Once you learn that most of the activity of the brain goes on without either conscious awareness, or with conscious awareness only kicking after the initial response, you begin to doubt that all our choices are conscious ones…..or rational ones. In fact, the brain stem and the limbic system are the key centres for our survival responses, our drives, our avoidances, and our emotional processing. How often do we behave in ways which really can’t be understood from the premise of consciously choosing once presented with the facts? Is that how human beings function? Would that even be the best way for human beings to function? (consciously and rationally, whilst discarding other ways of perceiving, processing our experience and responding). What do you think once you learn that there is an enormous neural network around the hollow organs of the body, the heart, and the gut especially, which we might well use to figure things out….where we might process and produce what we call “gut reactions”, or “heart felt” beliefs?
I’ve stumbled on two very different texts in this area in the last couple of days. Isn’t that weird, actually? It’s that old “coincidence” thing again…..never quite got to a point of really figuring out how those “coincidences” come about, or what they mean.
A few days ago, I read about a report for the WWF called “common cause“. The report, written by Tom Crompton. Essentially it argues that if we look at the research evidence, it would seem that human beings don’t make decisions using rational thought very much. Here’s a paragraph from the Summary –
There is mounting evidence from a range of studies in cognitive science that the dominant ‘Enlightenment model’ of human decision-making is extremely incomplete. According to this model we imagine ourselves, when faced with a decision, to be capable of dispassionately assessing the facts, foreseeing probable outcomes of different responses, and then selecting and pursuing an optimal course of action. As a result, many approaches to campaigning on bigger-than-self problems still adhere to the conviction that ‘if only people really knew’ the true nature or full scale of the problems which we confront, then they would be galvanised into demanding more proportionate action in response. But this understanding of how people reach decisions is very incomplete. There is mounting evidence that facts play only a partial role in shaping people’s judgment. Emotion is often far more important [see Section 1.3]. It is increasingly apparent that our collective decisions are based importantly upon a set of factors that often lie beyond conscious awareness, and which are informed in important part by emotion – in particular, dominant cultural values, which are tied to emotion. It seems that individuals are often predisposed to reject information when accepting it would challenge their identity and values.
That’s got me thinking about the importance of understanding our values (and/or our “virtues”) again.
Then, this morning, I read a post about some interesting TED videos, and the first one was this, by Dan Airley. He makes the case that we suffer from “cognitive illusions” just as much, if not more than, we suffer from “optical illusions”. (It’s about how we make decisions. It’s VERY entertaining, and thought provoking, and it’s just 17 minutes long. Take the time to watch it)
Heroes Not Zombies 
This process of learning you are discussing is often called cellular learning. It is the basis for our energy medicine being able to undo the traumas locked in our body which often express as disease(s).
I totally agree with you that our conscious brain is the lagger in our decision-making. People lack consciousness of how their choices are made on faith based belief systems. However, the current hubris of western culture has this belief system that is based in a delusion of rational thinking and inner control. It has such a high value in this level of functioning that it also believes man can do it better than nature. Thus, the belief that man can create drugs to affect health.
Unfortunately, this belief has been developed by a capitalist mentality that believes in the power of money and quest to create by any means necessary that one can get away with. So, here we are today, with a set of social
institutions that supports the greed and dominance of a drug based medical paradigm which pretends to it better than nature. Consequently, nature based healing modalities are attacked. The medicines of these nature based systems cannot be patented and there is no fortune to be made by these corporations with these holistic medicine systems. Couple the financial issue with the fact that holistic healing works better and safer and cheaper and you have an industry on the war path to destroy its competition.
Fortunately for homeopathy we are accumulating a solid list of studies from the physics labs which are showing over and over again that water changes its frequencies when remedies are added. Frequencies of the remedies are able to be graphed demonstrating that something IS there. Actually I read the first study on this back in the early-mid 1990’s. Prestigious folk like Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier has stated that high dilutions are real. He has also shown the courage to talk truth to power and called the attack on homeopathic research “intellectual terrorism!”
People like Roy Rustum, who we sadly lost this past year, have done great research on the structural properties of water. Iris Bell is another major name in the research lexicon of players here.
So when people keep screaming about placebo effect and irrationality of homeopathy, we can give them many sources of research outside the clinical experience which they like to deny. But when they deny the physics studies and the animal and plant studies where placebo is not at play, then we are looking at another level of behavior.
This level of behavior is downright delusions or blatantly lying. The liars are often on the take of big pharma. The delusional ones suffer from a state of Cognitive Dissonance. This is a social science concept well researched. It looks at why people refuse to take in factual information when presented if it disagrees with what they belief; ie, their belief based systems of perception.
You cannot argue with belief systems. And we all have them. Belief is not just about religion, which we know not to argue with–it never works. But belief in a medical system known to be the biggest cause of death in the USA prevents people from looking elsewhere. Fear of leaving that system is great. It is really is like rejecting your faith based religious beliefs. That is what we face in dealing with the delusional denialists–they are really not skeptics at all as they never really read any of the research or look at evidence that contradicts their beliefs.
Just some thoughts relative to your inquiry into how we learn and ake decisions.