Colloquy on Evolution and Culture: HUMAN/NATURE

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THE NATURAL HISTORY of INTUITION
St Elizabeths Episcopal Church Knoxville,
TN Sunday, May 10, 2009
Neil Greenberg Department of Ecology and
Evolutionary Biology University of Tennessee
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REVELATIONa forum for St Elizabeths Episcopal
Church, Knoxville, TN Sunday, 3 May 2009 9AM
Neil GreenbergDepartment of Ecology and
Evolutionary BiologyUniversity of Tennessee
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EVERYDAY REVELATION
The biological programs that lead us to SEEK and
SOLVE the mystery in which we are immersed are
indispensible to growth. Motivation is usually
mitigated by having our most urgent biological
needs met. Sometimes they persist They do not
always shut down when we have grown enough to
meet our biological needs
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REVIEWEveryday Revelations

• Once biological needs are met, we invest energy
  only in consolidating our accomplishments in
  confirming the validity of what we have already
  learned.
• But the inborn programs that lead us to this
  point sometimes persist, often stir again. The
  we are at risk for confrontation with a new
  mystery One that is at or beyond the boundaries
  of reason
• A mystery that threatens to catapult you into a
  new way of being aware of the world. And may
  evoke some extraordinary experiences

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• Ineffable defies expression, cannot be
  described in words.
• Noetic gives insight and knowledge into deep
  truths.
• Transient brief and cannot be accurately
  remembered, though easily recognized if it
  recurs.
• Passivity facilitated by preparation, but
  once begun it seems out of ones control as if
  controlled by a superior power
• William James 1918

The challenge of true mystery can be an
extraordinary experience
ORICL April 2008
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REVELATION Aesthetic arrest
A full awakening, Joseph Campbell called it,
to the crystalline purity of the bed or ground of
ones own and yet the worlds true being. Like
perfectly transparent crystal, Campbell said,
it is there, yet as though not there and all
things, when seen through it, become luminous in
its light
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CHANGE promises us adventure, power, joy, growth,
transformation of ourselves and the world and
at the same time threatens to destroy
everything we have, everything we know,
everything we are. The experience of change can
be said to unite all mankind. But it is a
paradoxical unity it pours us all into a
maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and
renewal, of struggle and contradiction, of
ambiguity and anguish. To be modern is to be
part of a universe in which, as Marx said, "all
that is solid melts into air."
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• familiar things are viewed in a new light

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If you truly love Nature, you will find beauty
everywhere.
Vincent Van Gogh
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• Sometimes the experience is small and gentle
  anything might be a potential opening to the
  transcendent.
• In his Song of Myself, Walt Whitman wrote
• All truths wait in all things.
• and another time,
• I hear and behold God in every object

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• We shall not cease from exploration
• And the end of all our exploring
• Will be to arrive where we started
• And know the place for the first time.
• From Little Gidding by TS Eliot

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THE NATURAL HISTORY of INTUITION

• We possess within us a model of the world as we
  have experienced it (known directly or through
  others)
• This includes a model
  of our selves (known
  directly or through others).

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OBJECTIVES

• INTUITION DESCRIBED / DEFINED
• BIOLOGICAL BACKGROUND of INTUITION (NATURAL
  HISTORY, DEEP ETHOLOGY)
• SOURCES of CONFIDENCE (in an intuitive BELIEF)

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INTUITION DESCRIBED / DEFINED
ability to sense or know immediately without
reasoning." understanding without apparent
effort, quick and ready insight seemingly
independent of previous experiences or empirical
knowledge.
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INTUITION DESCRIBED / DEFINED
experience of a clinical situation as a whole,
to solve a problem or reach a decision with
limited concrete information (Schraeder and
Fischer, 1986)
the sudden perception of a pattern in a
seemingly unrelated series of events. Beyond
what is visible to the senses (Gerrity, 1987 p.
65). the integration of forms of knowing in a
sudden realization which precipitates an
analytical process which facilitates action in
patient/client care. (Rovithis Parissopoulos
2005)
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INTUITION DESCRIBED / DEFINED
Because INTUITION draws on resources we may not
be consciously aware of the essential tension
between innovation and tradition ( empiricism
and rationalism) between these sources of action
must be resolved A tension often manifest as a
dichotomy of consciousness (such as heart and
mind or impulse and reason or non-conscious
and conscious cognition)
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INTUITION DESCRIBED / DEFINED
INTUITION has much in common with CREATIVITY In
that it involves perceptions, thoughts, or
actions that are more-or-less informed by
intercommunications between conscious and
non-conscious knowledge.
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• "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the
  rational mind is a faithful servant.
• We have created a society that honors the servant
  and has forgotten the gift.
• --Albert Einstein

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CONFIDENCE in a BELIEF

• The relative confidence we have in the veracity
  of a belief is
• Attributable to CORRESPONDENCE (tests to see
  if perceptions match the real world), and
• COHERENCE (weaves tested percepts into a
  narrative that enables predictions about the
  consequences of ones actions)
• reciprocal interactions between these faculties
  confers more or less CONFIDENCE

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SUBLINICAL STRESS affect OUTCOMES
STRESS (in moderation) is an essential coping
mechanism When stressed, sensory reception is
enhanced (eg, pupils dilate), and energy
available to specific functional modules in the
brain is reallocated (eg, prefrontal cortex may
be by-passed), affecting the outcome. This is
easy because multiple parallel paths of
information through the organism are in continual
interaction, even competition.
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COGNITIVE PSYCHOL RESEARCH the "deliberation-witho
ut-attention" hypothesis
Dijksterhuis tested the idea that simple choices
(such as between different towels or different
sets of oven mitts) indeed produce better results
after conscious thought, but that choices in
complex matters (such as between different houses
or different cars) should be left to unconscious
thought. Five separate experiments confirmed the
hypothesis
conscious thought is rule-based and very precise
but requires attention, while unconscious thought
can conform to rules in that it detects recurring
patterns --Dijksterhuis et al. 2006
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When making a decision of minor importance, I
have always found it advantageous to consider all
the pros and cons. In vital matters, however,
such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the
decision should come from the unconscious, from
somewhere within ourselves. . . . Freud speaking
to Reik
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BRAIN RESEARCH Nonconscious stimuli affect the
cognitive control system
fMRI was used to watch brains as people made
judgments about upcoming words or sounds after
having been primed by subliminal (nonconscious)
stimuli that indicated which kind of judgement
would be required. When primed with a
misleading stimulus (indicating an alternative
task) performance was impaired.
This indicates that, contrary to current
understanding, the cognitive control system in
the prefrontal cortex does not depend exclusively
on conscious information
Hakwan Passingham 2007
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TRUTH in the BRAIN
LEFT HEMISPHERE Coherence creates a stable and
internally consistent belief system (Ramachandran
1998) Probabilistic reasoning (Osherson et al
1998) Abstract object recognition (Marsolek 1999)
RIGHT HEMISPHERE Correspondence tests reality
and if damaged, confabulation runs
rampant (Ramachandran 1998) Deductive
reasoning (Osherson et al 1998) Specific object
recognition (Marsolek 1999)
Kant "The senses cannot think, the
understanding cannot see.
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Can Intuition be Trusted
COHERENCE and CORRESPONDENCE work together to
create confidence in a belief

• Development in a specific environment provides
  coherent socially validated perceptions

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INTUITION is the CREATIVE FORCE at work within us
the alliance of conscious and nonconscious
knowledege
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Enantiodromia "running counter to, a
characteristic phenomenon that occurs when a
one-sided tendency dominates conscious life in
time an equally powerful counterposition is built
up, which subsequently breaks through the
conscious control.
Great truths are part of each other
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• "Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that
  around every circle another can be drawn that
  there is no end in nature, but every end is a
  beginning, and under every deep a lower deep
  opens"
• --Ralph Waldo Emerson

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NATURAL HISTORY of INTUITION

• Ethology is the discipline that seeks to
  understand the causes and consequences of
  natural behavioral patterns. This integrative
  perspective is nicknamed DEEP ETHOLOGY
• Development (change within individuals, learning)
• Ecology (ever-changing context in which organisms
  must meet their needs)
• Evolution (change between generations, genes,
  memes)
• Physiology (internal mechanisms that maintain
  homeostasis, health, and mechanisms (stress) for
  coping with needs not met)

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NATURAL HISTORY - DEVELOPMENT

• Development (change within individuals
• Genetic programs (more-or-less open or closed)
• Maturation
• Experience (direct and indirect (observational)
  learning)
• Latent learning (learning you are unaware of)

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The Natural History of Intuition DEVELOPMENT
Neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity Highly experienced meditators
have much greater basal activity levels in their
left prefrontal cortices than non-meditators (Ric
hard Davidson group at Wisconsin-Madison)
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NATURAL HISTORY - ECOLOGY

• Ecology (ever-changing context in which coping
  occurs)
• Challenges to meeting needs (limiting factors,
  selection pressures)
• optimization
• Environment provides clues for the interpretation
  of ambiguous stimuli

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NATURAL HISTORY - EVOLUTION

• Evolution (change between generations genes,
  memes)
• Direct indirect fitness
• Adaptive change. epigenesis
• Continuity the immortal gene
• Blind variation competition -- selective
  retention
• Past environments, present vestigial traits

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NATURAL HISTORY - PHYSIOLOGY

• Physiology (internal mechanisms that maintain
  homeostasis (balance of critical functions),
  health)
• Copes with routine variation in challenges to
  meeting needs
• Copes with urgent challenges to meeting needs
  (stressors) and reallocates resources to most
  vital systems for most basic needs