“Coleridge observes that all men are born Aristotelians
or Platonists.
The latter feel that classes, orders, and genres are
realities; the former, that they are generalizations.
For the latter, language is nothing but an approximative
set of symbols; for the former, it is the map of the
universe.
The Platonist knows that the universe is somehow a
cosmos, an order; that order, for the Aristotelian, can be
an error or a fiction of our partial knowledge.
Across the latitudes and the epochs, the two immortal
antagonists change their name and language: one is
Parmenides, Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Francis Bradley the
other, Heraclitus, Aristotle, Locke, Hume, William
James.”
Truth and Reality
―TRUTH and REALITY‖
the neuropsychology of belief
Neil Greenberg
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN USA
RATIONALISTS
of EAST TENNESSEE
1 March 2009
Truth and Reality
―TRUTH in the BRAIN‖
the neuropsychology of belief
Neil Greenberg
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN USA
RATIONALISTS
of EAST TENNESSEE
1 March 2009
Truth and Reality
WHAT is BELIEF?
Belief is the psychological state in which
an individual is more-or-less confident
in the validity of a proposition. (confidence
can translate into biological fitness)
Validity can be more-or-less internal
(limited generalizability; eg, individual) or
external (broad generalizablity; eg, population)
Truth and Reality
We derive our beliefs…
“…through argument and
experience.
Argument brings conclusions
and compels us to concede
them,
but does not cause certainty
nor remove the doubts
in order that the mind may
remain at rest in truth,
unless this is provided by
Roger Bacon (1268) experience.”
The unknown versus the unknowable
Knowledge is a correspondence between what
is to be known and some attribute of the
knowing mind:
But ALL perception, ALL cognition, and ALL
action are selective representations of
experience: ABSTRACTIONS …
… reducing data by congenital, developmental,
and experiential circumstances to the least
knowable bit that will serve our biological
FITNESS…
The unknown versus the unknowable
On Exactitude in Science . . . In that Empire, the Art
of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map
of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City,
and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province.
In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer
satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map
of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and
which coincided point for point with it. … In the
Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered
Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and
Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the
Disciplines of Geography --Borges
SOURCES of BELIEF
These processes are centered in the brain
and involve subjecting units of incoming
information (percepts) to two
complementary ―tests‖ (reality-testing
and theorizing).
These tests bear a striking resemblance to
the two prominent philosophical views of
―truth,‖ correspondence and coherence.
HOW IS BELIEF ESTABLISHED?
• Empiricism and Reality-Testing
– data-based, induction-driven
– PERCEPTS CORRESPOND to reality
• Rationalism and Story-Telling
– theory-based, deduction-driven
– PERCEPTS COHERE with each other
Truth and Reality
COHERENCE is
COMFORTING
“A world that can be
explained even with
bad reasons is a
familiar world. But
on the other hand, in a
universe divested of
illusions and lights,
man feels an alien, a
stranger. . . .”
Albert Camus A ―predictable‖ world is much less stressful
correspondence and coherence
evidence and theory
past and future
These two domains – one rooted in the past, the other
in imagination– collaborate in creating a ―sense of
confidence in a belief,‖ not least, one’s self.
Increasing the degree of confidence in the validity of a
belief enhances biological fitness … ecologically,
there is an ―optimal‖ cost/benefit ratio for a
given level of confidence
Organisms often continue to try to increase confidence
depending on perceived urgency and resources
and can become addicted (search and discovery is pleasurable)
Truth and Reality
RECALLED IMAGINATION, IMAGINED MEMORIES
Episodic memory and plausible personal
imagination share a consistent network of
associated brain regions connected in a
distributed network of neural modules
…some of which may support self-schema and
familiarity processes, and contribute to the
brain's ability to distinguish real from imaginary
memories.
Hassabis et al., 2007
Truth and Reality
An Aside on Chance and Necessity:
the intrinsic imperfection of knowledge
Our inner world, umwelt, of necessity provides
an abstraction at best.
• Experience and neuroplasticity
• Neuronal activity recycling time
• Lateral inhibition … extrapolation and
interpolation
Truth and Reality
evidence and theory
correspondence and coherence
… the biological value of truth is important
in so far as …
(1) the search for truth exercises and enlarges
our competence (play, the scientist in the crib) and
(2) approximating the truth may provide a
biological advantage (better maps)
Scaffolding? Successive approximations? Zeno’s paradox?
Truth and Reality
To ACT with CONFIDENCE
is biologically significant
Much of our behavior is structured by the
possession and pursuit of confidence in
the validity of our beliefs – their ―truth.‖
The neuroethology of consciousness and its
dysfunctions have helped us identify the
manner in which correspondence and
coherence function and converge to create
a sense of more-or-less doubt or
confidence in the veracity of a belief.
ACTIONS are based on BELIEFS. We seek
―TRUTH‖ because we can never be too
confident. It is BIOLOGICALLY ADAPTIVE
in that it meets a NEED and enhances FITNESS
Such NEEDS range from physiology (health)
through fitness (―self actualization‖), and
meeting them is the principal business of life.
CONFIDENCE can be anxiolytic: real or
perceived needs that are not met evoke more-
or-less of the STRESS RESPONSE, the
physiology of which selectively activates brain
circuits which also energize MOTIVATION
DEEP ethology of belief
• DEVELOPMENT: change within a lifespan -- the
scientist in the crib and accumulating experiences
• ECOLOGY: meeting needs in the environment --
dynamic balance, and meeting needs, real or perceived
• EVOLUTION: Change between generations -- What
elements of belief are fixed and which are flexible?
• PHYSIOLOGY: Homeostasis, coping with needs;
stress, orchestrating the cerebral symphony; dynamic
tension of tradition and innovation
Infants are “scientists in the
DEVELOPMENT crib,” always developing
and testing, accepting or
rejecting, hypotheses about
the nature of our
environments and how
best to control them.
It is a necessary stage of our
cognitive development that
makes learning possible . .
and it is the beating heart
of the scientific method.
(if we can hold onto the “freshness” of
perceptions)
Truth and Reality
Our brains are formed by the
EPIGENETIC interaction of
organism and environment:
all percepts are modified by
those that came before.
We see the world
not as it is,
But as we are . . .
(Talmud)
Truth and Reality
We see the world
not as it is,
But as we are . . .
Jacob’s Ladder connects earth and
heaven, the real and the ideal
Truth and Reality
We see the world
not as it is,
But as we are . . .
Truth and Reality
BRAIN EVOLUTION
excavating the paleopsychology of our species:
"The Brain of Man has not abandoned it's
ancient animal foundations, it has built upon
them . . . . But it has also reconstructed
them as the shifting earth beneath dictates
. . . . We have done the best possible in the
landscape in which we have found
ourselves with the raw materials we have
inherited."
(Prolegomena to a Study of Mind, 1973, ch. 42)
―The mind consists of countless layers of
overlapping, interconnected nets, each sharing
millions of knots called neurons, and deployed
to catch and control whatever experiences will
advance our fitness -- our relative success in the
meeting of needs to survive and thrive.
No single net can catch much of anything of
great use, each catches fragments at best.‖
–Art & Organism
PHYSIOLOGY
STRESS RESPONSES are evoked by REAL or
PERCEIVED challenges to an organism’s
ability to meet its needs
SUBCLINCAL STRESS is evoked by modest
challenges to homeostasis, including
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE, an apparent
mismatch between internal perceptions and
external reality; challenges to the narrative
that confers biologically valuable confidence.
CORRESPONDENCE
THE POWER OF REALITY- TESTING
We confirm and establish confidence
in CORRESPONDENCE (the
validity of experiences) at every
level, from spinal reflexes through
thoughtful cognition.
Experiences we are confident are real
but which challenge theory is the
key method of enlarging our worlds.
Establishing validity is a key element
of learning.
Truth and Reality
COHERENCE
THE POWER OF THEORY
We confirm and establish confidence
in COHERENCE by assessing the
validity of component percepts and
their complexity.
Expectations exist at many levels,
from habituation and sensitization
of sensory receptors through the
most elaborate flights of
philosophy.
Truth and Reality
We NEED theory
La theorie seule peut
faire surgir et
developper l'esprit
d'invention"
(Without theory, practice is no
more than the routine given
by habit. Theory alone can
bring forth and develop the
spirit of invention)
Louis Pasteur
NARRATIVE
"The imagination... organizing
(as it were) the flux of the
senses... gives birth to a system
of symbols. . . consubstantial
with the truths of which they
are the conductors.“
Coleridge, 1816
FALSE CONFIDENCE
"What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is
an index into his desires — desires of which he himself
is often unconscious.
If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts,
he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is
overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it.
If, on the other hand, he is offered something which
affords a reason for acting in accordance to his
instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.
The origin of myths is explained in this way.‖
--Bertrand Russell ...
BUT IS MYTH SO BAD?
“These things never were,”
said Sallust, speaking of the
Greek myths,
“but always are!”
“Is there anything truer
than truth?” Asked
Kazantzakis,
“Yes, Legend.”
Is there a ―higher truth?‖
Truth and Reality
Is IMAGINATION
the crucible of
TRUTH ?
Abstraction / umwelt
Archetypal
Ideal
The common features of
countless experiences
IMAGINATION?
“Not only is the universe stranger
than we imagine, it is stranger
than we can imagine.” (Sir Arthur
Eddington)
There is no excellent beauty that
hath not some strangeness in the
proportion. (Bacon, Essays (1625) „Of
Beauty‟).
Truth and Reality
Can we handle the truth?
Are beliefs more important than truth?
TRUTH and STRESS
SELF-DECEPTION serves a vital function (Daniel
Goleman‟s use of Ibsen‟s term: “Vital Lies” 1985)
―You can’t handle the truth!‖ (Jack Nicholson in In “A
Few Good Men,” 1992)
DENIAL ---The more-or-less “…willing suspension of
disbelief…” (Wordsworth) – is that the function of art?
… to provide a safe zone for exploring the otherwise
troubling, stress-evoking truth?
Or of myth? (“theory used to be an “enchanted circle”)
DISORDERS of BELIEF?
Acceptance of experience that doesn’t
correspond to external reality: kinds of
hallucinations; Bonnet’s Syndrome (filling in scotoma);
dismorphic body; pareidolia. (False positive (confident
match with memories); Type I Error; gullible, trusting)
Denial of experience that corresponds to
external reality: agnosias: eg, visual (left occip),
associative, anasognosia (denial of dysfunction / right cerebral
cortices), prosopagnosia (faces) (False negative (failure to
match with memories); Type II Error; skeptical, wary)
POWER of EXPECTATIONS
PLACEBO: the power of coherence:
• Acupuncture IS effective in many cases, but
application at arbitrary sites is comparable
(Melchart et al. 2005)
• Antidepressant medications can be 80%
replicated with placebo (Kirsch et al. 2002)
• Parkinson’s patients experience an endogenous
dopamine ―rush‖ when nigrostriatal system
activated by placebo (expectation of reward – Fuente-
Fernandez 2001)
PLACEBO EFFECT
not merely subjective?
Extra endorphins were also released from sites not usually
engaged in analgesia, including
• rostral anterior cingulate (perception of degree of
pain)(ACC: autonomic, error-detection, conflict resolution or
management)
• insular cortex (receives somatic pain information)
• nucleus accumbens (assesses urgency of pain)
• dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (involved in decision
making, interpretation, and selective attention) BUT, only in those that
expected relief.
(Zubieta et al. 2005) . . .
gnosis
• ANOSOGNOSIA -- Disorder of “insight” …
denial of obvious condition (from the Greek: A + nosos
(disease) + gnosis (knowledge)
• HYPERGNOSIA -- Disorder of knowing;
possessing an overwhelming indubitable
conviction. (limbic epilepsy)
Anosognosia
• ANOSOGNOSIA (from the Greek: A + nosos (disease) + gnosis
(knowledge)
• Ignorance or denial of the presence of disease
– Most famously of paralysis in patients with non-
dominant (usually right) parietal lobe damage -- patients
deny their hemiparesis, & confabulate rationalizations
• Detection of discrepencies impaired
– When the right hemisphere is denied input from the
reality-testing of the left hemisphere; internal model is
“untested” by feedback, leaving left-side function
seemingly “hallucinated.”
Putative Causes of Anosognosia
• Freudian denial: avoidance of confrontation with
dysfunction, preserve self image.
• Phantom function: as with phantom limbs, signals
from motor cortex go to parietal monitoring area
AND to muscles (that no longer exist). In the
absence of feedback (confirming dysfunction)
parietal area prevails
• Right hemisphere impairment by muting
emotionality, and flattening affect, might create
the appearance of indifference
Coherence and Confabulation
• ―The production of coherent but fictitious stories‖
• First observed by Korsakoff in alcoholics
• Can be provoked (eg., to avoid embarassment) or
spontaneous (Schnider 2003)
• Involve anterior limbic structures (orbitofrontal)
• Impressive when right hemisphere (and its
―reality-check‖ on the left hemisphere) is
damaged
Coherence and Confabulation
• Right hemisphere stroke: denial of left side paralysis.
• Korsakoff’s syndrome: inability to form new memories
due to temporal lobe dysfunction.
• Acting out after a hypnotic suggestion will be
rationalized with improvised confabulations
• Schizophrenia: confabulations to rationalize
hallucinations or to justify paranoia
• Capgras syndrome: incomplete sense of who
owns a familiar face: alien imposters?
POST-SCRIPT on LEFT HEMISPHERE
function in establishing coherence
• When the body orientation association
area in the left superior parietal lobe is
suppressed, physical boundaries
between the body and the world
become uncertain : can evoke a
“spiritual” sense of “being one with
everything.”
LEFT - RIGHT HEMISPHERE
LATERALITY
• When separated, EACH hemisphere is
UNAWARE of the ipsilateral world
– Yet neither is aware of being incomplete
– Each functions as best it can with the
information available
LEFT HEMISPHERE RIGHT HEMISPHERE
Coherence: creates a Correspondence: “skeptical,”
consistent belief system – tests reality and if damaged,
works to “save appearances” confabulation runs rampant
(Ramachandran 1998) (Ramachandran 1998)
Probabilistic reasoning Deductive reasoning
(Osherson et al 1998) (Osherson et al 1998)
Abstract object recognition Specific object recognition
(Marsolek 1999) (Marsolek 1999)
Activated by familiar Activated by unfamiliar
percepts percepts
(Goldberg 2001) (Goldberg 2001)
Kant: "The senses cannot think,
the understanding cannot see.”
COPING WITH MISMATCH
the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC)
ACC is STRESS
sensitive AND appears
to generate brain waves
manifesting “error-
related negativity” (ERN)
associated with novelty
& the detection and
correction of errors.
Alternatively, the ERN may indicate an affect-
laden response to a mismatch between
expectancies and outcomes.
The Anterior Cingulate Cortex
The ACC’s stress-sensitivity affects our confidence in
beliefs.
Spindle cells project to many sites but especially frontal polar
cortex where responses that compensate for “error-
detection” are selected and initiated.
While often regarded as part of the emotion-processing limbic
system, ACC is more likely a specialized neocortical
structure that can also deploy mechanisms of the autonomic
nervous system by which we express activation of the stress
response.
The Anterior Cingulate Cortex
DISSONANCE evokes stress and the anterior cingulate
cortex (ACC) is important to the manner in which
incoming information is attended and compared to resident
information of which an individual is more-or-less
conscious.
Dissonances that may emerge from this comparison erode
confidence and that potential threat may evoke a subclinical
physiological stress response, the hormones of which can
differentially affect specific brain sites and thus evoke
specific mechanisms to ameliorate the effects of the
stressor.
The Anterior Cingulate Cortex
ACC is thus a leading candidate for the site of integration of
emotional and cognitive functions, of which reconciling
internal truths to external realities may be particularly
prominent. Such reconciliation involves compensating
thoughts (which can redirect attention) or actions (which
may remove or moderate the stressor).
Stress-moderating actions include the externalization of
beliefs in ways that explore their validity, embracing art in
both its aesthetic as well as therapeutic sense.
"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
Stress modulates neural function
STRESS is a coordinated suite of responses to real or
perceived challenges to an organism‟s ability to
meet its needs
As Camus observed, a predictable world is less
stressful
Novelty evokes more or less stress depending on the
perceived urgency of its challenge: information is
ASSIMILATED or ACCOMMODATED by an
organism‟s world model.
Search and Solve
mystery enlarges us
―know thy self‖
• the search for truth exercises and
enlarges our competence (the scientist in the crib)
and
• approximating the truth may provide a
biological advantage (better maps, but see Borges)
Truth and Reality