Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

The Brain is a Team of Rivals - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Abraham Lincoln deliberately included rivals/adversaries in his presidential cabinet. Wise leaders do. He said 'Rivals should be turned to allies for the sake of the greater good.'
        
        In a jury12 people are given the job of agreeing on a verdict. We see that is the best way of coming to a fair and rational conclusion.
        
        There are 2 parties in the brain with the same goal - the greater good - emotion and reason. They are different ways of going about it. In neural sub-populations the common good means the survival & thriving of the organism. Our competeing factions that believe they know the right way to solve problems.
- - - - Freud divided the systems into The Id - instinctive The Ego - realistic & organised and the Superego - critical and moralising.
        
        Paul MacLean (US 1970s) - suggested the brain is made of 3 layers, representing stages of evolutionary development, the Reptilian Brain - involved in survival behavioiur, the Limbic System - the emotions, and the Neocortex - involved in higher order thinking.
        
        Both have now fallen out of favour, but the heart of the ideas survive.
        
        Modern Neuroscience strives for an anatomical grounding for such ideas.
- - - - He reasoned that if choices and decisions derive from hidden mental processes, then free choice is either an illusion or at least tightly constrained.