Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

Author's Conclusion

• What is clear by now is that our societies lack systematic and institutionalised ways of enhancing citizens’ mental autonomy. This is a neglected duty of care on the part of governments. There can be no politically mature citizens without a sufficient degree of mental autonomy, but society as a whole does not act to protect or increase it. Yet, it might be the most precious resource of all. In the end, and in the face of serious existential risks posed by environmental degradation and advanced capitalism, we must understand that citizens’ collective level of mental autonomy will be the decisive factor.
• Here’s a positive proposal: to get started, we should aim at a productive cross-fertilisation of the two strongest aspects of the human mind. The first is our recently evolved capacity for self-critical rational thinking. At least sometimes, human beings are sensitive to rational argument. And the second is the enormous depth of our phenomenological state-space. Because of its many dimensions, the number of possible conscious states for a human being is incredibly large. We are only rarely aware of this fact, and we haven’t really started to systematically test how we might deliberately alter our state-space so as to enhance our autonomy and increase experiential forms of self-knowledge, ideally backed by the rigour of modern-day neuroscience. An exception, of course, are certain ancient spiritual techniques, which also work to stabilise the neurocognitive conditions required for rationality and rigorously logical, critical thinking. Statistically, mindfulness and mind-wandering are opposing constructs, and rational thought critically depends on the capacity for attentional self-control.
• It was William James, the father of American psychology, who said in 1892: ‘And the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of judgment, character, and will. […] And education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.’ We can finally see more clearly what meditation is really about: over the centuries, the main goal has always been a sustained enhancement of one’s mental autonomy.
• I think ideologically charged debates about freedom of the will and Stone Age reductionism are now a thing of the past. But the path forward is not about finding the right philosophical theory. It is about starting a process of actively implementing what we already know into societal and cultural practice. As a working concept, mental autonomy is an excellent new candidate for a basic value that could guide us in education, policymaking and ethics. The two-component proposal gives a new and deeper meaning to the old Kantian ideal of ‘man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity’. We might call it raising the standard of civilisation on the mental level, or developing a ‘culture of consciousness’.
• Finally, mental autonomy brings together the core ideas of both Eastern and Western philosophy. It helps us see the value of both secularised spiritual practice and of rigorous, rational thought. There seem to be two complementary ways to understand the dolphins in our own mind: one, from the point of view of a truly hard-nosed, scientifically minded tourist on the prow of the boat; and two, from the perspective of the wide-open sky, silently looking down from above at the tourist and the dolphins porpoising in the ocean.