Margaret McGhee

Just How Smart Are We

(June 12, 2003) Human nature is full of paradoxes and surprises. For example, have you ever wondered why otherwise intelligent people get involved in such weird belief systems. What mechanism in their brain allows them, or anyone for that matter, to completely suspend their rational thought process in selected areas of their life?

My current explanation for this is based upon a model of the brain that I developed for a completely unrelated purpose, helping my students learn to sing and play the guitar. This strictly functional model that I've come up with seems to provide some possible answers for this larger question.

My model of the brain differs from currently popular right brain - left brain models. In my model there is no left and right hemispheres conveniently split into the the yin and yang of human personality, the logical and intuitive domains of the mind.

Added Dec. 23, 2003: I don't dispute the right/left functional divisions of the human brain that are well known. Just that that is superfluous for my purpose. From reading I have done since June, I now understand that neurobiologists have actually identified physical centers for emotional experience in the brain and that some of these are dedicated to an overall emotional state-of-being type awareness that could be responsible for the process that I describe here.

Instead, I see a single element that exerts control over all our voluntary physical and mental activities. I gave this imaginary component a new name so that no one would confuse my musings with more scholarly studies on the topic. To emphasize the self-protective and willful nature of this organ, I call it the mego. The mego makes decisions for us and directs our minds in ways that benefit us - as well as it can determine what that is. In order to make decisions, some process of calculation is necessary - some way to choose the better alternatives from the worse.

Many philosophers believe that we humans use our (logical) brains to make such choices - or that ideally we do so. I believe the mego makes these decisions based solely on the emotional (feel good / feel bad) value of the expected outcome. We certainly use our logical ability to help us predict the outcome of the alternatives, and possibly even to create more alternatives - and that's a powerful tool indeed. But any animal that makes a choice - is attempting to predict the future, even if they are not aware they are doing so. Non-human animals are simply restricted to instinct, memory and very rudimentary logic if any. No matter what an animal's ability to predict the outcome, the decision is made I believe, according to which alternative (they believe) will result in "feeling" as good as possible - or at least feeling better than any of the alternatives. I believe this search for emotionally positive outcomes is the mental force of will that guides all animals, not just humans, through the thousands of decisions that guide us through our daily lives.

For example, when someone adopts the belief that there is a supernatural being who controls the universe it is because, weighing all the alternatives, they believed that would result in the greatest happiness for them in the future. While their logic may have given them a qualified no - their mego weighed that against the awe and beauty of religious ceremony, the need for acceptance and love from family and friends, the sense of community they could derive from enlisting, the desire for a life after death - all emotion packed considerations. For some, the logical results, even afforded substantial emotional weight in the struggle, just can't compete against the overwhelming emotional content of the arguments for faith.

Granted, some humans are more logical than others. They use their rational mind frequently and more competently. They give more emotional value to its conclusions. I suspect this is because they grew up where rationality was valued and because they've had many experiences in life where logical results proved good for them - for their well-being and survival. As they grew they exercised that ability and became better at it. As adults they feel better about the information that rational mind provides and they give it more emotional weight when considering an important decision.

Of course, the question is more complex than this. For one thing, the rational mind itself is far from omniscient. It is subject to bad inputs and faulty reasoning. Also, many questions are beyond logical analysis and it's not always easy to know when that's the case. Even very logical people are wise to be skeptical of the output of their rational mind.

Another factor is that by the time we become adults we have learned to trust our rational minds more or less in some areas of life than others. For example, there are people who follow their daily horoscope and believe that lucky numbers will win the lottery. Yet, these people can be perfectly rational in most other areas of their life. And we all know of capable scientists who profess a belief in God. To me, this selective application of logic explains why smart people can believe weird things, a question addressed by Michael Shermer in some of his writings. I'm reminded of the Intelligent Design movement.

We also tend to use our logical abilities, more or less, depending on the emotional stakes involved. For example, under great stress, we can abandon our calcula entirely and resort to the strictly emotional logic-less mechanisms that have protected us throughout most of our pre-human evolutionary history. It seems to me that our senses and memory are hardwired to our mego. The mego is constantly awash in their outputs, even as we sleep, and always has a current sense of our well-being - because that's it's job. If our DNA's well-being is threatened or there is an opportunity to enhance our survival, a mental action is generated. A mother will awake to the cries of her child with no assistance from her rational mind.

But unlike the information from our senses that carry unconscious emotional weight, we must willfully engage our rational mind and give weight to its output. I suspect that fear can cause the emotional signals from our memory and senses to become so strong that it can distract us from enlisting our rational mind and even if we do, it can swamp its output. We can become emotional and distraught losing our ability to remain calm and "calculated". Soldiers and policemen are trained to retain their logical capacities under stress but I think that all humans can "lose it" under very high stress.

Another level of complexity in humans is caused by the millions of memes that we carry in our minds. Some of us carry very strong memes that define our world view and our beliefs that we protect vigorously. They make us feel good when we contemplate making decisions that fit with their doctrine - and make us feel bad if we consider decisions that don't. When someone is heavily infected with such strongly held memes (we sometimes call them zealots) the emotions produced by those memes can be strong enough to overpower the emotional values produced by their memory, senses or logic. These people can organize their whole lives around the emotional signals produced by those particular memes. Few of us would fall into the zealot category - but most of us carry memes in some areas of our lives that can produce emotions strong enough to overcome logical considerations.

But the memes we carry are a part of human nature. We will always respond to thumbs-up, thumbs-down emotional signals from our memes as a significant part of our decision-making process. In my opinion, we can greatly increase our chance of happiness in life by consciously choosing to infect ourselves (perhaps inoculate is a better word) with good memes that support objectively positive values - that we rationally choose ourselves. Then, the decisions we make are more likely to increase our own well-being and the happiness of those around us. See Brodie - Virus of the Mind.

The important point here is that logic is just one of many inputs to our decision-making process - one that we get to decide how much weight to give it - how strongly we should "feel" about our logical conclusions. Rational people make logical decisions because they have learned to give appropriate emotional weight to the results they get from their rational mind, not because their rational mind makes decisions for them. We will always make decisions according to how good we believe we will feel as a result.

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This model of the brain that I use for my music students isn't nearly so concerned with weighing the output of the rational mind. Instead, I focus on other functional parts of the brain, such as the cerebellum, where fine muscle movements are memorized and controlled. But music is a felt experience. In order to learn how to make music it helps to understand the role of the mego and the rational mind in that process.

I believe that making music, especially in a group, where we sing, drum, dance, chant, pluck strings and blow air through pipes, is a very basic human activity that predates the development of our advanced logical abilities - and probably was a key step in that development. Music exercises our emotional and logical mental processes interactively and affirms a sense of cooperation and community with others, social adaptations that have always been crucial to human survival. It's no wonder we derive such great pleasure from it. No wonder it feels so good.