Libertarians
Mainstream
Can we trust our brains?
The gorilla in the room
how your senses dupe your brain
Leon Louw
LibSem
Grahamstown
18 November 2012
Dedication
Jim Harris
Fallibility and implications of:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
5 senses vs reality
Memory vs false memory
Conscious vs unconscious
Perception vs conception
Intellectual determinism vs truth
1. 5 Senses vs intuition
Recent science vs observation, rationality,
objectivism
Fallibility of the senses
Seeing is believing … but is it true?
The true colour of colour
Colour isn’t inherent (subjective experience)
Colour is dynamic (reflected light)
Parallel lines
Parallel lines
Parallel lines
Parallel lines
Parallel lines
Parallel lines
Parallel lines
Parallel lines
Parallel lines
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2
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2
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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
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)
3. Consciousness vs unconscious
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 vs unconscious ‘logic’
Research validating ‘voice inside’,
‘feelings’, ‘gut feel’, ‘just knowing’
False dichotomy: logic vs emotion
4. Perceptions vs conceptions
What we really see
(change)
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 vs mental

Fixations and saccades
Brains can’t multitask
(GIR)
Brains change reality
(GIR)
Magicians …
con-artists, marketers, politicians, seducers,
propagandists etc
always knew without knowing
(magic)
Logic
We ignore or confabulate anomalies
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 Correctness
environment, AIDS, tobacco, etc etc
Big lie (Goebbels)
The gorilla in the room
how your senses dupe your brain
End
Leon Louw
LibSem
Grahamstown
18 November 2012