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The Theory of Mind Myth
The Theory of Mind Myth
I t’s a strange loop: we are asking the same area of brain to both
generate a coherent sense of self, and simultaneously step outside this
frame of reference to get a fresh, unbiased perspective on another’s
thoughts. Talk about running uphill against basic physiology.
Despite the inadequacy of these leading neuroscience explanations of
ToM, it remains hard to shake the belief that we can step inside
another’s mind. Saxe begins her TED lecture with the question: ‘How
is it so easy to know other minds?’ To illustrate her point, she shows
two photos. The first is a mother gazing at her young child; the second
is of a teenager jumping off a high cliff into the ocean below. ‘You
need almost no information, one snapshot of a stranger, to guess what
this woman is thinking, or what this man is.’
I look at the mother, and see a combination of love and awe. But with
a moment’s reflection, I realise that I have gathered together some
general assumptions about what humans have in common, and
dropped them into her mind. I have no way of knowing if she is also
worrying that her husband might feel neglected by her single-minded
devotion to her child, wondering when to enrol her child in preschool,
or trying to cement into memory the feeling of unconditional love that
she anticipates will be challenged when her newborn morphs into a
rebellious teenager. By drawing on innate and acquired beliefs about
human nature, I can imagine her mind at the most universal and
generic, but not at the particular.
The photo of the boy diving off the cliff raises further questions. Since
I’m unaware of any neuroscience literature on the mental states of
cliff-divers, let me substitute a study on the world’s most famous free-
soloing mountain climber, Alex Honnold. Just watch Honnold climb
3,000 feet (900 metres) straight up the vertical face of a Yosemite
peak without the use of any safety equipment – no ropes, nets or
harnesses. Ask yourself: is Honnold experiencing a great degree of
anxiety and fear when he looks down at the Yosemite floor thousands
of feet below – or a moderate amount? Or none? Also ask yourself
how sure you are of your answer, and how you’d know if you are
right.
In 2016, the neuroscientist Jane Joseph at the Medical University of
South Carolina compared Honnold’s brain to that of another veteran
mountain climber. While in an fMRI scanner, both were shown a
succession of 200 supposedly high-anxiety-generating photos –
gruesome burnt and disfigured corpses, mangled accident victims, as
well as several high-risk mountain-climbing routes. The climber
serving as a control demonstrated high-level activation of his
amygdala – the area of brain that typically fires when one is fearful,
frightened or anxious. By contrast, Joseph told Nautilusmagazine,
Honnold’s amygdala remained entirely silent. When asked about the
photos, Honnold was puzzled. ‘I can’t say for sure, but I was
like, whatever,’ he said. Even the ‘gruesome burning children and
stuff’ photographs seemed to him dated and jaded. ‘It’s like looking
through a curio museum.’
Trying to imagine a mental state you’ve never had is like trying to conjure what an orgasm feels
like before you’ve ever had one