PPP, Part 4, Cool Avijjā Examples

Greetings, Friendlies!

Following on from Pile of Provisional Positions 3, about the Classical View of Humanity, and the idea of Avijjā as not understanding how our minds work…

In the two semesters I studied Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins, the course that most blew my mind (and this is a high bar) was Cognitive Neuropsychology. We explored various cognitive deficits and what they could tell us about the human mind.

We learned of Mirrored-Self Misidentification subjects who, when faced with their own image in a mirror, could not comprehend that this was their reflection. Instead they believed there was another person who looked like them and dressed like them; this person would follow them everywhere. One woman, when shown her reflection in a full-length mirror, became angry! She hated that woman, she said, and she was angry at the researcher for bringing her (that is, her own reflection) to the study. (Note: Previously these subjects did recognize themselves. The lack of recognition happened after damage to the brain.)

It’s one thing to read about it, another to watch (in our case videos) the behavior that manifests from this belief. I wish I could share the videos with you, but they are private to protect the identity of the subjects.

In Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Sacks describes a subject with visual agnosia, who was unable to… shall we say, “skillfully”?… perceive visual stimuli. The person was not blind, but his visual processing would not give him the meaning we might expect. On the subject’s departing Sacks’ office, the man grabbed the top of his wife’s head, rather than his own hat.

Vilayanur Ramachandran recounts a conversation with a subject who has somatoparaphrenia:

“PATIENT: [pointing to her own left hand] Doctor, whose hand is this?
DOCTOR: Whose hand do you think it is?
PATIENT: Well, it certainly isn’t yours!
DOCTOR: Then whose is it?
PATIENT: It isn’t mine, either.
DOCTOR: Whose hand do you think it is?
PATIENT: It is my son’s hand, Doctor.” [1]

What the what?!?

Learning about these cases, and of the underlying brain mechanisms they reveal, slowly and ever-so-surely my view of the Classical View of Humanity has fallen away. Not unlike how, through dhamma practice, we begin to see the mechanisms of various dukkha-producing activities, and our fascination, our “enchantment” with these activities falls away. The delusion just can’t stand up to the evidence.

Okay. Enough for today. May you be well!

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[1] Quoted from Michael Gazzaniga, Who’s in Charge?.