Theory of Mind and Brain

Part 1

How do we make judgements?

I want you to make a decision right now. Lets take an hypothetical situation. Suppose a train is about to come on a track. You are standing near the track. You know that at some distance 4 number of persons are working on train, completely unaware that train is approaching them and you know that soon train will cross over them and they will be killed. Now there is only one way to save them. There is a lever near to you. If you pull that lever, train will shift to another track (track 2) and you will be able to save life of those 4 persons working on track 1 but there is a catch. An another person is working on track 2 so if train shifts to track 2 that person will definitely be killed by train. Now you have two option: 

1. Either save life of 4 person by pulling the lever and let 1 person die at track 2
2. Don't pull the lever, let 4 person die and save life of 1 person from track 2

Close your eyes and Make the decision right now

You must be listening two voices in your head. Pull the lever or not pull the lever but most of the persons act on the first voice (Pull the lever) and took logical decision in this situation and went for option 1. Save life of 4 persons over life of 1 person. four over one, A perfect logical decision.

Now assume another situation. On track 2, the person who is working is your brother/sister or any of your close relative. 

Now make the decision again.

You must be hearing two voices again in your head but this time almost all of the people acted on second voice (don't pull the lever) and made emotional decision and chose option 2.

Almost same situation but we made slight change in the situation and two completely different decisions came out. Once we made logical decision and once we made emotional decision. Why does it happen ?


Theory of Mind and Brain

we have two mode of thinkings and two different part of brains are involved in decision making. One is logical part of brain that is responsible for our logical decision making. We may call it intellect or simply a physical brain. Another is emotional part of brain that is responsible for emotional decision making. This part is subtle and more mysterious. I call it mind. I created and developed theory of mind and brain to explain our decision making system. This theory explains almost all aspects of life of individual, society or even country. Our career decisions, our financial decisions, our emotional decisions, our social decisions. It answer all questions related to our thoughts, our behaviour, our actions.

"So the theory of brain and mind says that we have two type of decision making systems in our head: Logical Brain and  Emotional Mind and we make decisions by using both these system".

These two charechters are responsible for our all decision making. Many times you must hear two voices from your inside. OK try to remember the past moments when you heard two voices from inside. I assist you, suppose one time you made the decision to reduce your body weight by controlling your calorie intake. You saw a delicious food and a voice came to your head: eat it, another voice came: control and you find yourself in the situation of dilemma, two contradicting voices from your head. Every day you go through these types of situations. So this is the valid evidence that  brain is not alone involve in decision making there is one more power centre in your head that is actively involved in decision making. One more classic example is smoking. Well we all know that smoking is injurious to health but still people smoke. Why brain fails in self-control?

So here comes the concept of two system of decision making. Lot of research has been done on these two systems, Physiologists just called it system 1 and system 2, in hindi/Urdu poetry they call it dil and dimag, In Sanskrit they call them chitt and budhi. Ancient Indian sages did fantastic research on these two systems and they called it Mann (Mind) and Budhi (Brain or intellect). But one thing to clarify here that nomenclature is not so important, Important is their characteristics. You can give any name of these two systems.I gave Brain and Mind because these two names explains the whole concept and idea of research. Lot of people use heart for mind but heart is more used in literary sense than in psychology. So now I return to the main theme: two voices in head.  Those two voices belong to Mind and Brain. When you see a delicious food it’s your mind that ask you to eat (Emotional reaction) while brain ask you to control (Logical response) so basically we have two system that are equally active in judgements making and both play active role in judgements making.

In my early days, I got the opportunity to talk, read lot on this topic. Ancient Indian literatures are full of complete descriptions of these topics while mind was the main centre of study since ancient sages were aware about the unlimited power of mind. Brain plays the important role in assisting of mind. Famous Indian book Gita is all about the description and controlling of mind.

So we all know that brain is a physical organ, located in top most part of head, weighted around 1.5 kg composed of neurons, cells and vessels, process the thought and create reasoning. It processes the data and store in the memory but what is the mind? Where it is located? What is its size? Mind is not a physical thing that means it can’t be seen, it doesn't have any shape. You chop the body and search entire body from inside but you will not find mince since it is not a physical thing, it’s a subtle thing. Basically it’s a consciousness of having a particular thought. Brain is a scientific thing while mind is a philosophical thing but both exists and play important role in judgement making. Like brain, Mind also process the thoughts and create impressions (Brain create reasoning) , Like brain it also store thoughts in its own separate memory and it’s memory is also subtle means that doesn't exist physically. Suppose if you lost all your physical memory, will you also forget your routine works? Answer is No. While one side we have neuroscience that is study of brain we also have cognitive neuroscience that is study of mind.

Dualism was the centre theme of ancient Indian literatures which says that mind exists independently of brain. Upanishads were full of subtle knowledge about mind. Kenopanishad says “Not that which the mind can think, but that whereby the mind can think: know that to be Brahman the eternal, and not what people here adore”. Swami Vivekanada said that mind is power house but it can never be your friend, it will be either your obedient servant or ruthless master. So with this a new concept comes in picture that this is true that we have two system in our body to make decisions and they can be our friend, slave or master but we are not mind or body. We are more than that so who we are? As mentioned in Gita, we are soul. Imagine our body as a chariot that has five wheels and pulled by five horses. Our body is chariot, five senses are five horses, Mind and brain are the drivers and soul is passenger. This is the mind body soul concept but I won’t go more philosophical. My research is limited to Mind and Brain and will try to build a bridge between Science and philosophy.

So how do we make judgements? Why some people are so successful, so committed so disciplined in their life while some are not? What is intuition? Why some time we are concerned so much about little important issues but completely ignore important issues?  Why do we make emotional decisions? Why do we feel nervous? To understand the human judgement making system we need to understand the characteristics of these two characters of this series- Mind and Brain. In next article I will explain in detail about the characteristics of Brain and Mind. What are their main properties and how do they work.