Shufflebrain

We also find the active-negative mode in so-called cognitive dissonance, the theory Leon Festinger initiated in his investigations of the psychology of motivation. Festinger was trying to explain what occurs when we're forced to choose between conflicting opinions or to select among competing objects of desire. Festinger suggested the following little experiment to illustrate cognitive dissonance. Buy two similar but not identical presents for your wife, husband or sweet heart--things he or she would like about equally well. Let him or her examine the two items, rate both but keep only one. Take the reject back to the store (or at least hide it in the glove compartment). When you get back ask the recipient of the gift to reevaluate the two items. Festinger predicted that the chosen item's new rating would be even higher than it was the first time; that of the reject would go down. Indeed, numerous experiments vindicated Festinger's predictions and made cognitive dissonance popular in certain quarters. Today, advertising executives and politicians all know about cognitive dissonance.

Of course, there are exceptions. We're complicated beings (like our live actors in the gorilla experiment). Thus while cognitive dissonance works, I'm sure the reader knows we're not all that wishy-washy. But cognitive dissonance theory takes this into account, too. Consider studies where volunteers were forced to tell lies about their initially held beliefs. When the issue wasn't serious, the subjects would often come to believe their lies (cream and crimson sweaters sure beat red and purple ones!). But when the issue seemed serious, when the experimental subjects told lies about what they believed were important maters (somebody getting seriously hurt or not), they didn't change their opinions. The dissonance (the conflict between the belief and reality) remained.

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Carl and I certainly didn't discover the active-negative mode. Inhibition is as much a part of brain physiology as excitation. Repression is a critical element in Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis. Lorenz talked about inhibition of aggressive behavior. But Triclops and Cyclops show us, first of all, the active-negative mode lies at the basis of the one-to-one principle. Second, the one-to-one principle depends on an adequately informed mind, not a tabala raza.

Is amblyopia an expression of one-to-one? Where's the one-to-one feature in reducing dissonance? If the connections were obvious, the experts would long since have belabored the subject into extinction.

But look at amblyopia. Each eye focuses on an object. But there's a single target out there in the world. If the eyes don't aim so as to fuse the two images into a single view, it can hurt.[15] The mind will reduce, or eventually cancel, the input from one eye if the images don't fuse. Fusion is an attempt to make targets correspond one-to-one with percepts. A similar thing goes on with many of our quite normal sensory illusions-- optical, acoustical, tactile. To handle depth, we must synthesize several complex informational dimensions into a composite scene--one whole scene to one whole perception of the scene. And we must add as well as subtract to work out the complicated algebra. If not, we'd fall down or go nuts.[16]

Auditory illusions are particularly interesting. If somebody is clicking a ball-point pen while you're listening to an economics lecture, you'll miss a few phonemes here and there in the audible message. Yet your mind can cut out the clicks and insert the phonemes most likely to be there (by virtue of linguistic rules).[17] If we didn't have auditory illusions, (which the add-backs really are) we wouldn't be able to match a whole message with a whole memory and comprehend what we've just heard. (Imagine a conversation on a New York subway, otherwise?)

Cognitive dissonance is our way of matching one opinion with one set of apparent realities. Those of us who can't change our minds on any subject may very well be unable to endure an unforgiving world of realities.

Even in conscious reasoning, with mind working at the peak of pure intellect, the one-to-one principle shows up. Proceeding from the axioms of standard logic (there are nonstandard logics), the logician tells us that a valid proposition cannot be both true and false at the same time. If the proposition can be both true and false, we're in a heck of a philosophical pickle. Standard logic is linear: one logical relationship between valid premises has to yield one valid conclusion. If it were otherwise, if we really did invoke nonstandard forms, reason as we know it would falter. Or it would seem to falter. And we'd soon lose our faith in the intellect.