Then we come to the symbolic self. When we get to symbolic self, it doesn't mean that all these other selves have gone away. We still have a prototype. A proto-self that's monitoring the internal milieu of the body. We have the core self that's monitoring the internal milieu of the body and looking out into the world and seeing a relationship between what's happening in the body and whats happening in the world. And so these are all prefaces for what referred to as the symbolic self. I think Dimosio calls it extended self. Stern calls it the verbal self. And this is the self that you take out in the world with you now, here and now. This is the self that we compare with other-selves. Some of you might not even know what I'm talking about. Compare, what do you mean compare myself with somebody else's self. I dare you to go through the day, one day, one single day without comparing yourself with somebody else. Oh, she's so much thinner than I am. Or I wish I could have that hairstyle and look good on May. Or she's much smarter. How does a person have so many friends and relationships and here a comparison, comparison, comparison. And we do other kinds of comparisons too. And that is, we have how we would like to be, an ideal self, and we're constantly comparing how the slump that we are in now as the self that we're aiming to. This wonderful book, I forget the name of it, observed that the symbolic self can be a curse, as we're struggling uphill to climb that peak that we need to climb before we get any respect from anybody, which is nonsense, you know that. >> [COUGH] >> The symbolic self, we want it to be a worthy self. We're all struggling to be worthy. Maybe you're worthy anyway. Ever get a sense that hey I'm worth, I'm worthy. I'm worthy, you don't have to constantly this is a human dilemma. For some people it's more difficult than others, but we all have to prove our worthiness. Well, that's too bad. So, the precursors of symbolic self, other senses of self, language, theory of mind and a whole bunch, bunch more. >> [COUGH] >> And that's all part of the process, all part of the product of the neocortex. >> [COUGH] >> And this has to do with what I was talking about before. This is very much involved in psychological survival. We have two tasks. We have physical survival, and that's pretty much taken care of by nature and how our brain evolved and the various, the base of the brain and the midbrain have that pretty well handled. But then, with the neocortex that is brought with this. Another task and that is how to survive psychologically. Okay, we already mentioned that. And the symbolic self frequently accompanies the mind in mental time travel. MTT, mental time travel. That's one of our grandest capacities. To project an image of ourselves in the future. Important early on in human evolution particularly if you're in a hunter-gathering community, where would be a good place to go out in the field to bring down an animal? Should it be over here or over here or behind a rock? Or behind a club? And you envision yourself, you're actually there seeing what the possibilities are of being attacked by another tribe, or the prey that you want to bring down, instead of having it bring down yourself. So being able to imagine oneself in the future is very critical to our survival. And it has to do with the traveling mind. >> [COUGH] >> A traveling mind goes out there and checks the situation out. And not only checks the situation out, but it's like what would it feel like to be there? Would it feel potentially good or is it potentially quite dangerous? This is a wonderful quote from Dan Gilbert, who wrote a book on stumbling on happiness. We have a uniques structure that allows us to transport ourselves in the future. Just like I was talking about. To step into tomorrow shoes and see how they fit. I would say to see how they feel. How they fit and how they feel and the experience then before they happen etc., etc. If nature has given a greater gift, no one has named it. Mental time travel. It evolves gradually. Children at a very young age don't have the capacity to see in the future, to project themselves into the future. In order to do that, you have to remember what happened yesterday. Children have a very difficult time remembering what happened yesterday, or the day before, or last week. That's called episodic memory, just what it's called, episodic memory. Memory of past events. Until you can remember past events, you don't have anything to project into the future. You don't have anything to take with you and plant out into the future to see how that might feel. It's a cognitive skill. It takes a long time to development. And it's on its way to being established between the ages of three and four. Prior to that, you have spotty memories and not much to go on and that changes with mental time travel. Stepping into tomorrow's shoes and see how they fit or they feel. And are we the only creatures capable of doing this? Well, the answer is not really. There are Scrub Jays, you know what wax worms are? I don't know why don't we just call them night crawlers? They're not wax worms. What are these, they made of wax? No, they're night crawlers. They store them. They take them and they hide them away. That has to do with future planning, I'm going to need it in the future. It's very restricted, what they do, but they do it very well. They can actually pretend they're hiding something from other Scrub Jays, but not even hide anything. I mean, they are that clever. That's pretty cool. And then the capuchin monkeys in Brazil, they have these nuts and they eat these nuts. And they carry rocks to crush them because there is no rocks around there that are suitable for them unless they leave them behind. So there is some future planning, but none of them come close to what we do in terms of projecting ourselves in the future and marks a discontinuity between us and other primaries. So what are the upsides of mental time travel? Well, I mean it's clear, planning. Having an idea of how you'd like to be and a plan to get to where we'd like to be. There's lots of upside for mental time traveling. So what are the downsides of mental time travel? Ever heard of this? It's generalized anxiety, GAD. What's the D part? >> Disorder. >> Yeah, general anxiety disorder. Some people have a capacity to imagine disasters. No matter, one disaster or another. And so they project something in the future, oh that's going to turn bad. I'd better do something now to avoid that from happening. And that thing that might happen probably has no chance, or only a slim possibility of happening. So you're constantly projecting images of yourself in the future finding disasters and trying to take care of them before they even happen. It can be devastating. It's a disease, that you're constantly looking for the possibility of something happening, and then preventing it from happening. So that's a disadvantage of mental time travel. Another disadvantage of mental time travel, is you can imagine your own death. Can imagine your own death. This is Sheldon Solomon's talk, remember? How do you suppose the protoself and the core self are going to react, to respond to the idea of death? Talk about something that's going to disturb the internal milieu of the body. The idea of death will do that. We don't want to die. Life is really exciting. Even though you might be in the doldrums and it's not particularly exciting now. But it's better than death. It's unimaginable. It's a dirty trick. So if you realize that, I talked about my daughter, age four, I don't want to be a thing that dies. And it what was happening, her internal milieu was screaming out. Do something to settle me down. It's probably a natural reaction, when your first, although, I mean, I'm sure everybody here kind of has their own buffers against the raw realization of I'm going to die. But with something like, don't worry dear, God will take care of you, don't worry, you will live forever, set the stage for soul talk and if you're a good little girl or a boy and God will take you to heaven and take care of you in bliss forever. A bliss could be like an inner subjective self like being as one with God. People like to have that idea, you'll live forever in a good place if you follow these religious instructions. You should do this, and you do that, and follow the prescriptions. Listen, sweetheart, you won't even have to think about it. You just follow the instructions and it will work out. You figure that would calm the internal milieu. Last time, I talked about the formation of the rock. And the rock that could be instinct assumption, that if I do that, then everything is going to be okay for me. This is what's happening in the internal milieu of the body and what's the answer to this and you get the answer that you have a soul, and now the question is, cycling back to where we were read Bloom. He says we have two cognitive systems. One cognitive system, it's straight out of Pythagoras, and why they don't cite Pythagoras, I don't know. One for dealing with material objects, two chairs can't fit in the same space at the same time, and one dealing with social entities, with psyches. Two cognitive systems. Read that article. It's pretty interesting. And he continues to push that in various ways, and I've spoken about physical survival and psychological survival. And so now we need to wrap this up by talking about dualism. And even Bloom talks about the mind body or the body mind dualism. Is that the same as the body soul dualism? I don't know. Sometimes there's some slipperiness there. Are they talking about the mind, or are they talking about the soul? I'm going to spend some time, not now, but try to work that out. In other words, is the mind the same as the soul? Literature on this topic used the mind and the soul interchangeably. So, not many people write about the soul. We're giving a course on the soul. People will say, well, are you're giving a course on the mind? No, no, not really. It's the soul. So, there are distinctions between the body and the soul. Do people believe that their minds will survive their death or their bodies? I don't hear that, I may be like well my mind will survive, maybe some people think don't, but more likely say my soul will survive the death of my body. Why is the idea of having a soul that's separate from the body, that's separable from the body, why is that cognitively acceptable? The body finds that fun, okay, good idea, I'm going to live forever, if I behave myself. But what happens cognitively, why is that acceptable, and that's a challenge to figure that out. Now I have the makings of an answer. First of all children naturally believe that the mouse and the alligator thing, naturally believe that something survives death. That feelings and desires survive their death. They only believe that. And by age 4, they can imagine themselves in the future. So the idea that there is something that's called a soul that will survive their death is perfectly acceptable. We're ready for that because we already entertain the notion that when my body dies, I will still have feelings, I will still have sensations and if I've already experienced myself in the future. So all this idea of a soul that outlives the body, it goes on forever and ever, for infinity is okay by me. We made it. Thanks. You've been very attentive today. >> [APPLAUSE]
