Well, whether or not a model is needlessly complex depends on what it needs to explain. :-)
Back when I started thinking about the nature of suffering, I also had a relatively simple model, basically boiling down to “suffering is about wanting conflicting things”. (Upon re-reading that post from nine years back, I see that I credit you for a part of the model that I outlined there. We’ve been at this for a while. :-)) I still had it until relatively recently. But I found that there were things which it didn’t really explain or predict. For example:
You can decouple valence and aversion, so that painful sensations appear just as painful as before, but do not trigger aversion.
Changes to the sense of self cause changes even to the aversiveness of things that don’t seem to be related to a self-model (e.g. physical pain).
You can learn to concentrate better by training your mind to notice that it keeps predicting that indulging in a distraction is going to eliminate the discomfort from the distracting urges, but that it could just as well just drop the distraction entirely.
There are mental moves that you can make to investigate craving, in such a way which causes the mind to notice that maintaining the craving is actually preventing it from feeling good, and then dropping it.
If you can get your mind into states in which there is little or no craving, then those states will feel intrinsically good without regard to their valence.
Upon investigation, you can notice that many states that you had thought were purely pleasant actually contain a degree of subtle discomfort; releasing the craving in those states then gets you into states that are more pleasant overall.
If you train your mind to have enough sensory precision, you can eventually come to directly observe how the mind carries out the kinds of steps that I described under “Let’s say that there is this kind of a process”: an experience being painted with valence, that valence triggering craving, a new self being fabricated by that craving, and so on.
From your responses, it’s not clear to me how much credibility you lend to these kinds of claims. If you feel that meditation doesn’t actually provide any real insight into how minds work and that I’m just deluded, then I think that that’s certainly a reasonable position to hold. I don’t think that that position is true, mind you, but it seems reasonable that you might be skeptical. After all, most of the research on the topic is low quality, there’s plenty of room for placebo and motivated reasoning effects, introspection is famously unreliable, et cetera.
But ISTM that if you are willing to at least grant that me and others who are saying these kinds of things are not outright lying about our subjective experience… then you need to at least explain how come it seems to us like the urge and the aversion from resisting the urge can become decoupled, or why it seems to us like reductions in the sense of self systematically lead to reductions in the aversiveness of negative valence.
I agree that if I were just developing a model of human motivation and suffering from first principles and from what seems to make evolutionary sense, I wouldn’t arrive at this kind of an explanation. “An urge directly combines an itch and the desire to scratch it” would certainly be a much more parsimonious model… but it would then predict that you can’t have an urge without a corresponding need to engage in it, and that prediction is contradicted both by my experience and the experience of many others who engage in these kinds of practices.
No, that’s a good point, as far as it goes. There does seem to be some sort of meta-process that you can use to decouple from craving regarding these things, though in my experience it seems to require continuous attention, like an actively inhibitory process. In contrast, the model description you gave made it sound like craving was an active process that one could simply refrain from, and I don’t think that’s predictively accurate.
Your points regarding what’s possible with meditation also make some sense… it’s just that I have trouble reconciling the obvious evolutionary model with “WTF is meditation doing?” in a way that doesn’t produce things that shouldn’t be there.
Consciously, I know it’s possible to become willing to experience things that you previously were unwilling to experience, and that this can eliminate aversion. I model this largely under the second major motivational mechanic, that of risk/reward, effort/payoff.
That is, that system can decide that some negative thing is “worth it” and drop conflict about it. And meditation could theoretically reset the threshold for that, since to some extent meditation is just sitting there, despite the lack of payoff and the considerable payoffs offered to respond to current urges. If this recalibrates the payoff system, it would make sense within my own model, and resolve the part where I don’t see how what you describe could be a truly conscious process, in the way that you made it sound.
IOW, I might more say that part of our motivational system is a module for determining what urges should be acted upon and which are not worth it, or perhaps that translates mind/body/external states into urges or lack thereof, and that you can retrain this system to have different baselines for what constitutes “urge”-ency. ;-) (And thus, a non-conscious version of “valence” in your model.)
That doesn’t quite work either, because ISTM that meditation changes the threshold for all urges, not just the specific ones trained. Also, the part about identification isn’t covered here either. It might be yet another system being trained, perhaps the elusive “executive function” system?
On the other hand, I find that the Investor (my name for the risk/reward, effort/payoff module) is easily tricked into dropping urges for reasons other than self-identification. For example, the Investor can be tricked into letting you get out of a warm bed into a cold night if you imagine you have already done so. By imagining that you are already cold, there is nothing to be gained by refraining from getting up, and this shifts the “valence”, as you call it, in favor of getting up, because the Investor fundamentally works on comparing projections against an “expected status quo”. So if you convince it that some other status quo is “expected”, it can be made to go along with almost anything.
And so I suppose if you imagine that it is not you who is the one who is going to be cold, then that might work just as well. Or perhaps making it “not me” somehow convinces the Investor that the changes in state are not salient to its evaluations?
Hm. Now that my attention has been drawn to this, it’s like an itch I need to scratch. :) I am wondering now, “Wait, why is the Investor so easily tricked?” And for that matter, given that it is so easily tricked, could the feats attributed to long-term meditation be accomplished in general using such tricks? Can I imagine my way to no-self and get the benefits without meditating, even if only temporarily?
Also, I wonder if I have been overlooking the possibility to use Investor mind-tricks to deal with task-switching inertia, which is very similar to having to get out of a warm bed. What if I imagine I have already changed tasks? Hm. Also, if I am imagining no-self, will starting unpleasant tasks be less aversive?
Okay, I’m off to experiment now. This is exciting!
I am very much impressed by the exchange in the parent-comments and cannot upvote sufficiently.
With regards to the ‘mental motion’:
In contrast, the model description you gave made it sound like craving was an active process that one could simply refrain from [...]
As I see it, the perspective of this (sometimes) being an active process makes sense from the global workspace theory perspective: There is a part of one’s mind that actually decides on activating craving or not. (Especially if trained through meditation) it is possible to connect this part to the global workspace and thus consciousness, which allows noticing and influencing the decision. If this connection is strong enough and can be activated consciously, it can make sense to call this process a mental motion.
There does seem to be some sort of meta-process that you can use to decouple from craving regarding these things, though in my experience it seems to require continuous attention, like an actively inhibitory process. In contrast, the model description you gave made it sound like craving was an active process that one could simply refrain from, and I don’t think that’s predictively accurate.
An analogy that I might use is that learning to let go of craving, is kind of the opposite of the thing where you practice an effortful thing until it becomes automatic. Craving usually triggers automatically and outside your conscious control, but you can come to gradually increase your odds of being able to notice it, catch it, and do something about it.
“An actively inhibitory process” sounds accurate for some of the mental motions involved. Though merely just bringing more conscious attention to the process also seems to affect it, and in some cases interrupt it, even if you don’t actively inhibit it.
If this recalibrates the payoff system, it would make sense within my own model, and resolve the part where I don’t see how what you describe could be a truly conscious process, in the way that you made it sound.
Not sure how I made it sound :-) but a good description might be “semi-conscious”, in the same sense that something like Focusing can be: you do it, something conscious comes up, and then a change might happen. Sometimes enough becomes consciously accessible that you can clearly see what it was about, sometimes you just get a weird sensation and know that something has shifted, without knowing exactly what.
Okay, I’m off to experiment now. This is exciting!
Eh. Sorta? I’ve been busy with clients the last few days, not a lot of time for experimenting. I have occasionally found myself, or rather, found not-myself, several times, almost entirely accidentally or incidentally. A little like a perspective shift changing between two possible interpretations of an image; or more literally, like a shift between first-person, and third-person-over-the-shoulder in a video game.
In the third person perspective, I can observe limbs moving, feel the keys under my fingers as they type, and yet I am not the one who’s doing it. (Which, I suppose, I never really was anyway.)
TBH, I’m not sure if it’s that I haven’t found any unpleasant experiences to try this on, or if it’s more that because I’ve been spontaneously shifting to this state, I haven’t found anything to be an unpleasant experience. :-)
Cool, that sounds like a mild no-self state alright. :) Though any strong valence is likely to trigger a self schema and pull you out of it, but it’s a question of practice.
Your description kinda reminds me of the approach in Loch Kelly’s The Way of Effortless Mindfulness; it has various brief practices that may induce states like the one that you describe. E.g. in this one, you imagine the kind of a relaxing state in which there is no problem to solve and the sense of self just falls away. (Directly imagining a no-self state is hard, because checking whether you are in a no-self state yet activates the self-schema. But if you instead imagine an external state which is likely to put you in a no-self state, you don’t get that kind of self-reference, no pun intended.)
First, read this mindful glimpse below. Next, choose a memory of a time you felt a sense of freedom, connection, and well-being. Then do this mindful glimpse using your memory as a door to discover the effortless mindfulness that is already here now.
1. Close your eyes. Picture a time when you felt well-being while doing something active like hiking in nature. In your mind, see and feel every detail of that day. Hear the sounds, smell the smells, and feel the air on your skin; notice the enjoyment of being with your companions or by yourself; recall the feeling of walking those last few yards toward your destination.
2. Visualize and feel yourself as you have reached your goal and are looking out over the wide-open vista. Feel that openness, connection to nature, sense of peace and well-being. Having reached your goal, feel what it’s like when there’s no more striving and nothing to do. See that wide-open sky with no agenda to think about, and then simply stop. Feel this deep sense of relief and peace.
3. Now, begin to let go of the visualization, the past, and all associated memories slowly and completely. Remain connected to the joy of being that is here within you.
4. As you open your eyes, feel how the well-being that was experienced then is also here now. It does not require you to go to any particular place in the past or the future once it’s discovered within and all around.
Recently I’ve also gotten interested in the Alexander Technique, which seems to have a pretty straightforward series of steps for expanding your awareness and then getting your mind to just automatically do things in a way which feels like non-doing. It also seems to induce the kinds of states that you describe, of just watching oneself work, which I had previously only gotten from meditation.
Can you pick up a ball without trying to pick up the ball? It sounds contradictory, but it turns out that there is a specific behaviour we do when we are “trying”, and this behaviour is unnecessary to pick up the ball.
How is this possible? Well, consider when you’ve picked up something to fiddle with without realising. You didn’t consciously intend for it to end up in your hand, but there it is. There was an effortlessness to it. [...]
But this kind of non-‘deliberate’ effortless action needn’t be automatic and unchosen, like a nervous fiddling habit; nor need it require redirected attention / collapsed awareness, like not noticing you picked up the object. You can be fully aware of what you’re doing, and ‘watch’ yourself doing it, while choosing to do it, and yet still have there be this effortless “it just happened” quality. [...]
Suppose you do actually want to pick up that ball over there. But you don’t want to ‘do’ picking-up-the-ball. The solution is to set an intention.
[1] Have the intention to pick up the ball. [2] Expand your awareness to include what’s all around you, the room, the route to the ball, and your body inside the room. [3] Notice any reactions of trying to do picking-up-the-ball (like “I am going to march over there and pick up that ball”, or “I am going to get ready to stand up so I can go pick up that ball”, or “I am going to approach the ball to pick it up”) — and decline those reactions. [4] Wait. Patiently hold the intention to pick up the ball. Don’t stop yourself from moving — stopping yourself is another kind of ‘doing’ — yet don’t try to deliberately/consciously move. [5] Let movement happen.
Well, whether or not a model is needlessly complex depends on what it needs to explain. :-)
Back when I started thinking about the nature of suffering, I also had a relatively simple model, basically boiling down to “suffering is about wanting conflicting things”. (Upon re-reading that post from nine years back, I see that I credit you for a part of the model that I outlined there. We’ve been at this for a while. :-)) I still had it until relatively recently. But I found that there were things which it didn’t really explain or predict. For example:
You can decouple valence and aversion, so that painful sensations appear just as painful as before, but do not trigger aversion.
Changes to the sense of self cause changes even to the aversiveness of things that don’t seem to be related to a self-model (e.g. physical pain).
You can learn to concentrate better by training your mind to notice that it keeps predicting that indulging in a distraction is going to eliminate the discomfort from the distracting urges, but that it could just as well just drop the distraction entirely.
There are mental moves that you can make to investigate craving, in such a way which causes the mind to notice that maintaining the craving is actually preventing it from feeling good, and then dropping it.
If you can get your mind into states in which there is little or no craving, then those states will feel intrinsically good without regard to their valence.
Upon investigation, you can notice that many states that you had thought were purely pleasant actually contain a degree of subtle discomfort; releasing the craving in those states then gets you into states that are more pleasant overall.
If you train your mind to have enough sensory precision, you can eventually come to directly observe how the mind carries out the kinds of steps that I described under “Let’s say that there is this kind of a process”: an experience being painted with valence, that valence triggering craving, a new self being fabricated by that craving, and so on.
From your responses, it’s not clear to me how much credibility you lend to these kinds of claims. If you feel that meditation doesn’t actually provide any real insight into how minds work and that I’m just deluded, then I think that that’s certainly a reasonable position to hold. I don’t think that that position is true, mind you, but it seems reasonable that you might be skeptical. After all, most of the research on the topic is low quality, there’s plenty of room for placebo and motivated reasoning effects, introspection is famously unreliable, et cetera.
But ISTM that if you are willing to at least grant that me and others who are saying these kinds of things are not outright lying about our subjective experience… then you need to at least explain how come it seems to us like the urge and the aversion from resisting the urge can become decoupled, or why it seems to us like reductions in the sense of self systematically lead to reductions in the aversiveness of negative valence.
I agree that if I were just developing a model of human motivation and suffering from first principles and from what seems to make evolutionary sense, I wouldn’t arrive at this kind of an explanation. “An urge directly combines an itch and the desire to scratch it” would certainly be a much more parsimonious model… but it would then predict that you can’t have an urge without a corresponding need to engage in it, and that prediction is contradicted both by my experience and the experience of many others who engage in these kinds of practices.
No, that’s a good point, as far as it goes. There does seem to be some sort of meta-process that you can use to decouple from craving regarding these things, though in my experience it seems to require continuous attention, like an actively inhibitory process. In contrast, the model description you gave made it sound like craving was an active process that one could simply refrain from, and I don’t think that’s predictively accurate.
Your points regarding what’s possible with meditation also make some sense… it’s just that I have trouble reconciling the obvious evolutionary model with “WTF is meditation doing?” in a way that doesn’t produce things that shouldn’t be there.
Consciously, I know it’s possible to become willing to experience things that you previously were unwilling to experience, and that this can eliminate aversion. I model this largely under the second major motivational mechanic, that of risk/reward, effort/payoff.
That is, that system can decide that some negative thing is “worth it” and drop conflict about it. And meditation could theoretically reset the threshold for that, since to some extent meditation is just sitting there, despite the lack of payoff and the considerable payoffs offered to respond to current urges. If this recalibrates the payoff system, it would make sense within my own model, and resolve the part where I don’t see how what you describe could be a truly conscious process, in the way that you made it sound.
IOW, I might more say that part of our motivational system is a module for determining what urges should be acted upon and which are not worth it, or perhaps that translates mind/body/external states into urges or lack thereof, and that you can retrain this system to have different baselines for what constitutes “urge”-ency. ;-) (And thus, a non-conscious version of “valence” in your model.)
That doesn’t quite work either, because ISTM that meditation changes the threshold for all urges, not just the specific ones trained. Also, the part about identification isn’t covered here either. It might be yet another system being trained, perhaps the elusive “executive function” system?
On the other hand, I find that the Investor (my name for the risk/reward, effort/payoff module) is easily tricked into dropping urges for reasons other than self-identification. For example, the Investor can be tricked into letting you get out of a warm bed into a cold night if you imagine you have already done so. By imagining that you are already cold, there is nothing to be gained by refraining from getting up, and this shifts the “valence”, as you call it, in favor of getting up, because the Investor fundamentally works on comparing projections against an “expected status quo”. So if you convince it that some other status quo is “expected”, it can be made to go along with almost anything.
And so I suppose if you imagine that it is not you who is the one who is going to be cold, then that might work just as well. Or perhaps making it “not me” somehow convinces the Investor that the changes in state are not salient to its evaluations?
Hm. Now that my attention has been drawn to this, it’s like an itch I need to scratch. :) I am wondering now, “Wait, why is the Investor so easily tricked?” And for that matter, given that it is so easily tricked, could the feats attributed to long-term meditation be accomplished in general using such tricks? Can I imagine my way to no-self and get the benefits without meditating, even if only temporarily?
Also, I wonder if I have been overlooking the possibility to use Investor mind-tricks to deal with task-switching inertia, which is very similar to having to get out of a warm bed. What if I imagine I have already changed tasks? Hm. Also, if I am imagining no-self, will starting unpleasant tasks be less aversive?
Okay, I’m off to experiment now. This is exciting!
I am very much impressed by the exchange in the parent-comments and cannot upvote sufficiently.
With regards to the ‘mental motion’:
As I see it, the perspective of this (sometimes) being an active process makes sense from the global workspace theory perspective: There is a part of one’s mind that actually decides on activating craving or not. (Especially if trained through meditation) it is possible to connect this part to the global workspace and thus consciousness, which allows noticing and influencing the decision. If this connection is strong enough and can be activated consciously, it can make sense to call this process a mental motion.
Cool. :)
An analogy that I might use is that learning to let go of craving, is kind of the opposite of the thing where you practice an effortful thing until it becomes automatic. Craving usually triggers automatically and outside your conscious control, but you can come to gradually increase your odds of being able to notice it, catch it, and do something about it.
“An actively inhibitory process” sounds accurate for some of the mental motions involved. Though merely just bringing more conscious attention to the process also seems to affect it, and in some cases interrupt it, even if you don’t actively inhibit it.
Not sure how I made it sound :-) but a good description might be “semi-conscious”, in the same sense that something like Focusing can be: you do it, something conscious comes up, and then a change might happen. Sometimes enough becomes consciously accessible that you can clearly see what it was about, sometimes you just get a weird sensation and know that something has shifted, without knowing exactly what.
Any results yet? :)
Eh. Sorta? I’ve been busy with clients the last few days, not a lot of time for experimenting. I have occasionally found myself, or rather, found not-myself, several times, almost entirely accidentally or incidentally. A little like a perspective shift changing between two possible interpretations of an image; or more literally, like a shift between first-person, and third-person-over-the-shoulder in a video game.
In the third person perspective, I can observe limbs moving, feel the keys under my fingers as they type, and yet I am not the one who’s doing it. (Which, I suppose, I never really was anyway.)
TBH, I’m not sure if it’s that I haven’t found any unpleasant experiences to try this on, or if it’s more that because I’ve been spontaneously shifting to this state, I haven’t found anything to be an unpleasant experience. :-)
Cool, that sounds like a mild no-self state alright. :) Though any strong valence is likely to trigger a self schema and pull you out of it, but it’s a question of practice.
Your description kinda reminds me of the approach in Loch Kelly’s The Way of Effortless Mindfulness; it has various brief practices that may induce states like the one that you describe. E.g. in this one, you imagine the kind of a relaxing state in which there is no problem to solve and the sense of self just falls away. (Directly imagining a no-self state is hard, because checking whether you are in a no-self state yet activates the self-schema. But if you instead imagine an external state which is likely to put you in a no-self state, you don’t get that kind of self-reference, no pun intended.)
Recently I’ve also gotten interested in the Alexander Technique, which seems to have a pretty straightforward series of steps for expanding your awareness and then getting your mind to just automatically do things in a way which feels like non-doing. It also seems to induce the kinds of states that you describe, of just watching oneself work, which I had previously only gotten from meditation.