Self Comes to Mind

decision and action must be like. For millennia wise leaders have turned to a comparable solution when they asked followers to observe disciplined rituals whose side effect must have been a gradual imposition of consciously willed decisions on nonconscious action processes. Not surprisingly, those rituals often involved the creation of heightened emotions, even pain, an empirically discovered means of etching the desired mechanism in the human mind. What I am envisioning, however, extends well beyond religious and civic rituals to encompass day-to-day life matters bearing on a variety of areas. I am thinking, in particular, about matters of health and social behavior. Our insufficient education of nonconscious processes probably explains, for example, why so many of us fail miserably to do what we are supposed to do regarding diet and exercise. We think we are in control, but we often are not, and the epidemics of obesity, hypertension, and heart disease prove that we are not. Our biological makeup inclines us to consume what we should not, but so do the cultural traditions that have drawn on that biological makeup and been shaped by it, and even the advertising industry that exploits it. There is no conspiracy here. It is only natural. Perhaps this is a good place for ritualized skill building, if that is what it takes.
    The same applies to the epidemic of drug addiction. One reason so many individuals become addicted to all manner of drugs, not to mention alcohol, has to do with the pressures of homeostasis. In the natural course of a day, we inevitably face frustrations, anxieties, and difficulties that throw homeostasis off balance and consequently may make us feel unwell, perhaps anguished, discouraged, or sad. One effect of the so-called substances of abuse is to restore the lost balance rapidly and transiently. How do they do so? I believe they change the felt image that the brain is currently forming of its body. The state of off-balance homeostasis is neurally represented as an impeded, troubled body landscape. After certain drugs, at certain dosages, the brain represents a more smoothly functioning organism. The suffering that corresponds to the former felt image morphs into temporary pleasure. The brain’s appetite system has been hijacked, and the eventual result is not quite the sought-after rebalancing of homeostasis, at least not for long. Nonetheless, rejecting the possibility of rapid correction of suffering takes enormous effort, even for those who already know that the correction is shortlived and the consequences of the choice may be dire. In the framework I have outlined, there is an obvious reason for this state of affairs. The nonconscious homeostatic demand is in natural control and can be opposed only by a well-trained and powerful counterforce. Spinoza seems to have had the right idea when he said that an emotion with negative consequences could be countered only by another, more powerful emotion. What this possibly means is that merely training the nonconscious process to politely decline is hardly a solution. The nonconscious device must be trained by the conscious mind to deliver an emotional counterpunch.
Brain and Justice
     
    Biologically informed conceptions of conscious and unconscious control are relevant to how we live and especially to how we should live. But perhaps the relevance is nowhere more important than on issues that regard social behavior—in particular, the sector of social behavior known as moral behavior—and the breaking of the social agreements codified in laws.
    Civilization, and in particular the aspect of civilization that has to do with justice, revolves around the notion that humans are conscious in ways in which animals are not. By and large, cultures have evolved justice systems that take a commonsense approach to the complexities of decision-making and aim at protecting societies from those who violate established laws. Understandably, and with rare exceptions, the weight given to evidence coming from brain science and cognitive science has been negligible.
    Now there is a growing fear that evidence regarding brain function, as it becomes more widely known, may undermine the application of laws, something that legal systems have by and large avoided by not taking such evidence into account. But the response has to be nuanced. The fact that everyone capable of knowing is responsible for his actions does not mean that the neurobiology of consciousness is