Libertarians

1. Libertarians Mainstream

2. Can we trust our brains?

3. The gorilla in the room how your senses dupe your brain Leon Louw LibSem Grahamstown 18 November 2012

4. Dedication Jim Harris

5. Fallibility and implications of: 5 senses vs reality Memory vs false memory Conscious vs unconscious Perception vs conception Intellectual determinism vs truth

6. 1. 5 Senses vs intuition Recent science vs observation, rationality, objectivism Fallibility of the senses Seeing is believing … but is it true?

7. The true colour of colour Colour isn’t inherent (subjective experience) Colour is dynamic (reflected light)

8. Parallel lines Parallel lines Parallel lines Parallel lines Parallel lines Parallel lines Parallel lines Parallel lines Parallel lines

14. 1 2 1 2

20. Vilification vsreason 1 1

21. Vilification vsreason 1 1

31. 2. Memory vs false memory • ‘Reconstructed’ vs ‘false’ memory • Established view: • Analytical psychology • ‘work through’, ‘repression’, ‘denial’ • Elizabeth Loftus • ‘Lost in the mall’ research (1995) • 4 childhood family stories, 1 false • Only 4 in 24 denied planted memory • Most elaborated • When told 1 untrue, 5 chose wrongly

32. 2. Memory vs false memory • Crime scene jury experiment (Lindsay-Wells) • 2 declare errors assertively • Virtually all agreed on oath! • Extreme implications: • Sexual abuse • SA case study (step father-daughter) • ID parades, convictions • Social etc etc • Student law experiment • What is memory? (molecular structure)

33. 3. Consciousness vsunconscious System 1 & 2 ‘thinking’ Halo effect, priming, framing, anchoring Confabulation(ex-post facto) Used for centuries: magicians, con-artists, hypnosis, placebo, marketing, politics etc Derren Brown (mentalist; BBC ‘Experiments’) Conscious vsunconscious ‘logic’ Research validating ‘voice inside’, ‘feelings’, ‘gut feel’, ‘just knowing’ False dichotomy: logic vs emotion

34. 4. Perceptions vs conceptions What we really see (change)

36. Eye movement • Eye movement terms: • Fixations (3-4 per second) • Saccades (total blindness; haphazard) • Microsaccades (60-80 hertz; unknown function) • Drifts (prolonged blindness) • We see fixations surrounded by blur • Brain fills gaps presumptuously • We see selectively: physical vsmental

37. Fixations and saccades

38. Brains can’t multitask (GIR)

40. Brains change reality (GIR)

42. Magicians … con-artists, marketers, politicians, seducers, propagandists etc always knew without knowing (magic)

48. Logic We ignore or confabulate anomalies

50. 5. Intellectual determinism vs truth Intellectual determinism vs truth Myth imperative Suggestibility Magic = system 2; Geller = system 1 Occam's (Ockham’s) razor Tyranny of Political Correctnessenvironment, AIDS, tobacco, etc etc Big lie (Goebbels)