HL Prologue: Literary Depth, Mental Shallows

Prologue: Literary Depth, Mental Shallows
Note:PRO@@@@@@@ libero arbitrio costruzionismo3 paradigmi1 poichè abbiamo delle ragioni facciamo delle cose...scelta razionale2 facciamo delle cose e poi escogitiamo delle ragioni...razionalizzazione3 facciamo delle cose perchè si associano a certe ragioni...armonizzazionesolo 3 implica libertà e limiti all arbitrio

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when we claim to be just using our powers of inner observation, we are always actually engaging in a sort of impromptu theorizing – and
Note:EPIGRAFE

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At the climax of Anna Karenina, the heroine throws herself under a train as it moves out of a station on the edge of Moscow. But did she want to die?
Note:DILEMMA

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Had the ennui of Russian aristocratic life and the fear of losing her lover Vronsky become so intolerable
Note:PRIMA IPOTESI

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Or was her final act mere capriciousness, a theatrical gesture of despair,
Note:SECONDA

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imagine that we ask Anna herself.
Note:CONTROFATTUALE

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Anna will be as unsure as anyone else about her true motivations.
Note:FORSE...ANCHE LEI DEVE INTERPRETARE

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we may be sceptical that her own interpretation is any more compelling than the interpretations of others.
Note:PROBABILMENTE

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the distorting lens of self-perception.
Note:COSA LA SVANTAGGIA?

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Autobiography always deserves a measure of scepticism.
Note:CI SI VUOLE NOBILITARE

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Might we get closer to Anna’s true motivations if we asked her not in hindsight, but at the time?
Note:ALTERNATIVA

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This strategy seems unlikely to succeed, to put it mildly.
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The first possible moral is that our minds have dark and unfathomable ‘hidden depths’.
Note:PRIMA CONCLUSIONE

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uncovering the true motivations for human behaviour needs more than the blunderbuss of asking people directly.
Note:SECONDO

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We need somehow to dive deep into the inner workings of the mind,
Note:COSA OCCORRE

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Word associations, the interpretation of dreams, hours of intensive psychotherapy, behavioural experiments, physiological recordings and brain imaging
Note:STRUMENTI X DISSEPPELLIRE LA MOTIVAZIONE

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hidden fears and desires;
Note:FREUDIANI

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no hidden beliefs, desires, hopes or fears are ever actually observed.
Note:FALLIMENTO DI TUTTI...ALTRIMENTI POTREMMO PREVEDERE

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the project of charting our hidden depths is not merely technically difficult, but fundamentally misconceived; the very idea that our minds contain ‘hidden depths’ is utterly wrong.
Note:TESI DEL LIBRO

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the interpretation of the motives of real people is no different from the interpretations of fictional characters. And fictional characters can’t, of course, have an inner life,
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prefers Bach to Mozart,
Note:LE DOMANDE CHE RINVIANO AL PROFONDO

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No amount of therapy, dream analysis, word association, experiment or brain-scanning can recover a person’s ‘true motives’,
Note:IMPOSSIBILE RINTRACCIARE IL NULLA

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The inner, mental world, and the beliefs, motives and fears it is supposed to contain is, itself, a work of the imagination.
Note:L NVENZIONE DEL PROFONDO

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We invent interpretations of ourselves and other people in the flow of experience,
Note:COSTRUZIONE DELLA STORIA

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nothing more than interpretations of a ‘real’ Anna’s behaviour;
Note:SOLO SOGGETTIVITÀ...ANCHE X LA STESSA ANNA...L INTENZIONE NN VIENE CATTURATA DALLA SCIENZA

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We never have the last word in explaining our own actions – our
Note:LA VITA COME OPERA

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Yet the unfolding of a life is not so different from the unfolding of a novel.
Note:ANCORA VITA E OPERA

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Thoughts, like fiction, come into existence in the instant that they are invented, and not a moment before.
Note:IL PASSATO DI UN PENSIERO

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introspection is a process not of perception but of invention
Note:COSTRUZIONISMO INTERIORE SENZA REALTÀ

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apparent depth is, of course, ‘in the eye of the beholder’:
Note:SOGGETTIVISMO

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The sense that behaviour is merely the surface of a vast sea, immeasurably deep and teeming with inner motives, beliefs and desires
Note:L ILLUSIONE

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Beliefs, motives and other imagined inhabitants of our ‘inner world’ are entirely a figment of our imaginations.
Note:PERSONAGGI DI UNA FINZIONE

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The mind is, instead, a consummate improviser, inventing actions, and beliefs and desires to explain those actions, with wonderful fluidity.
Note:GLI NGANNI DELLA MENTE

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inventions are flimsy, fragmented and self-contradictory;
Note:LA QUALITÀ DELL OPERA

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the very task of our improvising mind is to make our thoughts and behaviour as coherent as possible – to
Note:L OBBIETTIVO FINALE

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our brains must strive continually to think and act in the current moment in a way that aligns as well as possible with our prior thoughts and actions.
Note:LO SFORZO

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So the secret of our minds lies not in supposed hidden depths, but in our remarkable ability to creatively improvise our present, on the theme of our past.
Note:METTERE I PEZZI AL POSTO GIUSTO...COSTRUIRE UN BEL PERSONAGGIO

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In the first, I attempt to clear away what I take to be fundamental and widespread misunderstandings of how our mind works. I then turn to present a positive account of the brain as a ceaseless improviser.
Note:STRUTTURA DEL LIBRO

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The common-sense mind and the mind we discover through experiment just don’t seem to fit together.
Note:SCOPRIREMO CHE È TUTTO SBAGLIATO

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subliminal perception,
Note:ILLUSIONE DI PROFONDITÀ

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unconscious beliefs, motives, desires
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inner agents (for Freud, the id, ego, and superego; for Jung, the collective unconscious).
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Many believe that with the right meditative practice, psychotherapy or even hallucinogenic drug, the doors to the rich inner world of the unconscious might be prised open.
Note:LA CURA...FANTASTICA

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There is no inner world. Our flow of momentary conscious experience is not the sparkling surface of a vast sea of thought – it is all there is.
Note:ESISTE SOLO LA COSCIENZA

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Our brain is an improviser, and it bases its current improvisations on previous improvisations: it creates new momentary thoughts and experiences by drawing not on a hidden inner world of knowledge, beliefs and motives, but on memory traces of previous momentary thoughts and experiences.
Note:PARS CONSTRUENS

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he strives to make Anna’s words and actions as coherent as possible – she should ‘stay in character’ or her character should ‘develop’ as the novel unfolds.
Note:L ANALOGIA CON TOLSTOJ QUI GIOVA

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a good interpretation is one that does not just make sense of the present moment, but links it with our past actions,
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linking the present with the past, just as writing a novel
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my argument will be illustrated through examples from visual perception.
Note:L ANALOGIA CHE USERÒ

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an engine for spontaneously finding meaning and choosing actions that make the best sense in the moment.
Note:LA MENTE E LE NUVOLE

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So what makes each of us special is, to a large extent, the uniqueness of our individual history of prior thoughts and experiences. In other words, each of us is a unique tradition,
Note:IDENTITÀ

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we will see that we are, in a very real sense, characters of our own creation,
Note:ANCORA

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Our freedom has its limits, of course. Amateur saxophonists can’t ‘freely’ choose to play like Charlie Parker, new learners of English can’t spontaneously emulate Sylvia Plath,
Note:LIMITI DELLA LIBERTÀ

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New actions, skills and thoughts require building a rich and deep mental tradition;

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and there is no shortcut to the thousands of hours needed to lay down the traces on which expertise is based.
Note:COSTRUIRE UNA TRADIZIONE

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Our freedom consists not in the ability magically to transform ourselves in a single jump, but to reshape our thoughts and behaviours, one step at a time:
Note:AGGIORNARSI

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Perhaps the most fundamental inspiration for me has come from attempts to understand the brain as a biological computing machine.
Note:FONTE ISPIRATRICE

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But it is very hard to reconcile this vision of the machinery of the brain with our everyday intuitions that our minds are guided by beliefs and desires.
Note:RICONCILIAZIONE

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In short, common-sense psychology sees our thought and behaviour as rooted in reasoning, but a lot of human intelligence seems to be a matter of finding complex patterns.
Note:RAGIONAMENTO E CONNESSIONE

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Psychologists and philosophers, from B. F. Skinner to Daniel Dennett,
Note:LE FONTI SCETTICHE

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Some past sceptics about those common-sense stories have a very different agenda: doubting, for example, that the brain is any kind of computer at all.
Note:UNA SETRANA SCHIERA DI AUTORI

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I’m going to take it as uncontroversial that the brain is a biological computing machine.
Note:È VERO IL BCONTRARIO

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beliefs and desires
Note:DA SOSTITUIRE CON CALCOLO

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Building intelligent machines would be off to a flying start if it happened that we could just ask people what they knew – and write this knowledge directly into a computer database.
Note:IA SAREBBE MOLTO SEMPLICE SE...

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the rich mental world we imagine that we are ‘looking in on’ moment-by-moment, is actually a story that we are inventing moment-by-moment.
IL VERO NN ESISTE...SIAMO ROBOTTONI BIOLOGICI COMANDATI DA UN CERVELLO CHE COESTRUISCE MODELLI E LI AGGIORNA