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The Social Value of Neurological Reflexivity:
Decisions, Habits and Attention
Jonathan Rowson,
Associate Director, RSA Social Brain
Said Business School, Oxford University
December 2010
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• RSA
– Founded in 1754 by William Shipley
– 27,000 Fellows, Lectures, Research, Venue
– Focus on Human Capability
• 21st Century Enlightenment?
– It has to be conceived as an attitude…in which the critique of what we
are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that
are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going
beyond them.
– Foucault on Kant’s description of enlightenment.
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• With a rising interest in neuroscience, we have an opportunity,
which we must not squander, to sophisticate our understanding
of ourselves.
– Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary
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• Beyond ‘The Individual’
• Because the individual has the capacity for reason and
evaluation we can place our faith in democratic institutions.
Because the individual is motivated to seek gain and minimise
loss we believe the free market can prosper. Because
individuals harbour the capacity for love and commitment, the
institutions of marriage and family can form the building blocks
for community.
• Kenneth Gergen, Realities and Relationships.
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• Social Brain(1): Purposively Social
– The Social Brain Hypothesis (Dunbar)
– Wireless broadband connectivity? (Cacioppo)
• The telereceptors of the human brain have provided wireless
broadband interconnectivity to humans for millennia. Just as
computers have capacities and processes that are transduced
through but extend beyond the hardware of a single computer,
the human brain has evolved to promote social and cultural
capacities and processes that extend far beyond a solitary brain.
– Cacioppo J & Patrick W, Lonliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social
Connection
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• Social Brain(2): Functionally Social
– Something everybody has in common
• “I felt it applied to me and maybe had an evolutionary
basis and was shared by everyone”
– One participant on the relevance of RSA Steer principles
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• Early 21st century: a reflexive age?
• I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who
loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say
to her, ''I love you madly,'' because he knows that she
knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these
words have already been written by Barbara Cartland.
Still, there is a solution. He can say, ''As Barbara
Cartland would put it, I love you madly.‘
– Umberto Eco, Modern and Modernism
Barbara Cartland
(in case you didn’t know)
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• Social reflexivity is both condition and outcome of a
post-traditional society. Decisions have to be taken on
the basis of a more or less continuous reflection on the
conditions of one’s action. ‘Reflexivity’ here refers to the
use of information about the conditions of activity as a
means of regularly reordering and redefining what that
activity is.
– Anthony Giddens, Beyond Left and Right
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• Neurological reflexivity
• The brain as reflexive ‘bait’
• Take 390 grams of soft white-gray meat, tweak it, and
pummel it, leaving the surface heavily convoluted.
Place in a suitable (mobility enabled) container, and
steep for a few years in human society…
– Andy Clark, Supersizing the Mind.
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Is the Brain the New Weather?
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• Models of Behaviour Change
– Controlled and automatic systems of the brain work in tandem
but are targeted differently
– ‘Nudge’, ‘Think’ and ‘Steer’
• Steer: Reflexive Holistic Model
– Acknowledges importance of controlled and automatic systems
– Public engagement
– If knowledge is power, knowledge about your own behaviour
ought to be particularly empowering
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• Steer Principles
– Habit is King
– Go with your gut, but take a minute to think when
something new is happening
– When it’s difficult, just let it sit
– When you feel swayed, step back and say so
– When you can’t trust yourself, ask others to help
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• The danger of adulterating knowledge
•
I doubt whether people achieve 10% of their intellectual
potential.
- William James writing c 1900.
• We only use 10% of our brain. - Infamous neuromyth.
• A risk worth taking?
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• How can we make our awareness of the brain more
relevant to social challenges?
• You cannot think about thinking, without thinking about thinking
about something.
– Marvin Minsky
• Social Brain thematic strands (for discussion):
– Decisions
– Habits
– Attention
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Thank you!
[email protected]