Big Foot. Sasquatch. Yeti. Yahoos. Yes, Yahoos, not as in Web searches, but as in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Here’s the story. “Australian National University researcher Debbie Argue may have solved one of English literature’s most enduring mysteries: Jonathan Swift’s inspiration for the Yahoo characters in his famous novel….”* Actually, the details of her “discovery” are just that Swift might have gotten his ideas for Yahoos from descriptions of Sasquatch that four Native American Kings carried to England in 1710. Argue’s argument lies in Swift’s using the date of the Four Kings’ arrival in his book: “He places this date within three sentences of introducing us to the Yahoos.” Maybe this finally resolves that “enduring mystery” you’ve been spending your time trying to solve.
Argue makes a reasonable argument that resolves the “mystery.” Okay, but what about that other component of the mystery, that Sasquatch critter? We’re still looking for Sasquatch with no concrete evidence. People make TV programs about it. As one might ask, “What’s up with that?” Seven billion people on the planet. Billions before this time. Not one sighting with accompanying hard evidence, not one demonstrable “Encounter of the Third Kind”? Only that trace fossil footprint that might or might not be a random impression from a bear or some other forest animal or from a prankster.
Neurologists have a potential research topic here. What part of the human brain seeks Sasquatch? What part of the brain obsesses over Yetis? What part of the brain accepts a Sasquatch reality? Could the brain be seeking a reward in its search for Big Foot?
Apparently, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) is heavily involved in such matters. According to researchers at UCLA’s Brain Imaging Center, “When belief and disbelief were compared (in an experiment involving 14 adults and fMRI), the investigators saw differences principally” in the VMPFC.** The lead investigator, Sam Harris, said, "What I find most interesting about our results is the suggestion that our view of the world must pass through a bottleneck in regions of the brain generally understood to govern emotion, reward and primal feelings like pain and disgust."
Where are we going with this? Let’s start far out with robots, Data, and Spock from Star Trek. The basic division seems to be between emotion and reason, those Star Trek characters all representing reason. The division sets up a basic idea, that thought is different from emotion, that it can take place in the absence of emotion. Well, now, what are we going to do with the role of the VMPFC? What are we going to do with this discovery that truth-testing is highly complex? Harris says,
“I think that it has long been assumed that believing that two plus two equals four and believing that George Bush is President of the United States have almost nothing in common as cognitive operations. But what they clearly have in common is that both representations of the world satisfy some process of truth-testing that we continually perform. I think this is yet another result, in a long line of results, that calls the popular opposition between reason and emotion into question."
So, calling the opposition between reason and emotion into question, eh? And why not? Haven’t you experienced those moments when everything clicks, when ALL of you is in sync? Surely, in those times of personal harmony, you are not simply reasonable and not simply emotional. You are a whole.
Rejecting or believing in the existence of Big Foot isn’t a one-part-of-the-brain act. You think, and you get a reward or a punishment. As Harris says,
‘What I find most interesting about our results is the suggestion that our view of the world must pass through a bottleneck in regions of the brain generally understood to govern emotion, reward and primal feelings like pain and disgust.”
When we process the truth of something, we don’t necessarily favor a content or focus on one (i.e., there is a Big Foot), but rather favor or focus on, as Harris says, a process that is “content-neutral.” That would be one that includes some rewarding neurotransmitter. “The involvement of the VMPFC in belief processing suggests an anatomical link between the purely cognitive aspects of belief and human emotion and reward.”
You can’t really be Mr. Spock or Data. You can’t really be robotic or blandly computer-like. Finding something to believe, you find something that rewards. And just as in the movie When Harry Met Sally, we keep bumping into the issue of Big Foot's existence just as Harry bumps into Sally over years; for us now hundreds of years of revisiting the issue or belief. Will we ultimately admit that we love to believe and that we believe because belief yields a reward? Ah! That hairy creature that may or may not exist. Am I just being Silly? In this mix of reason and emotion, will my brain ultimately side with those who search for Sasquatch in hopes of not just a glimpse, but an actual hairy creature? Will we, like Harry and Sally, eventually admit we are in love with each other? Sasquatch and its believers, a match made in infrequent and unsubstantiated encounters. Reason suffused with emotion.
*Staff report, Sci News, September 24, 2018. Yahoo in Gulliver’s Travels Represent 18th Century Description of Sasquatch, Research Says, Online at http://www.sci-news.com/othersciences/anthropology/yahoo-gullivers-travels-sasquatch-description-06437.html (I’m not sure of your stand on this. Have you been thinking about Swift’s inspiration for Yahoos lately? According to the article’s emphasis on the literary “mystery,” I’ve probably been remiss in thinking about such an “enduring” mystery. Been too busy getting bread, milk, and eggs at the store or thinking about how my life is built on quantum stuff I cannot see and wondering whether that stuff is as insubstantially wavelike as the physicists say it is or as insubstantial as proof that Sasquatch roams the woods without leaving concrete evidence)
**Sam Harris, Sameer Sheth, Mark S. Cohen, "Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief, and Uncertainty," Annals of Neurology , December 2007.
Argue makes a reasonable argument that resolves the “mystery.” Okay, but what about that other component of the mystery, that Sasquatch critter? We’re still looking for Sasquatch with no concrete evidence. People make TV programs about it. As one might ask, “What’s up with that?” Seven billion people on the planet. Billions before this time. Not one sighting with accompanying hard evidence, not one demonstrable “Encounter of the Third Kind”? Only that trace fossil footprint that might or might not be a random impression from a bear or some other forest animal or from a prankster.
Neurologists have a potential research topic here. What part of the human brain seeks Sasquatch? What part of the brain obsesses over Yetis? What part of the brain accepts a Sasquatch reality? Could the brain be seeking a reward in its search for Big Foot?
Apparently, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) is heavily involved in such matters. According to researchers at UCLA’s Brain Imaging Center, “When belief and disbelief were compared (in an experiment involving 14 adults and fMRI), the investigators saw differences principally” in the VMPFC.** The lead investigator, Sam Harris, said, "What I find most interesting about our results is the suggestion that our view of the world must pass through a bottleneck in regions of the brain generally understood to govern emotion, reward and primal feelings like pain and disgust."
Where are we going with this? Let’s start far out with robots, Data, and Spock from Star Trek. The basic division seems to be between emotion and reason, those Star Trek characters all representing reason. The division sets up a basic idea, that thought is different from emotion, that it can take place in the absence of emotion. Well, now, what are we going to do with the role of the VMPFC? What are we going to do with this discovery that truth-testing is highly complex? Harris says,
“I think that it has long been assumed that believing that two plus two equals four and believing that George Bush is President of the United States have almost nothing in common as cognitive operations. But what they clearly have in common is that both representations of the world satisfy some process of truth-testing that we continually perform. I think this is yet another result, in a long line of results, that calls the popular opposition between reason and emotion into question."
So, calling the opposition between reason and emotion into question, eh? And why not? Haven’t you experienced those moments when everything clicks, when ALL of you is in sync? Surely, in those times of personal harmony, you are not simply reasonable and not simply emotional. You are a whole.
Rejecting or believing in the existence of Big Foot isn’t a one-part-of-the-brain act. You think, and you get a reward or a punishment. As Harris says,
‘What I find most interesting about our results is the suggestion that our view of the world must pass through a bottleneck in regions of the brain generally understood to govern emotion, reward and primal feelings like pain and disgust.”
When we process the truth of something, we don’t necessarily favor a content or focus on one (i.e., there is a Big Foot), but rather favor or focus on, as Harris says, a process that is “content-neutral.” That would be one that includes some rewarding neurotransmitter. “The involvement of the VMPFC in belief processing suggests an anatomical link between the purely cognitive aspects of belief and human emotion and reward.”
You can’t really be Mr. Spock or Data. You can’t really be robotic or blandly computer-like. Finding something to believe, you find something that rewards. And just as in the movie When Harry Met Sally, we keep bumping into the issue of Big Foot's existence just as Harry bumps into Sally over years; for us now hundreds of years of revisiting the issue or belief. Will we ultimately admit that we love to believe and that we believe because belief yields a reward? Ah! That hairy creature that may or may not exist. Am I just being Silly? In this mix of reason and emotion, will my brain ultimately side with those who search for Sasquatch in hopes of not just a glimpse, but an actual hairy creature? Will we, like Harry and Sally, eventually admit we are in love with each other? Sasquatch and its believers, a match made in infrequent and unsubstantiated encounters. Reason suffused with emotion.
*Staff report, Sci News, September 24, 2018. Yahoo in Gulliver’s Travels Represent 18th Century Description of Sasquatch, Research Says, Online at http://www.sci-news.com/othersciences/anthropology/yahoo-gullivers-travels-sasquatch-description-06437.html (I’m not sure of your stand on this. Have you been thinking about Swift’s inspiration for Yahoos lately? According to the article’s emphasis on the literary “mystery,” I’ve probably been remiss in thinking about such an “enduring” mystery. Been too busy getting bread, milk, and eggs at the store or thinking about how my life is built on quantum stuff I cannot see and wondering whether that stuff is as insubstantially wavelike as the physicists say it is or as insubstantial as proof that Sasquatch roams the woods without leaving concrete evidence)
**Sam Harris, Sameer Sheth, Mark S. Cohen, "Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief, and Uncertainty," Annals of Neurology , December 2007.
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