1 00:00:01,200 --> 00:00:02,909 Well, good evening and thank you, everybody, 2 00:00:02,910 --> 00:00:08,790 for coming out today to hear my talk and glad it stopped raining so that there's somebody here to talk to. 3 00:00:09,720 --> 00:00:14,760 I shall be speaking today about a psychological phenomenon that's overlooked in the philosophy, 4 00:00:14,760 --> 00:00:19,170 literature and appears to receive only minor attention from researchers in psychology. 5 00:00:19,800 --> 00:00:25,830 It is, I think, a phenomenon that's commonplace, of practical significance and relevance to varying issues in ethics. 6 00:00:26,520 --> 00:00:30,450 I will not today be presenting a tightly crafted argument in support of a precise claim, 7 00:00:30,450 --> 00:00:37,080 but more of an exploratory survey to make a looser case that the phenomenon in question is worthy of extended theoretical attention. 8 00:00:38,670 --> 00:00:46,170 My personal, philosophical background could be described positively as eclectic and interdisciplinary, or not so positively as unfocused. 9 00:00:47,100 --> 00:00:54,090 I'm drawn to issues concerning mental structures and processes, the pursuit of truth, insight and understanding, and how this gets corrupted. 10 00:00:54,640 --> 00:00:59,129 How we use make sense of it are and are affected by language, virtue, 11 00:00:59,130 --> 00:01:07,230 moral and intellectual and human interaction and moral responsibility. When compelled to provide a single self-identifying category term 12 00:01:07,230 --> 00:01:13,770 I say that my field is neuropsychology, which concerns the way that the mind and its processes bear on moral questions. 13 00:01:15,180 --> 00:01:16,890 One more autobiographical data. 14 00:01:17,940 --> 00:01:24,720 I teach students who are obtaining an engineering heavy education to prepare them to be officers in the United States Navy and Marine Corps. 15 00:01:25,560 --> 00:01:32,080 The few philosophers we have on staff there were hired not to make philosophical exploration available to these clever young men and women. 16 00:01:32,190 --> 00:01:40,710 Alas, as there is a shortage of appreciation in those military services for philosophy or indeed most of the humanities and social sciences, 17 00:01:41,280 --> 00:01:46,140 but rather to teach a required and certainly important second year course in ethics for military leaders. 18 00:01:46,890 --> 00:01:53,820 My topic for today has been somewhat prompted by the Naval Academy understandable preoccupation with preparing students to cope with the physical, 19 00:01:53,820 --> 00:01:56,700 mental and moral demands of battlefield combat. 20 00:01:57,360 --> 00:02:04,919 A very psychologically challenging environment, and also by a more widely shared experience of classroom teaching in an era in the United States, 21 00:02:04,920 --> 00:02:10,110 at least, of greatly heightened attentiveness to the sensitivities and sensibilities of students. 22 00:02:11,880 --> 00:02:16,120 And what follows. I shall first talk generally about emotionality, self-regulation. 23 00:02:16,780 --> 00:02:23,999 Then introduced the phenomenon of interest to us today. Then after briefly connecting it to the psychological literature on defence 24 00:02:24,000 --> 00:02:28,050 mechanisms of using numerous examples to make the case for its broad utility, 25 00:02:28,860 --> 00:02:35,010 we will then turn to examining how it works briefly contrasted with other techniques of emotional self-management. 26 00:02:35,850 --> 00:02:42,870 At this point, we'll examine how taking note of this process can enrich our analysis of more responsibility in particular cases. 27 00:02:44,620 --> 00:02:47,469 Then, following a brief extension of the cast of emotions, 28 00:02:47,470 --> 00:02:52,840 the desire to ask whether the technique under examination might be relevant to character virtues. 29 00:02:53,260 --> 00:02:59,440 Concluding with a sober acknowledgement of the pathological usage to which could be put at that point, 30 00:02:59,440 --> 00:03:03,610 will open up to for your comments, suggestions, objections and questions. 31 00:03:04,320 --> 00:03:06,729 Of course, this is still a new area of research for me, 32 00:03:06,730 --> 00:03:11,800 and one which I have not yet settled on a position or even properly located its philosophical significance. 33 00:03:12,430 --> 00:03:15,820 I've even more eagerness than usual to receive feedback from you. 34 00:03:16,480 --> 00:03:21,760 I hope that the breadth of my talk with lots of ideas and use for us to discuss the Q&A 35 00:03:21,760 --> 00:03:26,200 period is the generous payoff that I receive for sharing my half baked ideas with you today, 36 00:03:26,620 --> 00:03:30,100 and I'm really looking forward to that. So welcome. 37 00:03:30,550 --> 00:03:35,950 Those of you who've come in, you haven't missed anything except the throat clearing that has typically been in the preamble. 38 00:03:36,380 --> 00:03:45,010 Right, exactly. Emotion, inhibition or suppression does not get a lot of good press these days and has not for a long time now. 39 00:03:45,670 --> 00:03:52,059 A recent encyclopaedic contributor felt no need to provide a citation for the statement that suppression of emotion, 40 00:03:52,060 --> 00:03:56,380 especially negative emotion, is typically linked to poor health and well-being for Westerners. 41 00:03:57,360 --> 00:04:02,370 Popular Western culture has for decades to an increasing general valorisation of emotionality. 42 00:04:03,030 --> 00:04:07,440 The experiencing of emotion is thought to be a basic part of sound, human functioning and flourishing. 43 00:04:08,100 --> 00:04:12,660 Starting this endangers relationships, moral behaviour and mental and even physical health. 44 00:04:13,710 --> 00:04:22,050 Emotions are informative, helpful and generally to be acknowledged, valued and even validated as embodying, justified or true perceptions. 45 00:04:22,890 --> 00:04:28,020 They emerge naturally in response to events and states of affairs in the environment, just as perceptions do. 46 00:04:28,500 --> 00:04:34,350 But they're even more personal and subjective, so their epistemic credentials are not to be scrutinised, but in general, 47 00:04:35,400 --> 00:04:40,020 philosophers for their part of extensively explored both emotion generally as well as specific emotions, 48 00:04:40,290 --> 00:04:43,730 and presented views that find great value in emotions and emotionality. 49 00:04:45,290 --> 00:04:51,439 There's a great deal of children's attitudes, I think, and there are salutary corrective to a long period during which emotions were 50 00:04:51,440 --> 00:04:55,940 subject to widespread denigration or dismissal as undeserving of attention. 51 00:04:56,720 --> 00:04:59,720 Emotions were regarded as fundamentally counter rational. 52 00:05:00,380 --> 00:05:06,950 They were held to have no place in productive thinking, which was taken to consist solely the logical manipulation of symbolic propositions. 53 00:05:07,550 --> 00:05:12,110 They were associated with women in a partnership that was thought to be mutually unflattering. 54 00:05:13,170 --> 00:05:19,950 They were supposed to make no contribution to intelligent action or penetrating inquiry, whether philosophical, scientific or otherwise. 55 00:05:21,110 --> 00:05:27,890 But it is perhaps time for a counter correction, for the pendulum, for the pace of the swing back toward a more balanced assessment. 56 00:05:29,030 --> 00:05:37,600 Emotionality can obviously be informative, productive, gratifying and fulfilling, but it can also obviously be disturbing and counterproductive. 57 00:05:38,420 --> 00:05:41,809 Given this, there ought to be a welcome world we play by methods of emotion, 58 00:05:41,810 --> 00:05:46,760 self-regulation that counteract the emergence of emotions in certain sorts of circumstances. 59 00:05:47,390 --> 00:05:54,610 Such methods could, it would seem, be conducive to better judgement and decision making and lessening of pointless, subjective, emotional suffering. 60 00:05:56,390 --> 00:06:06,200 Let's consider a simple to imagine that tangling for a couple of unpleasant weeks with a flu like Non-covid illness prompts us to get a physical exam, 61 00:06:06,650 --> 00:06:09,350 after which we're summoned for a consultation with the doctor. 62 00:06:10,160 --> 00:06:14,660 In his private office, we're presented with the grave news that we have cancer in our blood cells. 63 00:06:14,840 --> 00:06:23,440 That is leukaemia. Patients facing a life threatening illness like leukaemia and aggressive medical treatment like bone marrow transplantation, 64 00:06:23,800 --> 00:06:27,850 are suddenly confronted with a highly threatening situation that turns their lives upside down. 65 00:06:28,600 --> 00:06:32,290 Typically, the time spent for adjusting to the new situation is highly compressed. 66 00:06:32,920 --> 00:06:37,810 Patients have hardly realised what their diagnosis implies before they are confronted with very aggressive treatments. 67 00:06:38,620 --> 00:06:43,660 The mortality rate in bone marrow transplantation is up to 36%. 68 00:06:44,350 --> 00:06:52,570 Survival after one year is reported to be about 50% in the donors unrelated and 70 to 80% with a related donor for most patients. 69 00:06:53,050 --> 00:06:58,170 Bone marrow transplantation is the very last hope for survival. Now. 70 00:06:58,170 --> 00:07:04,830 It's an almost practical importance for us to be able to discuss intelligent intelligently with the doctor, what our options are, 71 00:07:05,130 --> 00:07:11,730 what actions we ought to take or not take, and so on, and to be able to recall the details of this discussion afterwards. 72 00:07:12,360 --> 00:07:15,960 So we cannot afford to become very emotional under these circumstances. 73 00:07:16,620 --> 00:07:22,050 Hence, we might attempt to avoid suffering distress by not allowing ourselves to bring to mind, 74 00:07:22,560 --> 00:07:29,340 even ideally to the unconscious mind, any cancer associated imagery that might well cause debilitating panic. 75 00:07:29,910 --> 00:07:36,270 Or to think of, or imagine the more dire of the implications and consequences of our treatment decline and possible death. 76 00:07:37,400 --> 00:07:43,340 The extra information, the beliefs, images and speculations would not be relevant to the urgent task at hand. 77 00:07:43,890 --> 00:07:47,690 Would not significantly enhance our discussion and planning at the doctor's office. 78 00:07:48,560 --> 00:07:55,040 On the other hand, its presence to mind could very well be distracting or crushing in a way that would undermine the current activity. 79 00:07:55,880 --> 00:08:01,520 At the very least, it would demand a great effort of will to maintain our composure and focus adequately, 80 00:08:01,520 --> 00:08:06,710 despite the upwelling of fear effort that could otherwise be directed in more productive directions. 81 00:08:07,980 --> 00:08:12,240 In order to achieve this self-control over our emotional and cognitive responses. 82 00:08:12,390 --> 00:08:19,440 Therefore, we restrict our engagement with the issues to a purely intellectual plane and a topically constrained one at that, 83 00:08:19,980 --> 00:08:25,830 thereby reproducing either the cognitive aspect of fear and or the affect of the physiological aspects that accompany it. 84 00:08:26,750 --> 00:08:30,010 Success could simply be a matter of degree rather than all or nothing. 85 00:08:31,670 --> 00:08:38,420 The managing of our cognitive response will in fact also prevent us from experiencing other potent emotions that could derail irrational efforts. 86 00:08:38,420 --> 00:08:46,310 Hear, despair, say, or anger or grief, because it aims at a broader current blackout of all associated, 87 00:08:46,700 --> 00:08:51,320 dark, strongly, negatively balanced ideas stored in our long term memory. 88 00:08:52,370 --> 00:09:00,020 In other contexts, such as conversations we have about the dire prognosis with our spouse, children, parents or business partners. 89 00:09:00,410 --> 00:09:03,739 It might be that more of the information will be properly admitted within our current 90 00:09:03,740 --> 00:09:08,180 perspective to help us plan as well to connect emotionally to those we care for. 91 00:09:08,930 --> 00:09:15,290 We've been here. A good deal of the related memory contents might prudently be suppressed, including much of the potentially attendant imagery. 92 00:09:18,900 --> 00:09:24,209 I propose that we use the term shallow cognisant for this method of self limiting 93 00:09:24,210 --> 00:09:29,700 our emotional responses by a selective suppression or non activation of emotion, 94 00:09:29,700 --> 00:09:31,620 arousing imagery and verbal thoughts. 95 00:09:32,810 --> 00:09:40,969 In describing this process as I have, I do presuppose a cognitive conception of emotions in which emotions are caused, 96 00:09:40,970 --> 00:09:47,450 shaped and even partly constituted by thoughts of conscious and unconscious in both symbolic and imagistic. 97 00:09:48,970 --> 00:09:53,350 So mission fights in a broad sense. If cognitions are components of emotions, 98 00:09:53,350 --> 00:10:00,069 then we can readily make sense of our routine observations of emotions being substantially controlled, triggered, moderated, 99 00:10:00,070 --> 00:10:00,700 eliminated, 100 00:10:00,700 --> 00:10:08,410 redirect and transmuted by the cognitions that are activated and alive within our stream of consciousness and unconsciousness from moment to moment. 101 00:10:09,530 --> 00:10:14,600 I say substantially control rather than completely controlled because emotions are more than just cognitions. 102 00:10:14,990 --> 00:10:22,040 They include physiological elements for one thing, and they thereby gain an independence that can keep them from being fully under cognitive dominion. 103 00:10:24,060 --> 00:10:28,850 Once we have the concept shallow cognisant in hand, it quickly becomes evident just how commonplace it is. 104 00:10:29,820 --> 00:10:34,500 Its implementation is not restricted to start with dramatic episodes like the one we began with. 105 00:10:35,160 --> 00:10:41,969 Indeed, that kind of life situation itself will, if things go reasonably well, gradually become more prosaic and shallow. 106 00:10:41,970 --> 00:10:49,600 Cognisant will continue to have a constructive role to play as the period of leukaemia treatment stretches out further into the future. 107 00:10:49,620 --> 00:10:56,849 We hope the sufferers, family, friends and associates will do well to avoid having their minds conjure pointlessly disturbing thoughts 108 00:10:56,850 --> 00:11:01,770 or images relating to cancer victims so as not to interfere with their ongoing care relationships. 109 00:11:01,890 --> 00:11:04,440 Relationships with this sufferer or with one another. 110 00:11:07,330 --> 00:11:15,340 The practice of shallow cognisance is not unheard of in common discourse where it might be true intellectualising often used in a pejorative sense. 111 00:11:16,960 --> 00:11:20,440 This usage may have been borrowed and adapted from the domain of psychology, 112 00:11:20,440 --> 00:11:25,900 where Freud began a tradition still alive of using Intellectualising as a defence mechanism. 113 00:11:26,170 --> 00:11:30,640 Unconsciously aimed at allaying anxieties or unacceptable impulses. 114 00:11:31,770 --> 00:11:35,970 These mechanisms are respected as normal ways of coping with the vicissitudes of life. 115 00:11:36,930 --> 00:11:41,309 More than a century of research demonstrates that defence mechanisms are automatic psychological 116 00:11:41,310 --> 00:11:46,380 processes that aid individuals in dealing with internal conflicts in stressful situations. 117 00:11:47,460 --> 00:11:54,210 Albeit practices that vary in how helpful or dysfunctional they are and supporting human flourishing within particular life contexts. 118 00:11:56,010 --> 00:12:00,239 Intellectual zation is said by psychologists specialising in the theoretical formulation 119 00:12:00,240 --> 00:12:04,290 and clinical measurement of defence mechanisms to involve the use of general, 120 00:12:04,290 --> 00:12:09,030 impersonal, abstract thinking in order to stave off disturbing feelings. 121 00:12:10,000 --> 00:12:14,590 Another closely related defence mechanism referred to as isolation of affect, 122 00:12:15,010 --> 00:12:20,890 is said to keep emotional accompaniments out of consciousness in some unspecified specified way, 123 00:12:21,310 --> 00:12:29,200 but it's not very well distinguished from intellectual zation. It's not clear which of these mechanisms might correspond to shallow cognitive. 124 00:12:30,390 --> 00:12:37,980 Both mechanisms, at any rate, are yoked together as so-called obsessional defences in the middle range of adeptness of all defence mechanisms. 125 00:12:38,980 --> 00:12:45,040 They help the individual in keeping out of awareness parts of the conflict, for instance, associated feelings, 126 00:12:45,040 --> 00:12:51,280 desires and thoughts which would generate intolerable anxiety perceived as an integrated psychological experience. 127 00:12:52,250 --> 00:13:01,850 By contrast, the mature, most adaptive defence mechanisms or coping strategies promote the integrated and partially aware experience of feelings, 128 00:13:01,850 --> 00:13:06,950 ideas, desires and thoughts associated to an internal conflict or external stressful situation, 129 00:13:07,320 --> 00:13:12,170 and help the individual fuming with his or her psychologically stressful experiences by integrating 130 00:13:12,170 --> 00:13:18,770 ethics with ideas for optimising and possibly resolving the internal or external causes of distress. 131 00:13:19,910 --> 00:13:25,250 So shall recognising seems unlikely to be looked upon with complete favour by researchers in this field. 132 00:13:26,850 --> 00:13:30,690 But consider some of the myriad beneficial applications of shell companies. 133 00:13:32,140 --> 00:13:36,700 A market investors say needs to weigh risks without allowing thoughts of possible 134 00:13:36,700 --> 00:13:40,270 catastrophes to render her fearful and irrational in her decision making. 135 00:13:41,250 --> 00:13:48,270 A team of mountain climbers must be able to coordinate their precise actions while avoiding anxious or fearful emotions that could impair execution. 136 00:13:49,430 --> 00:13:54,020 Performers, including university lecturers, need to closely monitor their performances, 137 00:13:54,170 --> 00:14:00,860 taking note of unplanned problems and handling these without the intrusion of resource sapping discombobulating emotions. 138 00:14:02,000 --> 00:14:08,399 Poker players, in addition, cannot afford to manifest emotion, which might tip off competitors in ways that can be exploited. 139 00:14:08,400 --> 00:14:13,610 If the attachment of those eager to enjoy humour must often be able to resist. 140 00:14:13,620 --> 00:14:21,110 Envisioning the jokingly depicted events vividly lest revulsion, distress, discomfort or ethical concern preclude amusement. 141 00:14:22,750 --> 00:14:29,620 Shallow cognition can also be important for interpersonal or inter-group cooperation, a function that is not highlighted in the psychology literature. 142 00:14:30,510 --> 00:14:38,610 When people, intimate partners, international diplomats or anyone in between need to negotiate conflicting interests, shall we? 143 00:14:38,640 --> 00:14:41,970 Cognisant of the other's expression of needs and requests, 144 00:14:42,360 --> 00:14:48,060 bypasses thoughts concerning their threatening, anxiety provoking defensiveness, eliciting implications, 145 00:14:48,480 --> 00:14:56,100 and thereby permits a more patient, sympathetic, slow, co-operative, creative consideration that can discover mutually acceptable resolutions. 146 00:14:57,010 --> 00:15:00,280 We also see social and political relations that are dependent upon there being 147 00:15:00,280 --> 00:15:04,300 reliable expectations that people can and will exercise share recognising. 148 00:15:05,130 --> 00:15:08,190 Is when show a cognisant contributes to productive, respectful, 149 00:15:08,190 --> 00:15:13,050 rational discussions of issues that easily arouse tempers or libidos or affronted egos. 150 00:15:14,150 --> 00:15:16,760 Relatedly, we shall return to this later. 151 00:15:17,090 --> 00:15:24,770 Students receiving trigger warnings from teachers are presumed to possess some capacity for restraining the flaring of emotions that could disturb, 152 00:15:24,770 --> 00:15:28,100 distract or otherwise interfere with rational analysis and discussion. 153 00:15:29,030 --> 00:15:30,799 In all these cases, holding emotion, 154 00:15:30,800 --> 00:15:36,770 evoking thoughts and imagery cognitively at bay seems a generally effective route to maintaining emotional control. 155 00:15:38,320 --> 00:15:42,910 The inhibitory utility of Shell recognising is not confined to negative emotions. 156 00:15:43,420 --> 00:15:48,790 It also helps with emotions that are ordinarily considered to be positive, but that in particular settings can be problematic. 157 00:15:49,510 --> 00:15:55,120 For instance, shallow cognition may prevent a general policy judgement or choice for being unbalanced 158 00:15:55,120 --> 00:16:00,100 by a powerful reaction of compassion or empathy to a single person's anecdotal case. 159 00:16:01,070 --> 00:16:08,809 What can help us control the onset of sexual, romantic, or even merely fraternal feelings of affection in a professional or otherwise unsuitable 160 00:16:08,810 --> 00:16:12,890 setting where they might lead to behaviour that amounts to sexual harassment or worse. 161 00:16:14,880 --> 00:16:20,240 Harrison excuse me, given the potent behavioural consequences of positive as well as negative emotions, 162 00:16:20,490 --> 00:16:26,580 emotional self-regulation is crucial across the board to avoid infringing upon the rights and interests of others. 163 00:16:27,730 --> 00:16:34,420 Not that shallow cognition is all powerful. Some stimuli to deep cognisance seem to be less resistible than others, 164 00:16:34,420 --> 00:16:39,610 such as the smell of a lost loved one versus the sight or verbal description of him or her, 165 00:16:40,060 --> 00:16:42,910 or a lengthy or repeated vision of a gruesome wound, 166 00:16:43,720 --> 00:16:50,540 as opposed to a quick glimpse or a depiction in words or repetitive exposure to the serious stressors of a battlefield engagement. 167 00:16:51,610 --> 00:16:57,910 There's certainly much to explore concerning the variables that determine the varying degrees of success met by shallow cognisance. 168 00:17:00,130 --> 00:17:05,980 Now I've been speaking as if shallow cognitive is the only emotion self-management game in town, but certainly is not. 169 00:17:06,550 --> 00:17:14,080 Reason psychological literature describes, for instance, emotion regulation strategies that include what's called attentional deployment, 170 00:17:14,170 --> 00:17:19,660 which is shifting one's attentional focus toward less distressing or more positive emotion inducing stimuli. 171 00:17:20,640 --> 00:17:26,460 Cognitive change. Modifying one starts to improve mood and response methylation, 172 00:17:26,700 --> 00:17:30,840 which is directly altering the physical or behavioural aspects of an emotional response. 173 00:17:31,770 --> 00:17:38,460 According to this model, a person facing an unpleasant work environment might intentionally ignore problematic co-workers, 174 00:17:38,700 --> 00:17:46,050 which would be intentional to reframe the boss's criticism as feedback that will help a career trajectory in the long term. 175 00:17:46,670 --> 00:17:48,719 Cognitive change or practice. 176 00:17:48,720 --> 00:17:55,950 Relaxation and deep breathing techniques to facilitate relaxation when becoming annoyed by co-workers, which is a response modulation. 177 00:17:58,180 --> 00:18:01,250 This provides a landscape in which to situate shallow cognisant. 178 00:18:02,290 --> 00:18:06,939 Notice how shallow colonising differs from the methods that redirect our attention toward different 179 00:18:06,940 --> 00:18:12,670 perceptions or thoughts that will undermine or counteract the arousal of an undesired or unhelpful emotion. 180 00:18:13,520 --> 00:18:15,110 Shallow colonising arguably, 181 00:18:15,110 --> 00:18:21,799 arguably holds the advantage over these techniques as it permits continued cognitive engagement with the ideas or realities 182 00:18:21,800 --> 00:18:28,760 needed to be faced without either escaping into self distraction or diverting to a very different construal of the situation. 183 00:18:29,900 --> 00:18:33,440 When we need to deal intelligently, properly with a diagnosis of leukaemia, 184 00:18:33,740 --> 00:18:40,010 it's no help to start thinking about politics or football except to offer a brief breather before returning to reality, 185 00:18:40,010 --> 00:18:46,510 perhaps, or even to find silver linings. Though such perspective shift certainly had their place, it could be profoundly valuable. 186 00:18:47,710 --> 00:18:54,430 Likewise, those who are determined not merely to fret about aspects of themselves, their lives and their worlds, but to work to change. 187 00:18:54,430 --> 00:19:00,250 Those cannot simply switch the channel to something that's completely different or has been re construed to be emotionally benign. 188 00:19:00,970 --> 00:19:04,120 If they're to strive to make improvements in the realities that disturb them. 189 00:19:04,120 --> 00:19:09,710 So they need to engage mentally with those realities, but without being brought low emotionally by. 190 00:19:10,820 --> 00:19:17,840 Someone who finds herself overwhelmingly dismayed and despairing when mulling over the plight of the poor or of animals in the modern world, 191 00:19:18,110 --> 00:19:20,240 must, if she is to play the role of activist, 192 00:19:20,750 --> 00:19:27,770 find some way to engage mentally with the issues that so disturbed her to read and listen and view and converse and write about these issues, 193 00:19:28,130 --> 00:19:35,480 all the while decoupling the foreseeable emotional reactions who strain may undermine her ability to continue and even her physical and mental health. 194 00:19:37,220 --> 00:19:44,990 Salman Khan. I think there's not, of course, eliminate the threats or Dr. Dyer reports it does not itself undo harsh realities, 195 00:19:45,530 --> 00:19:48,200 but it does facilitate our coping with them intelligently. 196 00:19:49,060 --> 00:19:53,740 And its function is often to postpone an emotional reaction, not to eliminate it permanently. 197 00:19:54,600 --> 00:19:58,319 The ideal outcome might typically not be complete prevention of an emotion, 198 00:19:58,320 --> 00:20:01,670 but mere delay until the circumstances are more propitious for confronting. 199 00:20:03,840 --> 00:20:10,229 The pathetic accident. Moreover, most emotionality is benign and stands outside a shallow cognisance, 200 00:20:10,230 --> 00:20:14,430 proper sphere of action which embraces only emotions that interfere with proper functioning. 201 00:20:15,210 --> 00:20:20,520 So a position in support of the use of shallow cognisance does not entail a general stance against emotionality. 202 00:20:21,300 --> 00:20:26,310 It can deem emotionality highly valuable and important as long as is in its proper place. 203 00:20:26,620 --> 00:20:30,390 With shallow cognisant being a tool for situating, it will best serve the good. 204 00:20:32,500 --> 00:20:36,940 How exactly did the shadow cabinet work? What's the mental mechanism that underlies it? 205 00:20:38,550 --> 00:20:45,390 I've said a tiny bit about and I'll say a little more, and what I say will be speculative and without a strong memory. 206 00:20:45,510 --> 00:20:47,909 But I do invite your comments on the account. 207 00:20:47,910 --> 00:20:56,280 I give my starting point here and indeed in much of my research elsewhere, is that the individual cognitive system is not fully integrated. 208 00:20:57,150 --> 00:21:04,800 Numerous familiar psychological phenomena, including priming effects, framing and scheme and script effects, expectation effects, 209 00:21:05,100 --> 00:21:10,049 temporary forgetting inconsistencies among beliefs or beliefs like states setting 210 00:21:10,050 --> 00:21:15,570 relative personas that we adopt and ambivalence suggest that our cognitive endowment, 211 00:21:15,660 --> 00:21:23,610 the pool of resources stored in memory for utilisation and thinking resources that I take to comprise both sentences and images is 212 00:21:23,610 --> 00:21:29,730 not a single find from which any and all assets are available to be activated whenever relevant to the current topic of cognition. 213 00:21:30,620 --> 00:21:34,820 Rather than provide in such such fashion, a single perspective upon the world. 214 00:21:35,270 --> 00:21:41,149 Our endowment is functionally compartmentalised in a complex pattern that actually supports many distinct, 215 00:21:41,150 --> 00:21:49,010 partial, partly overlapping situation triggered and sometimes mutually inconsistent prospects that quarter. 216 00:21:50,130 --> 00:21:56,160 Our stream, recognising, which is only partly conscious, involves a continual shifting from one perspective to another, 217 00:21:56,520 --> 00:22:02,700 as differing subsets of our representational resources get activated for the pragmatic task at hand as we perceive it. 218 00:22:03,600 --> 00:22:10,770 In short, our standpoint keeps changing how we think or behave and what kind of setting is no sure indicator of how we think or behave in a different. 219 00:22:12,790 --> 00:22:20,770 Shallow cognisance seems to work by creating a prospect that is insulated or sealed off from certain kinds of memory representations. 220 00:22:21,720 --> 00:22:28,890 We managed to activate the focal ideas with which we need to reason, for example, and planning how to respond to a leukaemia diagnosis. 221 00:22:29,310 --> 00:22:33,540 But we've all activated some representations that by virtue of their associations 222 00:22:33,540 --> 00:22:37,580 in relations with the focal ideas would ordinarily be activated as well. 223 00:22:37,590 --> 00:22:41,840 But for the shallow curtain. Engaging shall occur as it can be. 224 00:22:41,840 --> 00:22:52,549 Analogised using a simulated computer, also known as an emulator or a virtual machine as a safe sandbox environment in which to examine 225 00:22:52,550 --> 00:22:56,960 potentially dangerous entities without exposing the rest of the system to the risk of infection. 226 00:22:58,730 --> 00:23:02,030 So just how available is this show according to ordinary people? 227 00:23:02,810 --> 00:23:06,350 Is this a capacity that all possess or that can at least be developed by anyone? 228 00:23:06,980 --> 00:23:10,700 Or does it require some specialised kind of mental training in practice? 229 00:23:11,270 --> 00:23:18,170 This practice and shallow cognition strengthen one's ability in a way that transfers readily across different sorts of emotional listening stimuli, 230 00:23:18,530 --> 00:23:26,780 such that maybe practising in educational settings when confronted by emotion, trigger ideas can empower one to better, 231 00:23:27,050 --> 00:23:31,610 better handle not only future classroom provocations, but emotional triggers elsewhere in life. 232 00:23:32,690 --> 00:23:38,360 It's important that we find answers to these empirical questions because they bear upon significant issues of moral right and wrong. 233 00:23:39,560 --> 00:23:47,140 So a covenant is relevant not only to achieving our practical ends, as I suggested earlier, but also for the moral relationships that we bear to one. 234 00:23:49,260 --> 00:23:53,430 The earlier examples I offered were cast in terms of the self-interest and the shallow moderniser. 235 00:23:54,000 --> 00:23:57,630 But of course there were possible moral dimensions to those scenarios, too. 236 00:23:58,440 --> 00:24:05,220 The mountain climbers, for instance, may owe it to their loved ones to take all reasonable measures not to be undone by panic on the rock face. 237 00:24:05,910 --> 00:24:11,640 The market investor and poker player may have dependants carrying on them to avoid emotion caused by poor performance. 238 00:24:12,630 --> 00:24:14,970 But a pure case of moral responsibility to others. 239 00:24:15,210 --> 00:24:22,980 Simple one is presented by the choral singer who is at risk to choke up, literally with singing a certain, certain moving passage of text. 240 00:24:24,060 --> 00:24:25,370 And I know all I speak about. 241 00:24:26,190 --> 00:24:33,510 He needs to remember that singers indulging their emotional inclinations are likely to undermine the audience's ability to satisfy indulge theirs. 242 00:24:34,370 --> 00:24:37,729 But he can meet his ethical obligation here by using shallow cognisance while 243 00:24:37,730 --> 00:24:41,060 still clearly enunciating the words he sees and understanding their meaning. 244 00:24:42,870 --> 00:24:49,650 Another interesting sort of case is presented by the negative reactions of some passers by two women who are nursing young children in public. 245 00:24:50,960 --> 00:24:58,340 Policy discussions commonly balance the rights to breastfeed and to be breastfed against the supposed rights of these bystanders, 246 00:24:58,340 --> 00:25:02,570 not to be compelled to experience discomfort, revulsion, or other aversive emotions. 247 00:25:03,530 --> 00:25:08,020 A first response to the bystander's claim might be that they can look away if the site is disturbing to them. 248 00:25:08,750 --> 00:25:12,799 But this fails to grapple with the apparent psychological reality that much of the breastfeeding 249 00:25:12,800 --> 00:25:17,840 related emotional suffering derives not from being confronted by the actual sight of a woman's breast, 250 00:25:18,440 --> 00:25:24,890 but by unseen thoughts and images that only onlookers allow themselves to activate when witnessing nursing, 251 00:25:25,280 --> 00:25:28,310 even when there's no breast or suckling that is visible at all. 252 00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:37,570 Now, if the passer by passers by can be expected to engage easily in shallow cognisance, then their complaints seem to have no purchase whatsoever. 253 00:25:37,960 --> 00:25:45,040 That is as it is then their own failures to deploy the self-regulation measure that is the morally relevant cause of their own suffering. 254 00:25:47,150 --> 00:25:55,120 Might such an analysis be condemned as victim blaming? That wouldn't be surprising, though, in my view, victim blaming charges do not cut the ice. 255 00:25:55,120 --> 00:25:58,330 They're popular thought to cut. But that's a topic for another time. 256 00:26:00,170 --> 00:26:04,820 A still richer example might be found in the realm of informed consent to medical procedures. 257 00:26:05,750 --> 00:26:12,980 Our earlier leukaemia example suggests that shallow cognisance may play a highly constructive role in patient's provision of consent, 258 00:26:13,280 --> 00:26:18,259 as it makes it possible for them to weigh their options and choices without having to fight off their own distressing, 259 00:26:18,260 --> 00:26:20,840 disorienting and deflating emotional reactions. 260 00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:29,480 If doctors can be confident that patients who face serious health challenges are capable of calmly, rationally processing all processing, 261 00:26:29,930 --> 00:26:35,810 all the decision, relevant information regarding those challenges and the medical and non-medical interventions that are available, 262 00:26:36,230 --> 00:26:39,410 then they can open the information spigot or tap, 263 00:26:39,740 --> 00:26:43,879 and patients will be able to make fully informed choices without feeling overwhelmed 264 00:26:43,880 --> 00:26:47,000 or raced in certain directions by painful emotions they are undergoing. 265 00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:54,200 On the other hand, what if patients cannot be counted on to mobilise Shell or cognisant effectively where Edwards needed? 266 00:26:55,130 --> 00:27:02,960 Then doctors will be tempted, perhaps rightly, to withhold choice, relevant information that's emotionally highly disturbing and therefore liable, 267 00:27:03,050 --> 00:27:07,280 thereby liable to exert an irrational bias upon the patient's choice. 268 00:27:08,270 --> 00:27:15,140 In the jargon of the law courts, the probative epistemic value of some information would be outweighed by its likely prejudicial effect. 269 00:27:16,120 --> 00:27:20,409 In which case we might encounter episodes like the one I experienced with my own orthopaedist 270 00:27:20,410 --> 00:27:24,430 as he and I plan in arthroscopic surgical procedure on the meniscus of my knee. 271 00:27:25,550 --> 00:27:33,320 He said nothing to me at that time about the procedure involving tourniquets and the wrenching or distorting of my knee joint in order to fix it in 272 00:27:33,320 --> 00:27:41,750 place for the surgery or the resulting micro tearing to be expected in the anterior cruciate ligament and the discomfort this would produce post-op. 273 00:27:42,590 --> 00:27:45,890 I learned about these standard features of the procedure only after the surgery. 274 00:27:45,950 --> 00:27:52,010 From the notes taken during the procedure. Plus what the doctors assistant said at my first post-op follow up appointment. 275 00:27:53,060 --> 00:28:00,410 Given my seeming shallow calmness and capability, it looks as if I was wrongly denied the opportunity to give informed consent to the procedure. 276 00:28:01,190 --> 00:28:04,759 Once, at least, the doctor had good reason to expect it. 277 00:28:04,760 --> 00:28:10,280 I, perhaps, like most of his patients or most surgery patients or most medical patients, 278 00:28:11,060 --> 00:28:14,840 couldn't handle the truth, as Jack Nicholson said in A Few Good Men. 279 00:28:15,200 --> 00:28:20,360 That is that I would not possess the mental resources to make good, rational use of the extra information. 280 00:28:21,650 --> 00:28:27,440 So it is important that we ascertain just how competent people in all walks of life are at shallow cognition. 281 00:28:28,190 --> 00:28:35,960 And it's also important that we learn whether shallow cognition is a skill that can be developed, and if so, how for it is an empowering skill. 282 00:28:36,260 --> 00:28:41,060 And what we are known to possess it heightens the respect with which we must be treated by others. 283 00:28:41,750 --> 00:28:46,400 They're not permitted to materialistically withhold from us the information to which we are otherwise entitled, 284 00:28:46,790 --> 00:28:52,490 on grounds that it will disconcert us, arousing emotions that will overwhelm our capacities for rational decision making. 285 00:28:56,480 --> 00:29:02,300 Another setting in which moral issues arise with greater complexity but still serious personal and political consequences. 286 00:29:02,820 --> 00:29:05,960 Because education, we are in the USA at least. 287 00:29:06,410 --> 00:29:13,010 There are frequent allegations made by students of having been harmed and victimised by upsetting, insulting or offending words or images. 288 00:29:14,560 --> 00:29:17,560 Such charges are taken very seriously by school administrators, 289 00:29:17,560 --> 00:29:21,460 especially when the students have issued their complaints on social media or other public fora, 290 00:29:22,120 --> 00:29:25,750 and they often result in serious punitive consequences for the instructors involved. 291 00:29:26,830 --> 00:29:30,310 And then a university faculty approve of this state of affairs. 292 00:29:30,670 --> 00:29:35,080 Many decry it might show recognising have some relevance to the controversy. 293 00:29:36,670 --> 00:29:42,730 Well, if our current housing is a practice that students routinely can practice completely at low cost, 294 00:29:43,390 --> 00:29:46,120 then it would seem to deflate the students claims of more. 295 00:29:47,130 --> 00:29:58,470 The psychic vulnerability to potentially disturbing content such as mere mentions, not uses of supposedly toxic slurs or microaggressions, 296 00:29:58,470 --> 00:30:06,930 like a statement praising colour-blind marriage standards or tentative statements of controversial or widely despised political or social views. 297 00:30:07,800 --> 00:30:14,520 The psychic vulnerability in such material is largely under recipients control through the shallow, cognisant technique of mental self management, 298 00:30:15,030 --> 00:30:19,530 and this removes a substantial part of the case to suppress or punish the expression of such content. 299 00:30:20,630 --> 00:30:25,940 There may remain reasons to limit or prohibit the expression, but they will not concern its infliction of psychic pain or damage. 300 00:30:27,710 --> 00:30:30,040 But promoting and teaching is necessary. 301 00:30:30,050 --> 00:30:37,910 The use of shallow, cognisant educators would be free to pursue and model basically unfettered inquiry in the educational environment, 302 00:30:38,690 --> 00:30:40,849 including about difficult topics like sex, 303 00:30:40,850 --> 00:30:47,660 violence, death, religion and race, while not provoking emotional reactions in sensitive students that could undermine their learning. 304 00:30:48,820 --> 00:30:52,540 Indeed, it could well be that classroom experience in handling disconcerting emotional 305 00:30:52,540 --> 00:30:56,889 reactions in self-education that it helps students develop their shallow, 306 00:30:56,890 --> 00:31:00,850 cognisant capacities, thereby providing an important component of the emotional, 307 00:31:00,850 --> 00:31:05,229 hardiness and resilience that students will need in their subsequent professional intellectual 308 00:31:05,230 --> 00:31:09,969 activities if they're not to veer off course whenever encountering matters that threaten to disorient, 309 00:31:09,970 --> 00:31:15,590 disturb and dis compose. We cannot take a subtle stance on this topic, however, 310 00:31:15,590 --> 00:31:22,100 until we know the empirical realities regarding shell cognisant and those realities might well complicate the final picture. 311 00:31:22,880 --> 00:31:29,390 It could turn out, for instance, that while shallow colonising is effective and widely available for deflecting the majority of slings and arrows, 312 00:31:29,840 --> 00:31:36,740 certain kinds of traumatic experience produce emotional reactivity that cannot be easily overcome by the shallow cognitive mechanism. 313 00:31:37,920 --> 00:31:44,879 Additionally, the shallow cognisant consume resources of which we have a limited supply so that we have to be aware of inflicting 314 00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:50,670 shallow cognisant fatigue upon our students where they find its exercise more taxing or even ineffective. 315 00:31:51,870 --> 00:32:00,360 It will also be worth learning whether an inability to utilise economising effectively is fostered or reduced by certain experiences or attitudes, 316 00:32:01,140 --> 00:32:04,830 for instance, about oneself of one's psychic vulnerability or about others. 317 00:32:04,830 --> 00:32:07,590 Emotional conditions and experiences are about the nature of emotions. 318 00:32:09,420 --> 00:32:12,930 Empirical data will not resolve all the conceptual and ethical issues, of course. 319 00:32:13,620 --> 00:32:22,199 Suppose that we learn that students are able to cognisable shallowly about blatantly disturbing content content like profanity or bigoted speech, 320 00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:25,710 or blunt descriptions of disgusting situations or violent atrocities, 321 00:32:26,190 --> 00:32:30,150 but that later they often encounter memories of the initial problems, 322 00:32:30,540 --> 00:32:37,110 and that these memories are not as reliably and effectively stripped of their aversive emotion by shallow cognisance at those later moments. 323 00:32:38,240 --> 00:32:42,379 Or subsequent protective shallow cognisance is just as effective in most instances, 324 00:32:42,380 --> 00:32:52,400 except that some of the recognised recognised episodes occur when the recipient is not well positioned to conduct shallow compromising effectively, 325 00:32:52,400 --> 00:32:56,390 such as during a sleepy state or an illness or an emotionally vulnerable period. 326 00:32:57,400 --> 00:32:58,690 If these are the realities, 327 00:32:58,990 --> 00:33:06,069 then we need to grapple with how to balance the cognitive emotional burdens borne by students against the benefits of making classrooms, 328 00:33:06,070 --> 00:33:13,960 venues for open and blinkered, fearless inquiry rather than safe spaces where social taboos are not challenged or ignored but differentially honoured. 329 00:33:15,310 --> 00:33:23,590 And how do trigger warnings intersect with shallow cognitive? Suppose that our cancer diagnosis doctor character had prefaced his terrible report 330 00:33:23,590 --> 00:33:28,210 of leukaemia with a true warning about how he had some terrible news to impart. 331 00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:32,450 There are many easier for the patient to get. Shallow quagmire isn't going. 332 00:33:33,590 --> 00:33:39,560 We might reasonably expect that a trigger warning will help people, including students, to initiate their shell cabinet mechanisms. 333 00:33:40,400 --> 00:33:45,830 But the research without which I am only beginning to explore, is similarly tending not to support this, 334 00:33:46,280 --> 00:33:51,139 suggesting instead that expressed trigger warnings have little effect and the trauma 335 00:33:51,140 --> 00:33:56,270 survivors actually themselves trigger a heightened anxiety over what is to come. 336 00:33:57,020 --> 00:34:05,360 Anticipatory anxiety. And reinforced survivors view of their trauma is central to their identity in these ways, 337 00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:08,600 perhaps undermining the engagement of the shallow cognitive mechanism. 338 00:34:10,950 --> 00:34:15,400 What the discussion thus far is focussed upon. Shall Cognisant is a tool for controlling emotion. 339 00:34:15,420 --> 00:34:23,810 It may actually be a broader utility. The show recognising process recall is but a means to override the normal situation or task best 340 00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:29,580 based activation of representational resources from our compartmentalised cognitive storehouse. 341 00:34:30,500 --> 00:34:37,760 While altering the sets of cognitive assets, both intentional imagistic that are activated for use can obviously shape emotions. 342 00:34:37,760 --> 00:34:45,560 Given the dependence of emotions upon cognitions. To be parallel, I think can be said for desires, desires to or shaped by conditions. 343 00:34:45,950 --> 00:34:49,790 So shallow cognisant should offer control over these as well to some degree. 344 00:34:50,570 --> 00:34:57,900 Consider a couple of brief examples. If we are giving intimate counsel to a friend for whom we might have romantic or sexual feelings, 345 00:34:58,230 --> 00:35:05,610 we might engage our partners in order to block activation of fantasy images and thoughts that would only breed destructive desires. 346 00:35:06,510 --> 00:35:11,300 Or depending upon the matter under discussion, we might need to interrupt the unhelpful arousing of longings, 347 00:35:11,790 --> 00:35:16,290 possibly envious for what our friend is contemplating, like exotic travel or quitting his job. 348 00:35:17,950 --> 00:35:22,659 We might temper our desire to lash out punitively at an insult or an instance of 349 00:35:22,660 --> 00:35:27,219 sexual harassment by inhibiting activation of thoughts about the negative events, 350 00:35:27,220 --> 00:35:33,580 adverse implications for us, for our vulnerability to future foreign misconduct, our reputation relationships, 351 00:35:33,790 --> 00:35:36,760 and what will be felt by our loved ones when they hear about what we suffered, 352 00:35:37,450 --> 00:35:45,310 as well as by inhibiting activation of imagery related to such applications such as our furious or crestfallen spouse or the event itself, 353 00:35:45,730 --> 00:35:54,580 like the perpetrators smirking face. I closed my remarks today by considering whether, given what we surveyed so far, 354 00:35:54,610 --> 00:35:59,200 the capacity information for shallow caverns might be components of character virtue. 355 00:36:00,630 --> 00:36:02,880 Do they not facilitate app responses? 356 00:36:03,030 --> 00:36:09,359 Emotional is iterative, behavioural and intellectual to circumstances that might otherwise throw us off kilter by arousing, 357 00:36:09,360 --> 00:36:17,030 unhelpful emotions or desires. If we can't, for instance, think clearly and forthrightly about the dangerous circumstances we face. 358 00:36:17,390 --> 00:36:24,920 Yet with the aid of shallow recognising stem, the arousal of fear, we should be better positioned to face these circumstances courageously. 359 00:36:26,430 --> 00:36:32,670 We will, however, need to choose wisely when to deploy shallow cognisance, as it's a tool that could be used to prod ourselves toward. 360 00:36:33,210 --> 00:36:37,260 In this case, fear, ignoring action whether the action would be virtuous or vicious. 361 00:36:38,250 --> 00:36:42,329 So there would seem to be no escaping the need for Aristotelian practical wisdom being 362 00:36:42,330 --> 00:36:46,740 able to discriminate the virtuous from the vicious courses in concrete situations. 363 00:36:47,400 --> 00:36:51,200 Only now it needs to guide also the deployment of the instrument of shallow covenant. 364 00:36:52,920 --> 00:36:54,450 Ordinary discourse, we should note, 365 00:36:54,450 --> 00:37:00,690 sometimes includes character attributions and evaluations that arguably turn upon the use or non-use of shallow cognitive. 366 00:37:01,560 --> 00:37:08,190 A political leader who could not talk about potentially emotional issues like environmental catastrophe without getting visibly choked 367 00:37:08,190 --> 00:37:15,180 up and apparently losing some control is liable to be judged harshly by the electorate as unfit to lead on account of a character flaw. 368 00:37:15,210 --> 00:37:22,280 Oversensitivity. The norms are complex and shifting, as the same politician might be faulted for insensitivity, 369 00:37:22,280 --> 00:37:30,110 or she or he to employ shallow cognisant to provide entirely detached comments on a child centred threat or tragic tragedy. 370 00:37:31,280 --> 00:37:36,919 We seem to recognise that people are endowed with some powers to regulate their emotions and our perception of these powers 371 00:37:36,920 --> 00:37:42,650 seems to bring with it the description of more responsibility for the emotional responses that we do permit ourselves. 372 00:37:44,290 --> 00:37:49,690 The four challenges might be lodged against the proposal. The cello cognisant plays a role in virtues of character. 373 00:37:50,680 --> 00:37:57,730 First, it might be thought that surely virtue which comprises rationality, ought not require avoidance of certain thoughts or knowledge. 374 00:37:58,520 --> 00:38:03,020 Judgement. Decision making cannot benefit from contracting the cognitive base upon which they rely. 375 00:38:04,670 --> 00:38:10,100 But an information avoidance requirement is readily acceptable once we allow for a broad notion of rationality, 376 00:38:10,100 --> 00:38:12,830 whose standard is not purely epistemic but also practical. 377 00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:20,070 When the human ideal is understood, as in the act of fitting tradition, to include apt behaviour, motives, 378 00:38:20,070 --> 00:38:26,820 emotions and emotional reactions, choices, values, desires, receptions, attitudes, interests, expectations and sensibilities. 379 00:38:27,540 --> 00:38:30,810 Then the virtue idea can no longer presuppose maximal knowledge. 380 00:38:31,360 --> 00:38:34,230 For there are trade-offs between knowledge inside these other desiderata. 381 00:38:35,520 --> 00:38:39,210 For instance, recalled the early example of an arousal excessive empathy or compassion. 382 00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:45,330 Here, using shallow cognisant to constrict the information we entertain might undermine this arousal, 383 00:38:45,630 --> 00:38:49,410 thereby averting an unbalanced judgement or choice that would have been responsive only 384 00:38:49,410 --> 00:38:53,220 to a subset of the multiple relevant considerations while being neglectful of others. 385 00:38:55,000 --> 00:38:59,260 The second challenge is to show a cognisance as a contributor to virtue derives from the fact 386 00:38:59,260 --> 00:39:03,579 that you are housing is not itself a distinctive dimension of character akin to generosity, 387 00:39:03,580 --> 00:39:09,910 good karma for patients of courage, but a psychological faculty or activity that cuts across numerous dimensions. 388 00:39:10,690 --> 00:39:13,899 In this, it seems perhaps similar to continence or willpower. 389 00:39:13,900 --> 00:39:22,870 So this. The willpower is an asset deployed by the Nano, not yet virtuous when faced with uncooperative contrary to reason, desires and emotions. 390 00:39:23,620 --> 00:39:30,700 So maybe shallow energy is likewise not a virtue, but a compensatory resource used by those lacking it for virtue. 391 00:39:32,140 --> 00:39:36,070 However, there are important functional differences between continents and shallow cognisant. 392 00:39:36,820 --> 00:39:40,629 The ideally virtuous person could not dispense with shallow cognates. 393 00:39:40,630 --> 00:39:46,300 Either way, she could dispense with willpower if her other psychological dispositions were operating fully, rationally. 394 00:39:47,150 --> 00:39:55,190 Even if you were competent in utilising a potential deployment, cognitive change in response modulation to achieve emotional self-regulation. 395 00:39:55,610 --> 00:40:00,560 Such approaches would be less effective than shallow cognition. You could not substitute effectively for it. 396 00:40:01,520 --> 00:40:07,940 For one thing, those other practices of self-regulation standardly engage only after troubling emotional arousal has begun leaving an 397 00:40:07,940 --> 00:40:14,690 inertial residue still to subside ratio recognising is typically deployed in advance or at the very outset of arousal. 398 00:40:15,590 --> 00:40:22,550 For another yellow card analogy has the advantage when it comes to managing desires, at least in the domain of responding to verbal stimuli. 399 00:40:23,220 --> 00:40:27,540 If someone tries to tempt us with dessert or sex by graphically describe these delights, 400 00:40:28,050 --> 00:40:36,660 we can utilise cognitive change by reminding ourselves of our reasons not to indulge but ocracy our income, and this may well undo us. 401 00:40:37,440 --> 00:40:40,740 On the other hand, if we can cognate the verbal description shallowly, 402 00:40:41,040 --> 00:40:44,820 the resulting detachment should stand us a better chance of resist the temptation. 403 00:40:46,450 --> 00:40:51,729 Moreover and more significant other techniques of emotional self-regulation achieve their emotional desire, 404 00:40:51,730 --> 00:40:58,330 thwarting or undermining effects only at high cost, by subverting our ability to engage mentally with the eliciting stimuli, 405 00:40:58,600 --> 00:41:02,500 and thus our ability to remain intellectually engaged at length in rational discourse. 406 00:41:03,280 --> 00:41:08,980 We don't want to be rudely uncommunicative with the person who wishes us the pleasure of a wonderful dessert or sexual encounter. 407 00:41:09,640 --> 00:41:16,390 And we can't participate properly in a discussion of our dire medical situation if we're repeatedly distracting ourselves or, 408 00:41:16,390 --> 00:41:19,850 say, rehearsing, reassuring thoughts, shallow, cognitive. 409 00:41:19,850 --> 00:41:25,270 You avoid such costs as it permits more selective content restrictions upon a current cognisant. 410 00:41:26,580 --> 00:41:30,870 A third objection to linking virtue to shallow cognisance is an over intellectualising issue. 411 00:41:30,870 --> 00:41:38,849 Pretty shallow covers. You may seem to reduce human thinking to mere abstract simple processing by eliminating or more accurately, 412 00:41:38,850 --> 00:41:45,840 not activating the associated representation resources, especially images that are most prone to arouse emotions and desires. 413 00:41:46,830 --> 00:41:49,320 But this seems to be a distorting exaggeration. 414 00:41:49,890 --> 00:41:56,010 Shadow cabinet, as you need not interfere, say with being highly creative, witty or amused in handling verbal information. 415 00:41:56,520 --> 00:42:00,450 It permits and in some cases facilitates friendly, affectionate and loving feelings. 416 00:42:01,020 --> 00:42:04,290 In fact, it is very selective in its suppression of emotion, desire. 417 00:42:05,140 --> 00:42:11,500 Through its cognition activation inhibition. It targets certain mental states for avoidance while allowing others to be addressed freely. 418 00:42:12,520 --> 00:42:20,379 For instance, we might utilise cognisant when talking about a painful life episode or a perilous situation we now face all in the same conversation, 419 00:42:20,380 --> 00:42:25,720 becoming indignant upon learning how some people are being mistreated or pitying toward the student or office. 420 00:42:25,720 --> 00:42:32,270 He tells us of his family tragedy. There's one more chance to attack the linkage between virtue and shadow cabinet. 421 00:42:33,020 --> 00:42:38,660 Up to this point, we've been surveying shallow cognisance, admirable power, appreciating the benefits it provides. 422 00:42:39,260 --> 00:42:44,750 But does it have a darker side? Indeed, it can be used in ways that do not promote human flourishing. 423 00:42:46,370 --> 00:42:48,409 Nothing in the foregoing discussion, I hope is clear, 424 00:42:48,410 --> 00:42:55,730 entails that all are two sides of shallow cognisant tend toward the virtuous while maintaining clinical intellectual distance has broad utility. 425 00:42:56,030 --> 00:43:00,890 It can be directed not only against irrational emotions and desires, but also rational, appropriate ones. 426 00:43:01,370 --> 00:43:08,690 It can distract us from irrelevant, prejudicial or competence, compromising information, but also from considerations that do deserve our attention. 427 00:43:09,780 --> 00:43:12,630 For instance, a conspiracy and how to face death head on. 428 00:43:13,080 --> 00:43:20,220 Which might be sensible if you're currently not in a position to do that productively or might be cowardly, evasive, or in bad faith. 429 00:43:21,240 --> 00:43:27,300 There's no kind of facial reason to believe the cello, as he cannot be initiated as part of a program of motivated irrationality. 430 00:43:28,450 --> 00:43:33,069 Or consider herself current as it can interfere with rational decision making if its filtering 431 00:43:33,070 --> 00:43:36,730 out of information ends up subverting a key part of the process of decision making. 432 00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:41,110 Our imaginative awareness and evaluation of alternative scenarios and options. 433 00:43:42,070 --> 00:43:47,530 In cases like these, we can speak of pathological, dysfunctional or vicious shallow cognitive. 434 00:43:48,770 --> 00:43:54,950 There may also be cause to worry that silicone, as you can for some people, become a mechanism of habitual emotional withdrawal and deadening. 435 00:43:55,700 --> 00:44:01,070 You might expect, for instance, that those whose normal emotional reactions have been consistently penalised or ignored, 436 00:44:01,550 --> 00:44:06,200 they become fixed in a pattern of shallow cognitive suppressing, even emotions that will be productive. 437 00:44:07,590 --> 00:44:13,079 Anjelica Huston can certainly convey false or misleading signals to others about our beliefs and other attitudes, 438 00:44:13,080 --> 00:44:20,420 as well as our emotional or other psychological traits. For instance, what it serves to inhibit our manifestation of emotional desire. 439 00:44:20,570 --> 00:44:24,290 The grizzly easily crossovers to mistakenly take us to be not care. 440 00:44:25,320 --> 00:44:33,570 Or as being generally detached and unfeeling. There is danger with a somewhat explicit awareness of shallow cognisant become widespread. 441 00:44:35,130 --> 00:44:37,610 Finally an ethical judgement in decision making. 442 00:44:37,620 --> 00:44:44,279 We would hope that shallow cognisant would work to suppress the arousal of emotions desires that tempt us away from morally sound 443 00:44:44,280 --> 00:44:52,080 judgements such as a lawyer finding it hard to defend his repulsive client or a submarine weapons officer baulking at firing his missile. 444 00:44:52,680 --> 00:44:58,919 But it might at times counter ethically black emotions that would inform us more fully of reasons or stakes that we're not confronting. 445 00:44:58,920 --> 00:45:05,160 Frankly, like the Nazis who would recoil viscerally from their brutal conduct and experience terrible guilt, 446 00:45:05,700 --> 00:45:10,170 if not for deploying psychological techniques to suppress these enlightened reactions. 447 00:45:11,740 --> 00:45:16,030 I hope I've thrown out enough provocations to stimulate your creative and critical faculties, 448 00:45:16,030 --> 00:45:19,080 and that you will not hesitate to share your thoughts and experiences now. 449 00:45:19,450 --> 00:45:20,890 Thank you very much for your patience.