Saturday, April 5, 2014

making sense

Neuroscience appears to be telling us that vertebrate brains operate with help from a variety of fast-response modules which don't always communicate well with one another, and that in human brains the same is true of the idea-linked public-relations (PR) module which plays such a big role in the way that we inform behaviors on all levels i.e. behaviors that look inward and outward from the boundaries of skin, family and culture. As a result idea-based redirection of behaviors is by no means perfect, regardless of what our PR module likes to pretend.

Hence the desire to "make sense" of reactive-module (e.g. fight/flight) behaviors on the part of others may itself be missing the fact that fast-response modules can operate without conscious permission. In fact these modules can also guide which patterns our PR module chooses to think about, whether we recognize their involvement or not.

This does not release individuals from the responsibility of managing all of their behavior modules to the greater good. However, it might require that our attempts to make sense of behaviors (socially and economically) move beyond the narrative of "conscious motive". The PR module in our head often only gets to make up its story about a behavior's reasonability after the fact.