[lit-ideas] Re: Unconscious Thought
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 21:06:38 -0800
John McCreery wrote:
Instead, Klein develops a theory of what he calls recognition-primed
decision making. This theory envisions the decision maker as entering
a situation equipped with a stack of potentially relevant cognitive
models. Scanning the situation, he grabs the first one that seems to
make sense and proceeds to act on it while continuing to scan the
environment for evidence that supports or contradicts his choice. So
long as the model appears to work, he continues to act on it.
[Interesting stuff to which I'm not responding snipped.]
An interesting implication of Klein's work (one to which he himself
points clearly) is that it explains very nicly the role and importance
of experience. More experience means having more possible models and
and better developed skills for identifying the relevant ones. Which
is why, for example, the Army is right to recommend to young, green
first lieutenants that they seek and follow the advice of the
seasoned noncoms with whom they share command of platoons. As an
officer, the lieutenant has the right (and sometimes responsibility)
to overule his sergeant, but the sergeant, drawing on his greater
experience, is, on average, far more likely to be right.
In any situation in which an agent is faced with a decision about
(seemingly must choose) what to do, there are unspecifiably many
responses, any of which will be 'correct' only in light of the agent's
antecedent aims. The rationality of a decision (effectiveness is not
always, or even most of the time identical with what's rational) can
only be understood where part of a 'situation' is what the agent wants
to achieve. 'Here's x; x will put me to sleep; so I'll <take> <not take>
it because I <want> <don't want> to go to sleep.' Neither of the first
boxes can be checked until one of the second is—unless the agent acts on
a whim, that is, makes no real choice at all.
Yet, who is to say what is a 'whim' and what is the working out of some
hypothetical unconscious state or the grabbing of one of a number of
'cognitively relevant models'? (Are there things one 'just does'?) There
are certainly things one does 'for no reason,’ but acting purposively
would seem by definition not to be one of them. So, unconscious states
and processes and ‘grabbing’ a workable response model will be different
in just this way: picking a model will be a choice (however much one
talks of grabbing) made in light of what one believes about the
situation one is faced with and against a background of wants and
desires (the desire to escape, to win the point, to avoid
embarrassment); and if it is a choice, it is itself rational behaviour.
In the case of unconscious processes and the like, this is not so clear.
John says that an ‘interesting implication of Klein's work …is that it
explains very nicely the role and importance of experience. More
experience means having more possible models and and better developed
skills for identifying the relevant ones.,’ and suggests that
inexperienced young officers are well advised to listen to the
experienced old non-com, whose repertoire of models is presumably larger
than theirs, and that the Army is right to remind them of this.
Who could object to so plausible an example? One wonders though what
it’s an example of. Does Sarge have a greater fund of response models or
does he have a smaller one, i.e., a smaller fund of models that will
work? Suppose Louie has no response model for some situation, and Sarge
has one. It isn’t just given that Louie should take Sarge’s advice, for
Sarge himself may not be entirely comfortable with his own model.
Although in terms of models he outscores Louie 1-0, this says nothing
yet about whether his advice is worth taking. Not unless Sarge can say
on good grounds that this one response is either the only or one of the
few that is likely to work in such situations will Louie be well advised
to trust him.
I think that Sarge should be listened to only if the situations to which
he has a stock of response models are themselves fairly common. In fact,
unless they were fairly common it’s unlikely that Sarge would have tried
and true response models to deal with them. Apparently Klein believes
that experience yields more models and that’s why the experienced person
will fare better in certain situations. Maybe. But isn’t it equally
plausible that one learns from experience what will not work and thus
comes to have a more finely honed set of responses? It’s the neophyte
who tries first this then that then the other and finally either gives
up or loses or both.
If the situation is highly uncommon then maybe Sarge will have a
response to it; folk probability suggests that if he’s really
experienced and Louie a mere beginner, that he will. But all of this
seems to pass by the earlier suggestion that decisions and choices
somehow go around ‘rationality’ by tapping into unconscious processes of
some sort. It seems no more likely that a Kleinian Sarge would go with
his gut feelings than would anyone else: the theory isn’t, insofar as I
understand it, a theory about gut feelings, but about solutions to
problems, stored and quickly brought into play.
The original theory will be of no use if it takes into account only the
number of response models in any given person’s repertoire without
invoking the efficacy of these as opposed to the efficacy lurking within
some other equinumerous set of models, e.g. Old Scout’s. Given the
presence of both Sarge and Old Scout in the same platoon, the reason for
Louie’s listening to one or to the other or to both of them can’t be
simply a function of which is the more experienced; in fact, he can have
no good reasons at all except the folk probability that one or the other
or both might have a good response—not just more responses. And although
it may do this subliminally, I don’t see it doing it out in the open.
Robert Paul
The Reed Institute
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