Archive for August 2010
brain scan
Our thoughts must be encoded somewhere in our neurons – not IN neurons but in the way they wire up and fire up. Would it be possible to scan those connections – in essence probing the circuits to reveal their structure? We do this in conversation when trying to get answers, but could we diagnose a person (e.g., as holding certain ideas, or thought patterns) by running a script of sorts rather than ‘mechanically’? Thoughts are, of course, not static things contained in a brain but rather ever changing within the neural landscape.
I wonder how much of our thinking is deterministic. Could we ask a person the same question, something totally mundane like: ‘do you like blue?’ and get a consistent answer on different days (assuming they haven’t changed their ‘mind’). More to the point, linguists have shown that by activating certain ‘frames’ respondents will answer questions differently. This is quite interesting and alludes to the idea of ‘priming’ when it comes to manipulation. But my interest here is not explicit manipulation but rather the self-delusion of, let’s call it self-reporting. We tell ourselves narratives, about the world, about ourselves, and surely believe them to an extent.
Perhaps the most empirical of people, then, are those that recognize and can’t believe their own silly stories.
