Cowardly.
In fact, in the course of everyday thought, each person is likely to frequently switch among such views or attitudes, and we usually don’t even notice this. However, when we encounter more serious trouble, our Critics may make enough changes to start the large-scale cascades that we describe in terms of emotional states.
Psychiatrist: What would happen if too many Critics were active? Then your emotions would keep changing too quickly. And if those Critics stopped working at all, then you’d get stuck in just one of those states.
Perhaps we can see an example of this in Antonio R. Damasio’s book, Descartes’ Error,[131] which describes a patient named Elliot, who had lost some parts of his frontal lobes in the course of removing a tumor. After that treatment, he still seemed intelligent—but his friends and employers had the sense that Elliott was ‘no longer himself.’ For example, if asked to sort some documents, he was likely to spend an entire day at carefully reading just one of those papers—or at trying to decide whether to classify them by name—or by subject or size or date or by weight.
Damasio: “One might say that the particular step of the task at which Elliot balked was actually being carried out too well, and at the expense of the overall purpose. … True, he was still physically capable and most of his mental capacities were intact. But his ability to reach decisions was impaired, as was his ability to make an effective plan for the hours ahead of him, let alone to plan for the months and years of his future.”
The damaged parts of Elliot’s brain included certain connections (to the amygdala) that are widely believed to be involved with how we control our emotions.
Damasio: “At first glance, there was nothing out of the ordinary about Elliot’s emotions. … However, something was missing. … He was not inhibiting the expression of internal emotional resonance or hushing inner turmoil. He simply did not have any turmoil to hush. … I never saw a tinge of emotion in my many hours of conversation with him: no sadness, no impatience, and no frustration with my incessant and repetitious questioning.”
This led Damasio to suggest that “reduced emotion and feeling might play a role in Elliot’s decision–making failures.” However, we could also consider this opposite view: that it was Elliot’s new inability to make such decisions that reduced his range of emotions and feelings. For, perhaps the damage in Elliott’s brain was mainly to some of the Critics (or to their connections) that formerly set off the large-scale cascades that we recognize as emotional states. Then he would have lost those precious cascades—and hence, the emotions that he once displayed—because he could no longer could exploit those Critics to choose which emotional states to use.
??????????????????? §7-3. The Critic-Selector Model of Mind
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
—Poul Anderson No problem is so formidable that you can’t walk away from it.
—Charles Schulz We frequently change what we’re thinking about, without noticing that we are doing this—because it is mainly when some trouble comes that we start to reflect about thinking itself. Thus, we don’t recognize a problem as ‘hard’ until we’ve spent some time on it without making any significant progress. Even then, if that problem does not seem important, you might just abandon that line of thought and simply turn to some other subject.
However, if you have an important goal, then it is useful to notice that you are stuck—and it will be even more useful if you also can recognize that you’re being blocked by a certain particular type of barrier, obstacle, impasse, or snag. For if you are able to diagnose the particular “Type of Problem” you face, then that knowledge can help you to switch to a more appropriate “Way to Think.”
This suggests a Model of Mind based on reacting to ‘cognitive obstacles.’ We’ll call this the Critic-Selector model:
On the left are resources that we shall call Critics, each of which can recognize a certain species of “Problem-Type.” When a Critic sees enough evidence that you now are facing its type of problem, then that Critic will try to activate a “Way to Think” that may be useful in this situation.
For example, a Critic-Selector model could embody a set of ‘rules’ like these:
If a problem seems familiar, try reasoning by Analogy.
If it seems unfamiliar, change how you’re describing it.
If it still seems too difficult, divide it into several parts.
If it seems too complex, replace it by a simpler one.
If no other method works, ask another person for help.
Every person accumulates a collection of different “Ways to Think” because, as we’ve repeated many times, no single method or mental technique can solve every kind of problem-type; however, if we have enough of them then, whenever the one we’re using fails, we’ll be able to switch to a different one.
However, there is a problem that is sure to arise in any system based on If-Then rules: what if more than one Critic or “If” is aroused? [132] Then we might decide which one to use by adopting some policy like these:
Choose the Critic with the highest priority. [Ref: GPS]
Choose the one that is most strongly aroused. [Ref. Pandemonium]
Choose the one that gives the most specific advice. [Ref. Raphael]
Have them all compete in some ‘marketplace.’ [See §9-X]
Simple strategies like these will work in simple cases, but will fail in more complex situations. Then we’ll need higher-level Critics that recognize and suggest ways to change our bad selections of low-level Critics:
If too many Critics are aroused, then describe the problem in more
