turned away. 01:17.461 --> 01:21.841 For a time," the story goes on, "he struggled with himself 01:21.840 --> 01:24.050 and covered his face. 01:24.050 --> 01:29.150 But finally, overpowered by appetite, he pushed his eyes 01:29.150 --> 01:33.380 wide open and rushed towards the corpses, saying, 'Look for 01:33.380 --> 01:35.870 yourselves, you evil wretches! 01:35.870 --> 01:39.880 Take your fill of the beautiful sight.'" 01:39.880 --> 01:43.630 Now, we'll talk more in today's lecture about the 01:43.630 --> 01:48.180 particular picture that Plato has in mind when he speaks of 01:48.180 --> 01:52.790 the tripartite soul as involving this force that he 01:52.790 --> 01:54.740 calls appetite. 01:54.740 --> 01:58.830 But the basic description that we have here doesn't rest in 01:58.830 --> 02:02.960 any way on a particular Platonic framework. 02:02.960 --> 02:09.250 The idea that one can, on the one hand, feel compelled to do 02:09.250 --> 02:10.190 something-- 02:10.190 --> 02:16.330 eat a piece of chocolate cake, check one's Facebook page-- 02:16.330 --> 02:22.850 those are temptations that one can try to control, and 02:22.850 --> 02:26.480 struggle with oneself about. 02:26.480 --> 02:31.160 And the narrative that will take place in the next four or 02:31.160 --> 02:36.510 five lectures is about what sorts of strategies are 02:36.510 --> 02:41.060 available for us, given that these kinds of conflicts 02:41.060 --> 02:43.430 inevitably arise? 02:43.430 --> 02:47.930 So that's our first example from the ancient tradition of 02:47.930 --> 02:49.480 a kind of conflict. 02:49.480 --> 02:55.970 A conflict between a drive of appetite, on the one hand, and 02:55.970 --> 03:02.300 a drive of a certain kind of self-regulation on the other. 03:02.300 --> 03:06.290 Second example comes from Ovid's Metamorphosis. 03:06.290 --> 03:12.180 A long story in which, in the passage that we're reading, a 03:12.180 --> 03:17.210 character Medea has, against her better judgment, found 03:17.210 --> 03:21.410 herself in love with a young man named Jason. 03:21.410 --> 03:25.630 And here I'm using a seventeenth century 03:25.630 --> 03:30.390 translation that's actually in rhyming couplets. 03:30.390 --> 03:35.600 "Meanwhile Medea, seiz'd with fierce desire,/ By reason 03:35.600 --> 03:40.140 strives to quench the raging fire;/ But strives in vain! 03:40.140 --> 03:43.670 Some God (she said) withstands,/ and reason's 03:43.670 --> 03:46.790 baffl'd counsel countermands." 03:46.792 --> 03:52.782 So here's Medea, seized with desire, trying to control 03:52.780 --> 03:56.150 herself through reason, telling herself: it's absurd 03:56.150 --> 03:59.450 to be in love with this young man, it's a violation of other 03:59.450 --> 04:01.930 obligations that she has. 04:01.930 --> 04:05.780 But she strived in vain. 04:05.780 --> 04:09.360 She has the feeling of having been overtaken by a force 04:09.360 --> 04:14.720 outside herself, and what reason is telling her to do is 04:14.720 --> 04:15.720 overridden. 04:15.720 --> 04:17.390 It continues-- 04:17.390 --> 04:21.300 this is a rhyming version of the passage that's actually 04:21.300 --> 04:24.880 quoted in prose form in the Jonathan Haidt that we read 04:24.880 --> 04:28.800 for today--continues--this is now in Medea's voice. 04:28.800 --> 04:35.030 "But love, resistless love, my soul invades/ Discretion this, 04:35.030 --> 04:39.980 affection that persuades./ I see the right, and I approve 04:39.980 --> 04:45.240 it too,/ Condemn the wrong-- and yet the wrong pursue." 04:45.240 --> 04:51.950 So this feeling of seeing what is right, endorsing what is 04:51.950 --> 04:56.960 right, condemning what is wrong, and yet nonetheless 04:56.960 --> 05:00.850 finding oneself doing what lies against one's better 05:00.850 --> 05:05.120 judgment is a fundamental trope in the 05:05.120 --> 05:07.000 Western literary tradition. 05:06.995 --> 05:10.395 It's a fundamental trope in the Eastern 05:10.400 --> 05:12.100 philosophical tradition. 05:12.100 --> 05:14.710 And it's an extraordinarily familiar feeling 05:14.710 --> 05:17.650 in all of our lives. 05:17.650 --> 05:23.240 Third example of the kind of tension that is picked out by 05:23.240 --> 05:29.540 this talk of parts of the soul comes from today's Internet. 05:29.540 --> 05:34.450 Here's a piece about last year's Sweet Sixteen 05:34.450 --> 05:36.140 bracketing decision. 05:36.142 --> 05:37.892 And here's the headline. 05:37.890 --> 05:42.360 "Emotions and analysis conflict when picking Sweet 05:42.360 --> 05:44.510 Sixteen winner. 05:44.510 --> 05:49.190 Most of you, says this post, involved in NCAA pools, had 05:49.194 --> 05:52.884 difficult decisions last week trying to decide whether your 05:52.880 --> 05:56.920 hearts were trying to lead you astray. 05:56.920 --> 06:02.010 'It's difficult,'" he says, echoing Medea, echoing Plato, 06:02.010 --> 06:07.140 to remove emotion during (now in his own words), "what many 06:07.140 --> 06:10.640 consider to be the best post-season in sports." And he 06:10.640 --> 06:14.960 goes on to describe how difficult it is to take 06:14.960 --> 06:21.180 reason's mandate and select a team to which you don't bear 06:21.180 --> 06:23.730 emotional connections. 06:23.730 --> 06:29.320 But we don't find this only in the context of sportsmanship. 06:29.320 --> 06:33.410 Here's a fourth example of the sort of conflict of the soul 06:33.410 --> 06:35.390 that Plato is talking about. 06:35.390 --> 06:40.780 This one comes from the greatest arbiter of mass 06:40.780 --> 06:43.690 culture, Oprah. 06:43.690 --> 06:50.600 "Listen up," says Oprah, on Oprah's webpage, "Why Being in 06:50.600 --> 06:57.330 your Heart is Better Than in Your Head." So in this regard, 06:57.330 --> 07:01.140 those of you who have done the reading know that, if we had 07:01.140 --> 07:08.120 clickers, she is agreeing with Plato, or Hume? 07:08.122 --> 07:09.952 Is she agreeing with Plato-- 07:09.950 --> 07:11.170 left hands-- 07:11.170 --> 07:15.590 Plato or Hume? 07:15.592 --> 07:16.482 Excellent. 07:16.480 --> 07:16.900 Good. 07:16.900 --> 07:20.270 So Plato's idea is that reason is in charge. 07:20.270 --> 07:25.080 Hume's suggestion in the passage that we read, he says, 07:25.080 --> 07:30.920 reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions. 07:30.920 --> 07:34.900 Now, Hume isn't exactly saying what Oprah is saying here. 07:34.900 --> 07:36.830 That's something we'll have a chance to talk 07:36.830 --> 07:38.570 about more in sections. 07:38.570 --> 07:43.290 But again, we see, just as we saw in the story of Leontius, 07:43.290 --> 07:47.570 the story of Medea, the story of choosing your winning team 07:47.570 --> 07:52.410 in basketball betting, and here in Oprah, this idea that 07:52.410 --> 07:57.980 the soul has parts, that there are conflicts within us. 07:57.982 --> 08:02.912 So what I want to do in today's lecture is to talk 08:02.910 --> 08:07.230 through with you the five readings which I assigned for 08:07.230 --> 08:12.280 today, three required, two supplementary, each of which 08:12.280 --> 08:18.090 attempts to give voice through identification of a taxonomy 08:18.090 --> 08:22.410 to this idea that we are pulled sometimes in one 08:22.410 --> 08:26.510 direction and sometimes in another. 08:26.511 --> 08:30.201 So the first, which I'll talk about in detail later in the 08:30.200 --> 08:33.310 lecture, is Plato's division between 08:33.310 --> 08:37.320 reason, spirit, and appetite. 08:37.320 --> 08:40.990 The second is Hume's discussion of the relation 08:40.990 --> 08:44.400 between reason and passion. 08:44.399 --> 08:48.259 And Jonathan Haidt, in the book that we read the first 08:48.260 --> 08:52.850 chapter of today, presents a wonderful metaphor there, for 08:52.850 --> 08:57.790 understanding the relation between, on the one hand, 08:57.790 --> 09:02.370 reason--the part of ourselves to which we have direct, 09:02.370 --> 09:05.830 conscious access, and over which we have direct 09:05.830 --> 09:13.520 regulative control--and the other mass of drives and 09:13.523 --> 09:17.143 instincts which compose us, which he suggests we can 09:17.140 --> 09:22.380 understand as an elephant which we seek to control 09:22.375 --> 09:26.635 through whatever mechanisms are possible. 09:26.640 --> 09:31.760 Hume's suggestion, in the passage that we read, is that 09:31.755 --> 09:37.575 the drive and the impetus towards motion comes through, 09:37.580 --> 09:42.820 to continue with the metaphor, the creature whose feet are on 09:42.820 --> 09:44.520 the ground. 09:44.520 --> 09:47.950 So although it is the case that there's a kind of 09:47.950 --> 09:52.220 steering that's possible on the part of the rider, the 09:52.220 --> 10:00.200 impetus towards action comes from those parts of us over 10:00.200 --> 10:05.420 which we don't have direct rational control. 10:05.420 --> 10:11.600 And this idea that we are a bundle of drives that pull us 10:11.600 --> 10:18.320 in various directions lies at the heart of the incredibly 10:18.320 --> 10:23.260 influential, though highly controversial, picture of the 10:23.260 --> 10:28.580 human mind that Sigmund Freud presented in the first half of 10:28.580 --> 10:30.200 the century. 10:30.200 --> 10:36.910 So Freud's idea is that each of us, when we are born, are a 10:36.910 --> 10:44.310 bundle of incoherent desires and needs and passions. 10:44.310 --> 10:47.460 We have a desire to eat, we have a desire for certain 10:47.460 --> 10:50.110 kinds of comfort, we have incredibly 10:50.110 --> 10:52.450 vivid sexual desires. 10:52.450 --> 10:56.450 And those desires have no degree of 10:56.450 --> 10:58.260 consistency about them. 10:58.255 --> 11:02.955 They pull us in every direction, and they cause us 11:02.960 --> 11:08.910 to act in ways that aim at their satisfaction. 11:08.910 --> 11:13.610 The story of human development, says Freud, is 11:13.610 --> 11:20.340 the story of going on to develop two kinds of 11:20.340 --> 11:23.280 regulative capacities. 11:23.280 --> 11:30.310 The one, which he calls the ego, is a part of the self 11:30.310 --> 11:33.820 that is sensitive to reality. 11:33.820 --> 11:39.630 It recognizes that you can't simultaneously want to kill 11:39.630 --> 11:44.470 your brother and marry your brother, because if your 11:44.470 --> 11:47.610 brother is dead, you can't marry him. 11:47.610 --> 11:51.050 It may recognize, in fact, that you want neither to kill 11:51.050 --> 11:55.600 your brother nor marry your brother, though that bit of 11:55.600 --> 11:58.870 information may come from the third part. 11:58.870 --> 12:01.900 So we have this bundle of passions that pull us in 12:01.900 --> 12:02.910 various directions. 12:02.910 --> 12:06.760 And on top of that, as we develop, comes a part of 12:06.760 --> 12:11.020 ourselves which is sensitive to reality. 12:11.020 --> 12:18.670 And as that happens, we become conscious of our experience. 12:18.670 --> 12:23.490 So whereas these desires pull us in various ways without our 12:23.490 --> 12:29.520 even being aware of it, the ego, the sense of self, is 12:29.520 --> 12:35.510 something to which we have reflective access. 12:35.509 --> 12:40.919 As we go on to interact with others in the world, we get 12:40.920 --> 12:45.520 information about appropriate ways in which to regulate 12:45.520 --> 12:51.460 ourselves so as to conform with the norms of society. 12:51.460 --> 12:57.450 And as we internalize those, and take them to be part of 12:57.450 --> 13:02.510 what we ourselves endorse, they become what Freud calls 13:02.510 --> 13:08.430 the superego, sometimes thought of as the conscience. 13:08.430 --> 13:11.220 So the picture here is that there are all sorts of 13:11.220 --> 13:14.980 unconscious parts of ourselves, some of which are 13:14.980 --> 13:22.760 drives that pull us to do things like eat and procreate, 13:22.760 --> 13:26.990 some of which are aspects more sensitive to the constraints 13:26.990 --> 13:33.820 of reality, some of which are the norms of society. 13:33.824 --> 13:38.954 And then on top of that, in a rather smaller part of 13:38.950 --> 13:45.600 ourselves, is an aspect of which we are conscious. 13:45.600 --> 13:51.750 Now, there are details of the Freudian picture which have 13:51.750 --> 13:55.860 been discredited for all sorts of reasons. 13:55.860 --> 14:02.080 But the basic idea that we have unconscious pulls in 14:02.080 --> 14:07.600 directions which we disavow has become, I think, part of 14:07.600 --> 14:12.910 how it is that Western culture self-conceives. 14:12.910 --> 14:16.950 I think it's almost impossible to underestimate the extent to 14:16.950 --> 14:20.680 which the Freudian picture underlies twentieth century 14:20.680 --> 14:25.630 literature, twentieth century film, and twentieth century 14:25.630 --> 14:27.890 self-understanding. 14:27.890 --> 14:31.440 Notice that the Freudian picture, though it has three 14:31.440 --> 14:35.300 parts, isn't exactly the Platonic picture. 14:35.296 --> 14:40.646 Appetite and id roughly correspond, but spirit is not 14:40.645 --> 14:43.125 the same thing as ego. 14:43.130 --> 14:49.320 And reason and superego where are only roughly correlated. 14:49.320 --> 14:53.310 Those of you who are intrigued by this discussion can go back 14:53.310 --> 14:58.010 and look in this week's reading, and read Freud's own 14:58.010 --> 15:01.680 presentation of the theories that I've described. 15:01.682 --> 15:05.682 The fourth distinction which I'll go on to discuss in the 15:05.680 --> 15:10.500 main part of the lecture is a contemporary extension between 15:10.500 --> 15:16.330 system one and system two, or between a sort of automatic 15:16.330 --> 15:21.470 heuristic processing system and a rational reflective 15:21.470 --> 15:23.020 processing system. 15:23.018 --> 15:25.818 And as I said, I'll talk about that in the 15:25.820 --> 15:28.030 bulk part of the lecture. 15:28.030 --> 15:34.710 I want to just now introduce our fifth set of divisions. 15:34.710 --> 15:38.380 And these are the four divisions which Jonathan Haidt 15:38.380 --> 15:41.020 identifies in the opening chapter. 15:41.020 --> 15:44.430 So as you know, we read the Plato, we had the option of 15:44.430 --> 15:47.450 reading the Hume, the option of reading the Freud, we read 15:47.451 --> 15:50.021 the Evans piece and we read the Haidt. 15:50.020 --> 15:54.580 So Haidt's first distinction is between what he 15:54.580 --> 15:57.280 calls mind and body. 15:57.280 --> 16:03.020 And what he points out there is that so much of our bodily 16:03.020 --> 16:10.570 regulation happens through the brain, there are independent 16:10.570 --> 16:14.450 loci of processing. 16:14.450 --> 16:21.350 In particular, the gut, our digestive organ, can run 16:21.350 --> 16:25.700 relatively independently of the brain. 16:25.700 --> 16:29.680 And he provides some examples of that. 16:29.680 --> 16:32.740 But strikingly, one of the things that he does not 16:32.740 --> 16:38.770 discuss is the famous example of Mike, the headless rooster, 16:38.765 --> 16:43.615 who was a rooster--here he is on the cover of Life 16:43.620 --> 16:50.840 magazine--who soon after the Second World War was beheaded, 16:50.835 --> 16:54.815 and who went on to live for another 18 16:54.820 --> 16:58.070 months, perfectly happily. 16:58.070 --> 16:59.320 Here he is again. 16:59.320 --> 17:02.880 And if you go on YouTube, you can actually watch a live 17:02.880 --> 17:05.110 version of Mike the headless chicken. 17:05.110 --> 17:07.390 Those of you who have pledged to turn off your Internet, are 17:07.390 --> 17:08.640 regretting it now. 17:10.570 --> 17:14.880 So the point about Mike the headless chicken is that 17:14.880 --> 17:20.080 there's a whole bunch of motor control representations that 17:20.076 --> 17:24.556 take place not in the organ where one would typically 17:24.557 --> 17:29.277 expect it, in the head, but rather along the spinal cord 17:29.280 --> 17:31.600 in various ways. 17:31.604 --> 17:38.164 The first division to which Haidt adverts is the fact that 17:38.156 --> 17:43.836 it's actually a biological feature of us. 17:43.840 --> 17:49.720 That regulation of action happens through all sorts of 17:49.720 --> 17:54.630 biological processes, some of which are located up here, and 17:54.625 --> 17:59.255 others of which communicate with the parts of our limbs 17:59.260 --> 18:04.550 and so on, only through lower parts of the spinal cord. 18:04.548 --> 18:08.998 The second division that Haidt reminds us of the importance 18:09.000 --> 18:15.390 of is the division between left brain and right brain. 18:15.390 --> 18:19.560 As many of you know, we have running along the middle of 18:19.560 --> 18:24.060 our heads something called the corpus callosum, which 18:24.060 --> 18:26.990 connects all the stuff that happens on the right side of 18:26.990 --> 18:30.950 our head to all the stuff that happens on the 18:30.950 --> 18:33.750 left side of our head. 18:33.750 --> 18:40.620 It turns out that in certain kinds of epileptic patients, 18:40.620 --> 18:46.130 the only way to cure their epilepsy, their electric 18:46.130 --> 18:51.060 seizures that run across the brain, is by severing the 18:51.060 --> 18:53.890 corpus callosum. 18:53.886 --> 18:59.896 And by doing so, for medically necessary purposes, science 18:59.898 --> 19:04.418 has discovered the degree to which the processing that goes 19:04.420 --> 19:08.790 on in the two sides of the brain is relatively 19:08.785 --> 19:10.385 independent. 19:10.390 --> 19:13.530 Basically, everything that comes in through the right 19:13.530 --> 19:18.150 visual field is processed in the brain's left hemisphere, 19:18.150 --> 19:23.410 and everything that comes in through the left visual field 19:23.410 --> 19:27.860 is processed in the brain's right hemisphere. 19:27.860 --> 19:33.610 And though many features of the brain are duplicated 19:33.610 --> 19:40.050 across the hemisphere, others of them are localized. 19:40.050 --> 19:44.960 In particular, in the brains of right-handed people, 19:44.960 --> 19:47.590 language is a right [correction: left] 19:47.590 --> 19:50.430 hemisphere activity. 19:50.430 --> 19:55.430 And so Haidt describes some famous research done in the 19:55.430 --> 20:03.920 1950s by the neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga in which a 20:03.920 --> 20:07.710 patient who had been subject to a severing of the corpus 20:07.710 --> 20:14.440 callosum, is presented with some images that either come 20:14.435 --> 20:17.205 in through the left visual field and consequently are 20:17.210 --> 20:20.980 processed on the right side of the brain, or images that come 20:20.980 --> 20:25.140 in from the right visual field, and consequently are 20:25.140 --> 20:29.650 processed on the left side of the brain. 20:29.650 --> 20:36.770 Interestingly, because information processed on the 20:36.770 --> 20:41.520 right side of the brain isn't linguistically available-- 20:41.520 --> 20:43.310 I believe I misspoke earlier. 20:43.310 --> 20:46.830 The language center is on the left, not in the right brain-- 20:46.830 --> 20:51.180 isn't linguistically available, when the subject 20:51.180 --> 20:56.240 looks at something that comes in over here, there's no 20:56.240 --> 21:01.110 linguistic processing of what he sees. 21:01.110 --> 21:06.940 But when he's asked to explain what it is that is in his 21:06.940 --> 21:12.240 visual field, he engages in what Gazzaniga called 21:12.240 --> 21:14.160 confabulation. 21:14.160 --> 21:19.260 So the gentleman here has been shown with this side of the 21:19.260 --> 21:24.040 brain a bunch of images of snow, and 21:24.040 --> 21:25.820 he is asked to choose-- 21:25.820 --> 21:28.840 remember, this is right brain, so it's left hand-- 21:28.840 --> 21:30.480 something that goes with them. 21:30.480 --> 21:33.300 And so he selects with his left hand, controlled by the 21:33.300 --> 21:37.680 right brain from the left visual field, a shovel, 21:37.680 --> 21:39.450 something which would be enormously 21:39.450 --> 21:43.220 useful if you had snow. 21:43.220 --> 21:48.690 Meanwhile, the left side of his brain through the right 21:48.690 --> 21:53.930 eye, controlling the right hand, sees a chicken claw and 21:53.930 --> 21:56.040 selects a chicken. 21:56.040 --> 21:59.970 So one side of his brain sees a chicken claw, and selecting 21:59.967 --> 22:02.687 the thing that goes with it, selects the chicken. 22:02.690 --> 22:05.650 The other side of his brain sees the snow, and selecting 22:05.650 --> 22:09.080 the thing that goes with it, selects the shovel. 22:09.080 --> 22:10.490 So far, so good. 22:10.490 --> 22:13.250 I told you the brain is segregated in these sorts of 22:13.250 --> 22:17.440 ways, so it isn't surprising that the right side is 22:17.440 --> 22:19.570 selecting something that goes with what it saw on the left 22:19.570 --> 22:23.990 side, and selecting something that goes with what it saw. 22:23.990 --> 22:26.750 What happens next? 22:26.750 --> 22:31.530 What happens next is that the man looks down at the shovel 22:31.530 --> 22:36.470 and the chicken, which he has selected, and is confronted 22:36.465 --> 22:41.595 with the question of why he has chosen those things. 22:41.600 --> 22:45.430 Now, as far as the language center of his brain goes, he 22:45.425 --> 22:50.595 has no idea why he's chosen the chicken claw. 22:50.600 --> 22:50.880 Right? 22:50.880 --> 22:55.130 That information hasn't entered into the part of his 22:55.130 --> 23:00.190 brain where the linguistic processes are taking place. 23:00.190 --> 23:04.390 Nonetheless, what he does is something called 23:04.390 --> 23:05.270 confabulation. 23:05.270 --> 23:06.870 He says, Oh. 23:06.870 --> 23:09.200 I take the shovel because I need to shovel 23:09.195 --> 23:12.965 out the chicken coop. 23:12.970 --> 23:18.120 He comes up with an explanation for why it is that 23:18.120 --> 23:22.020 he has chosen as he has chosen. 23:22.020 --> 23:27.290 And in cases of hypnosis, there is a similar 23:27.290 --> 23:29.080 phenomenology. 23:29.080 --> 23:32.940 Subjects will find themselves onstage with their arms ad 23:32.941 --> 23:38.441 legs in a particular way, and immediately come up with a 23:38.440 --> 23:43.070 confabulated explanation for it is why that they are doing 23:43.070 --> 23:45.030 what they are doing. 23:45.030 --> 23:53.600 We are quite typically people who read our behavior off our 23:53.600 --> 23:55.290 experience. 23:55.291 --> 24:01.021 And when we talk about emotion and self-understanding, we 24:01.020 --> 24:04.220 will come back to this issue. 24:04.220 --> 24:08.930 The point about left and right brain is two-fold. 24:08.930 --> 24:14.600 The first is that this is a second example of a biological 24:14.600 --> 24:18.090 underpinning of the idea that we are 24:18.090 --> 24:20.930 divided in certain ways. 24:20.934 --> 24:28.214 And the second is the idea of confabulation in the sense 24:28.210 --> 24:31.840 that, to use the rider-elephant metaphor, it's 24:31.837 --> 24:36.397 as if the rider thinks that it's his feet that are on the 24:36.400 --> 24:40.440 ground rather than the elephant's. 24:40.440 --> 24:45.590 The third division which Haidt describes to us is the 24:45.590 --> 24:50.480 division between what he calls old brain and new brain. 24:50.480 --> 24:55.460 Roughly, the parts of our brain, the brain stem and 24:55.460 --> 25:01.550 subcortical regions, that we share with nonhuman animals, 25:01.548 --> 25:06.728 and the parts of our brain that are much more highly 25:06.730 --> 25:10.900 developed in human beings, namely the cortical region and 25:10.900 --> 25:14.210 the reticular, the prefrontal cortex. 25:14.210 --> 25:20.450 And Haidt tells there a story which is useful for 25:20.450 --> 25:26.120 understanding how it is that self-regulation occurs. 25:26.120 --> 25:31.280 So my guess is that many of you have seen some version of 25:31.280 --> 25:35.740 these famous images of this person. 25:35.740 --> 25:37.970 Anybody know the name of this person? 25:37.970 --> 25:39.210 Yeah. 25:39.210 --> 25:40.120 Phineas Gage. 25:40.116 --> 25:43.866 This is Phineas Gage, who was a railroad worker in the 25:43.870 --> 25:48.570 nineteenth century who was tamping down some dynamite as 25:48.570 --> 25:51.580 part of his job as a railroad worker. 25:51.580 --> 25:57.710 And the dynamite exploded, and this long metal pole went 25:57.710 --> 26:00.790 through his brain. 26:00.790 --> 26:06.520 But, like Mike the headless chicken, Phineas Gage was a 26:06.520 --> 26:11.260 survivor, and in fact did not die, but went to live for many 26:11.260 --> 26:13.530 more years. 26:13.530 --> 26:19.060 In reconstructing the accident, it's become clear 26:19.060 --> 26:24.770 that the damage which the pole did was to an area of Gage's 26:24.770 --> 26:28.780 brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. 26:28.780 --> 26:33.690 Right up here is the prefrontal cortex. 26:33.692 --> 26:39.722 And the result of the accident which happened to Gage was 26:39.720 --> 26:45.030 like what happened to the University of Virginia 26:45.030 --> 26:49.360 schoolteacher that Haidt describes in his story. 26:49.360 --> 26:55.810 There was a lot of capacity for a certain kind of 26:55.810 --> 26:58.120 self-regulation. 26:58.120 --> 27:06.040 So in some ways, like Medea, though Gage was able to see 27:06.040 --> 27:09.580 what the normatively correct thing to do was--to see what 27:09.580 --> 27:13.320 he ought to do, to understand it, to explain it, to 27:13.320 --> 27:18.730 articulate it, to say what was appropriate--he found himself 27:18.730 --> 27:23.080 unable to act on what it was that he thought would be a 27:23.080 --> 27:24.580 better idea. 27:24.580 --> 27:28.580 So he would say something like, you shouldn't yell and 27:28.580 --> 27:31.700 scream when you're upset in a public setting. 27:31.700 --> 27:34.510 He would understand that that sort of behavior was 27:34.510 --> 27:35.550 inappropriate. 27:35.550 --> 27:39.960 But he would nonetheless find himself unable to act on that. 27:39.960 --> 27:45.060 He would end up doing what Freud would say his id told 27:45.060 --> 27:48.150 him to do, or what Plato would say his 27:48.153 --> 27:51.913 appetite told him to do. 27:51.910 --> 27:57.700 Again and again, it's been discovered in subjects with 27:57.702 --> 28:01.762 damage to the prefrontal cortex that they face 28:01.760 --> 28:04.050 difficulties with self-regulation. 28:06.670 --> 28:13.150 So it looks like at least one of the places where what Plato 28:13.150 --> 28:20.170 would call reason seats itself is in this 28:20.170 --> 28:24.410 particular part of the brain. 28:24.410 --> 28:27.700 And, in fact, there is reasonably good evidence that 28:27.695 --> 28:31.445 individuals can suffer, for example, from attention 28:31.450 --> 28:37.650 hyperactivity deficit disorder, ADHD, has lower 28:37.650 --> 28:43.200 prefrontal cortex function than those who do not. 28:43.200 --> 28:48.250 So when Haidt speaks of old brain--a part of the brain 28:48.250 --> 28:54.570 that we share with beings who act on instinct, and new 28:54.570 --> 28:58.840 brain--cortex, and in particular, the parts of the 28:58.840 --> 29:01.680 cortex that are especially well-developed in human 29:01.680 --> 29:06.500 beings, like PFC--one of the things that he is talking 29:06.500 --> 29:11.310 about is this capacity for self-regulation. 29:11.310 --> 29:15.220 And when we talk about weakness of the will in 29:15.220 --> 29:19.670 roughly five classes, we'll talk about some of the ways in 29:19.670 --> 29:23.960 which we can exploit the fact that we have these complex 29:23.960 --> 29:31.020 brains capable of learning patterns both though our old 29:31.020 --> 29:34.910 system and through our new one. 29:34.910 --> 29:38.730 So we are capable of regulation both in the way 29:38.730 --> 29:41.260 that dogs and cats are. 29:41.260 --> 29:45.550 If you want to train your cat not to go on the couch, 29:45.550 --> 29:48.830 saying, "Please don't go on the couch, you'll leave fur 29:48.830 --> 29:53.000 there, and my aunt is allergic," is in fact not an 29:53.000 --> 29:57.400 effective way to train your cat not to go on the couch. 29:57.400 --> 30:00.030 To train your cat not to go on the couch you need to do 30:00.030 --> 30:03.040 something like put a crinkly piece of paper there that 30:03.040 --> 30:06.740 makes an ugly noise every time she sits down. 30:06.740 --> 30:12.030 Or perhaps spray her gently with a water bottle whenever 30:12.030 --> 30:14.610 she goes on the couch. 30:14.610 --> 30:18.160 In so doing, you set up associations between being on 30:18.160 --> 30:22.910 the couch and a negative outcome, and change her 30:22.910 --> 30:25.320 associations with it. 30:25.320 --> 30:29.850 But you don't do it in a way that engages reflective 30:29.850 --> 30:31.870 self-regulation. 30:31.870 --> 30:37.020 We as human beings with both old brain and new can regulate 30:37.020 --> 30:42.030 ourselves in the way that we regulate and train animals 30:42.030 --> 30:45.290 through associating certain activities with positive 30:45.286 --> 30:48.706 things and other activities with negative ones. 30:48.710 --> 30:55.080 But we can also do so making use of a kind of reflection 30:55.080 --> 30:58.610 and self-regulation that involves a certain kind of 30:58.610 --> 30:59.880 self-control. 30:59.880 --> 31:04.300 And we'll talk about that more in later lectures. 31:04.300 --> 31:08.440 So what I want to do now, having given you first some 31:08.440 --> 31:11.550 literary texts in which we have articulated the idea of 31:11.550 --> 31:15.970 the soul being divided, and then quickly run through the 31:15.970 --> 31:19.890 various divisions that we read about today, is to-- 31:19.890 --> 31:20.770 Oh, sorry! 31:20.770 --> 31:22.580 There's a fourth example from Jonathan Haidt. 31:22.580 --> 31:25.500 What I want to do, really, is to tell you about controlled 31:25.500 --> 31:28.630 and automatic processing, and then do what I said 31:28.630 --> 31:29.760 I would just do. 31:29.760 --> 31:34.050 So some of you, at the conclusion of this class, are 31:34.050 --> 31:39.340 going to walk from this room, perhaps by taking an elevator, 31:39.340 --> 31:45.400 over to a lecture in another part of WLH that is taught by 31:45.400 --> 31:46.750 John Bargh. 31:46.752 --> 31:51.042 And what I want to describe for you here is a study that 31:51.040 --> 31:55.860 John Bargh did roughly fifteen years ago, that brings out the 31:55.860 --> 32:01.060 relation between controlled and automatic thought. 32:01.055 --> 32:07.025 So Bargh brought subjects into his laboratory, and had them 32:07.030 --> 32:10.250 engage in what's called a scrambled sentence task. 32:10.246 --> 32:13.036 The scrambled sentence task is a task where you're given a 32:13.040 --> 32:15.710 list of words, say, five words. 32:15.710 --> 32:20.170 He, beautiful, doorway, relevant, Thursday. 32:20.172 --> 32:23.542 And you're asked to put four of them into a sentence. 32:23.540 --> 32:26.010 In so doing, you're forced to engage with the 32:26.010 --> 32:26.980 meanings of the words. 32:26.980 --> 32:30.440 The only idea of the scrambled sentence task is to get you 32:30.440 --> 32:33.640 thinking about various words. 32:33.638 --> 32:40.538 So subjects in this study were presented either with a set of 32:40.540 --> 32:46.270 words that were just a wide range of words, or with a set 32:46.266 --> 32:49.516 of words, a portion of which had terms specifically 32:49.520 --> 32:52.090 associated with the elderly. 32:52.090 --> 32:57.590 Words like wrinkly, and bingo, and Florida. 33:00.800 --> 33:06.250 Those subjects who unscrambled the sentences that had words 33:06.245 --> 33:09.435 associated with the elderly presumably had primed in their 33:09.440 --> 33:14.690 minds the idea of old persons. 33:14.694 --> 33:21.924 And then the dependent variable, DV, which Bargh 33:21.920 --> 33:26.150 measured, was how long it took the people, when they left the 33:26.150 --> 33:29.440 study, to walk to the elevator. 33:29.444 --> 33:33.404 The subject who had engaged in the typical scrambled sentence 33:33.400 --> 33:38.330 task walked quite quickly to the elevator. 33:38.330 --> 33:42.480 But those who had been given words associated with the 33:42.480 --> 33:49.240 elderly went very slow. 33:49.240 --> 33:56.490 Indeed, subjects who were in the ordinary condition took 33:56.491 --> 34:00.521 just over seven seconds to get to the elevator, whereas 34:00.520 --> 34:03.400 subjects who had been primed with words associated with the 34:03.400 --> 34:07.170 elderly took more than a second and a half 34:07.170 --> 34:09.740 longer to get there. 34:09.740 --> 34:13.180 Now, presumably this was not because they were consciously 34:13.180 --> 34:18.950 thinking, oh, I've got to get to my bingo game. 34:18.950 --> 34:24.110 It was because an image of something had been evoked in 34:24.110 --> 34:28.260 their minds unconsciously, beneath the level of 34:28.260 --> 34:33.040 awareness, and had ended up affecting their behavior. 34:33.040 --> 34:36.840 And in a series of studies that Bargh went on to do over 34:36.840 --> 34:40.850 the next few years, and which he continues to do now, he 34:40.850 --> 34:44.020 found this effect over and over again. 34:44.020 --> 34:48.110 So for example, some subjects were primed with terms that 34:48.110 --> 34:53.310 had to do with politeness, others with terms that had to 34:53.310 --> 34:57.930 do with rudeness, and the dependent variable, the thing 34:57.930 --> 35:02.880 which he was measuring, was how likely they were to 35:02.880 --> 35:06.560 interrupt the experimenter when they needed to get 35:06.560 --> 35:09.090 information from the experimenter. 35:09.090 --> 35:13.190 Those primed with words associated with politeness 35:13.190 --> 35:17.820 waited almost fifteen minutes, whereas those primed with 35:17.820 --> 35:21.800 words associated with rudeness went up right away, and 35:21.800 --> 35:24.430 interrupted the experimenter. 35:24.430 --> 35:28.570 More recently, in the domain of embodied cognition, he's 35:28.570 --> 35:32.950 been looking at things like, what happens if you hold a 35:32.950 --> 35:40.840 warm or a cold coffee cup before you evaluate a resume, 35:40.840 --> 35:45.190 and subjects who have, in the elevator, helped the 35:45.192 --> 35:48.572 experimenter by ("could you just hold my mug, please?") 35:48.570 --> 35:52.390 Holding a warm mug, as opposed to ("could you just hold my 35:52.390 --> 35:57.590 mug, please") holding a cold mug, were more likely to 35:57.590 --> 36:00.420 evaluate the resume positively. 36:00.420 --> 36:06.310 That is, a sense of warmth in one domain brings with it a 36:06.305 --> 36:09.365 sense of warmth in the other. 36:09.370 --> 36:11.620 So that's the fourth division. 36:11.620 --> 36:12.610 OK. 36:12.610 --> 36:17.040 So what I want to do in the last ten minutes of lecture is 36:17.035 --> 36:21.605 to talk about the two texts that I 36:21.610 --> 36:23.250 haven't discussed already. 36:23.250 --> 36:27.190 First, Plato's division into reason, spirit, and appetite, 36:27.190 --> 36:30.550 and secondly, the material on dual processing. 36:30.550 --> 36:34.090 Though this next lecture is explicitly about dual 36:34.090 --> 36:37.540 processing, if we don't get all the way through that 36:37.540 --> 36:41.370 material, I'll begin next lecture with it. 36:41.370 --> 36:47.090 So in the somewhat salacious material from Plato that I had 36:47.090 --> 36:52.700 you read today--I hope you read it: It's really great and 36:52.700 --> 36:54.520 really fun. 36:54.520 --> 36:59.660 So in it, Plato--here's a wonderful depiction of it by a 36:59.660 --> 37:02.790 philosopher named John Holbo who lives in Singapore. 37:02.794 --> 37:08.034 Plato describes the three parts of the human soul. 37:08.028 --> 37:12.478 The first is what he calls reason, or logos; This is 37:12.480 --> 37:16.200 represented here by the chariots here. 37:16.204 --> 37:19.014 The second, spirit, sometimes translated 37:19.010 --> 37:22.980 as honor, or thumos. 37:22.980 --> 37:27.920 And the third, appetite, or epithumos 37:27.920 --> 37:32.640 Now Plato presents a number of metaphors by which we can 37:32.640 --> 37:34.400 understand this. 37:34.400 --> 37:37.890 In the Republic, in a passage which we're reading for early 37:37.890 --> 37:44.480 next week, he describes reason as a human being, spirit as a 37:44.480 --> 37:50.450 lion, and appetite as a multiheaded beast. And in the 37:50.445 --> 37:53.715 passage that we read for today, from the Phaedrus, he 37:53.720 --> 37:59.550 describes reason as "a charioteer," spirit as "a good 37:59.550 --> 38:06.220 horse, noble in frame, well-jointed, with a high neck 38:06.220 --> 38:07.860 and regal bearing. 38:07.860 --> 38:15.910 His coat is white and he is controllable by word alone." 38:15.910 --> 38:21.090 Appetite, by contrast, on the Platonic picture, is "a great 38:21.090 --> 38:25.640 crooked jumble of limbs with a short bull neck, a pug nose, 38:25.640 --> 38:30.500 dark skin, bloodshot white eyes, companion to wild boasts 38:30.500 --> 38:35.420 and indecency, shaggy around the ears, deaf as a post, 38:35.420 --> 38:39.090 barely yielding to the horsewhip and the goad 38:39.090 --> 38:40.710 combined." 38:40.710 --> 38:45.190 And Plato goes on to describe in the passage that we read 38:45.190 --> 38:51.770 today a rather exciting event, where a man of Athens has 38:51.770 --> 38:57.690 fallen in love with a young boy, and the brown horse 38:57.690 --> 39:05.120 within him, his appetites, are ready to engage in those 39:05.120 --> 39:10.300 activities which fell into the category of things that Freud 39:10.300 --> 39:14.110 talked about in the id, and I don't mean that he wanted to 39:14.110 --> 39:18.170 eat lunch with the young boy. 39:18.170 --> 39:24.760 Whereas spirit is attracted, but recognizes the ways in 39:24.760 --> 39:31.410 which there are social norms, and the charioteer is involved 39:31.410 --> 39:36.940 in trying to keep them in line. 39:36.940 --> 39:44.870 So Socrates writes of the process by which the 39:44.870 --> 39:49.910 charioteer tries to bring the dark horse into line, as the 39:49.910 --> 39:55.480 dark horse basically tries to get the man to embrace his 39:55.480 --> 39:57.850 young beloved. 39:57.850 --> 40:04.520 So he says: "the promised time arrives, the horses pretend to 40:04.520 --> 40:08.770 have forgotten what they were told by the charioteer. 40:08.768 --> 40:10.698 It reminds them. 40:10.704 --> 40:11.854 The horse struggles. 40:11.850 --> 40:12.610 It neighs. 40:12.610 --> 40:14.570 It pulls them forward. 40:14.566 --> 40:17.546 It forces them to approach the boy again with the same 40:17.550 --> 40:21.250 proposition, and as soon as they are near, it drops its 40:21.250 --> 40:24.610 head, straightens its tail, bites the bit, and pulls 40:24.610 --> 40:27.590 towards the boy without any shame at all." 40:27.590 --> 40:32.160 The charioteer--that is reason, self-regulation, the 40:32.160 --> 40:36.750 superego, the prefrontal cortex--is struck with the 40:36.750 --> 40:40.160 same feelings as before, where he feels like this is not 40:40.160 --> 40:43.040 activity that he wants to engage in. 40:43.040 --> 40:45.800 "Only worse, and he's falling back as he would from a 40:45.800 --> 40:46.670 starting gate. 40:46.670 --> 40:49.770 He violently yanks the bit back out of the teeth of the 40:49.765 --> 40:53.845 insolent horse, harder this time, so that he bloodies its 40:53.850 --> 40:58.110 foul-speaking tongue and jaws, sets its legs and haunches 40:58.110 --> 41:02.850 firmly on the ground, and causes it to stop." 41:02.850 --> 41:08.930 Now this idea that one of the ways in which we learn to 41:08.930 --> 41:15.950 control our passions is by training ourselves as we would 41:15.950 --> 41:22.620 train a wild animal through the creation of negative 41:22.620 --> 41:27.490 associations with certain sorts of activities is, in 41:27.488 --> 41:33.008 fact, a fundamental insight about how human 41:33.010 --> 41:36.540 self-regulation takes place. 41:36.540 --> 41:42.170 And with respect to truly forceful passions, sexual 41:42.171 --> 41:47.241 appetites in particular, a kind of self-regulation that 41:47.240 --> 41:53.940 involves an equally forceful antidote is crucial. 41:53.942 --> 42:00.492 Plato's picture is that in the well-ordered soul, reason, the 42:00.490 --> 42:07.460 charioteer, does the ruling, and that spirit and appetite 42:07.460 --> 42:10.310 are, through a process of 42:10.310 --> 42:15.820 self-regulation, tamed and trained. 42:15.820 --> 42:20.870 So what the Republic, the book from which we've been reading 42:20.870 --> 42:28.420 excerpts, describes, is a process by which the rational 42:28.420 --> 42:35.960 part of ourselves can come to be in control of our spirits 42:35.960 --> 42:39.020 and our appetites. 42:39.024 --> 42:43.174 Plato actually tells the story by means of a controlling 42:43.170 --> 42:47.100 metaphor, which is that he compares the structure of the 42:47.100 --> 42:52.090 human soul to the structure of a city. 42:52.090 --> 42:55.360 And he says that just as in the human soul, there is 42:55.360 --> 43:00.710 reason, there is spirit, and there is appetite, so, too, in 43:00.705 --> 43:06.425 a well-structured city, there are guardians, those governed 43:06.430 --> 43:11.650 by reason, auxiliaries, roughly soldiers, those 43:11.650 --> 43:16.160 governed by honor, and a kind of worker, who 43:16.155 --> 43:20.005 is governed by appetite. 43:20.010 --> 43:24.660 And moving back and forth between the individual and the 43:24.660 --> 43:31.400 society, Plato goes on to describe a series of processes 43:31.400 --> 43:38.050 through which the will and desires and impulses of, on 43:38.050 --> 43:41.940 the one hand, the auxiliaries and the workers, and, on the 43:41.940 --> 43:45.890 other hand, spirit and appetite, can be brought into 43:45.885 --> 43:49.875 harmony with what reason dictates. 43:49.880 --> 43:54.440 And it will turn out, we'll find out in three lectures, 43:54.440 --> 43:59.840 that this kind of harmony is the answer that he's going to 43:59.840 --> 44:06.290 offer to Glaucon's question about why it is intrinsically 44:06.290 --> 44:12.720 valuable to act in a moral way. 44:12.720 --> 44:16.900 So that concludes the presentation of Plato's 44:16.900 --> 44:19.480 tripartite soul. 44:19.480 --> 44:24.440 What we will do next lecture is to talk about the 44:24.440 --> 44:29.760 discussion of dual processing accounts in the context of the 44:29.760 --> 44:32.810 two pieces that we're reading for next class. 44:32.812 --> 44:37.472 The first, as you may know, or may have seen, is Daniel 44:37.470 --> 44:41.590 Kahneman's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, and you 44:41.590 --> 44:44.610 have your choice of either listening to the speech or 44:44.610 --> 44:47.830 reading a somewhat more detailed article in which we 44:47.830 --> 44:49.930 describes its content. 44:49.930 --> 44:54.950 And the second is a piece that I've written on a notion that 44:54.950 --> 44:57.990 I call alief, which tries to bring together some of the 44:57.990 --> 44:59.780 ideas that we have today. 44:59.780 --> 45:02.680 So I hope to see many of you back on Thursday.