Cognitive behavior therapy and the mind-body problem

From as long ago as we can trace, philosophers and others have tried to understand what “consciousness” is, and how what we call “mind” interacts with what we call “body”:

“If mind and matter are such different things, then how can minds have effects in the material world? . . . How can consciousness simply be something material, since it seems so unlike everything else in the physical world?” [1].

Cognitive behavior therapy focuses on, and seeks to exploit, the empirical fact that what we think influences what we feel and how we behave. The theoretical basis is sometimes described as a “cognitive triangle” of thoughts emotions and behaviors: Thoughts create feelings, emotions; Feelings create Behavior; Behavior reinforces thoughts [2].

In some ways, all this is quite commonly taken for granted. “It feels good to be right” seems self-evidently obvious, needing no further explanation. But it is worth noting that being right refers to something mental, an intellectual judgment made by the mind; whereas feeling good is an emotion, an actual physical sensation, which in this case we find pleasurable.

Such physical sensations are caused by physiological mechanisms, for example, the release of hormones. Something in the neo-frontal cortex of the brain decides the “valence” of an emotion, whether we experience it as pleasurable or as distressing. Release of the hormone adrenaline, for example, is associated with excitement, an increase in the heart rate and blood pressure; but our brain/mind decides or interprets whether this is pleasurable, as in love and love-making, or stressful as in anger and fighting.

There is no substantial disagreement over these mutual influences of thoughts and emotions and behaviors. But many people will not welcome some of the inevitable consequences of these undoubted empirical facts.

For one thing, that thoughts are influenced by emotion and behavior is clearly a basis for skepticism about the possibility that humans could be entirely objective, impartial, independent-minded. At the same time, this does serve as at least partial explanation of the common observation that facts and evidence do not usually suffice to change beliefs, let alone systems of belief, ideologies or religions.

We learn how to behave, and how to react emotionally, and what to believe, long before we are capable of rational thought based on experience and observation. Starting at birth, we learn “default settings”, the attitudes most likely to be appropriate in various circumstances. If we feel safe and loved as babies, we tend to take pleasure in exploration, play, and cooperation; and this “default” instinct remains with us; but if we were unwanted and frightened as babies, we learned how to manage feelings of fear and abandonment and expect to do that later in life [3: 56]. We become able to exercise reason at some age that is typically around 5 or later, the age at which elementary schooling can begin; age 7 was sometimes called the age of reason, but since the neocortex begins to develop rapidly in something like the second year of age [3: 57], learning to reason surely begins at different ages for different individuals.

At any rate, long before we have much in the way of reasoning ability, we begin to learn — or, rather, we begin to accumulate beliefs. Not uncommonly, learning is taken to be the acquiring of knowledge; but how we learn, and the sources from which we learn, means that what we learn — learn to believe to be true — is often (or perhaps never) guaranteed to be objectively true to reality; it is belief, not true knowledge.

We learn from parents and other caregivers, from partners in childhood play, from schooling with its teachers and peers, from doing chores or not doing chores, from all sorts of physical and social environmental influences. Since every individual experiences such things in a unique manner, it follows inevitably that people differ in all manner of their beliefs on all manner of topics.

Since it feels good to be right, we like to take our beliefs to be confirmed by our continuing experiences; and if a given happening can be interpreted in more than one way, we will most likely choose to interpret it in a way that confirms our pre-existing beliefs. If however some event seems incompatible with our beliefs, we may find ways of overlooking or denying that it happened, or of interpreting it in some roundabout manner that jibes with our beliefs.

So human beliefs cover the widest range of possibilities, and random encounters between any two individuals would be unlikely to find much overlap in belief. However, our encounters are far from random. Typically we grow up in a small family, often with quite a large extended family, often in a village; and the chances of encountering people with vastly different beliefs are less in those environments than at large. So we like to enjoy comforting “small-town values”; and we tend to be cautious and suspicious with strangers and foreigners.

In adulthood, we form other close associations through work environments and social and political obligations, and again we like the comfort of encountering people whose beliefs are typically compatible with ours on matters of joint interest. That shows itself in the phenomenon of Groupthink [4], which is dysfunctional in putting higher value on agreement than on objectively, fact-based, decision-making. Advice commonly given in group settings, often self-advice, is “ Don’t Rock the Boat” — if at all possible, do not disagree with what one of the others says. A consequence is that “consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one may actually believe individually [5]. Irving Janis [4] described and illustrated this phenomenon of Groupthink with examples of expert advice on political matters that turned out to have been disastrously bad.

In group settings, the factors that lead to Groupthink make it likely that the favored opinions become those held by the most persistent and dogmatic advocates, namely, the extremists. Human affairs in general would proceed much more peacefully and productively if the most powerful influences were those of the judiciously critical who hold moderate views, rather than those of the extremist ones. It is, however, unfortunately characteristic of human nature that the dogmatists are also more passionate than the moderate, level-headed, thoughtful ones who are capable of considering more than one side of any given issue. There are not many who describe themselves, as philosopher Susan Haack does [6], as “passionately moderate” or passionately impartial.

The necessary, desirable, passion is not over the nature and content of any particular belief, but for a way of interacting with others that makes possible the reaching of tangible, practical arrangements for mutual behavior that is acceptable all around. It means believing passionately that others need not hold the same beliefs as we do, just so long as they accept that we can hold our own, different from theirs.

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[1] Tim Crane, “The Mind-Body Problem”, Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science; 10 February 2025, DOI 10.21428/e2759450.3614036a; https://oecs.mit.edu/pub/7fjwb5k3/release/1?readingCollection=9dd2a47d

[2] “The three-component model of emotions”; https://cogbtherapy.com/cbt-model-of-emotions#insight

[3] Bessel van der Kolk, The Boy keeps the Score, Viking Penguin, 2014

[4] Irving L. Janis, Victims of Groupthink: A psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes, Houghton Mifflin, 1972/1982

[5] Credited to Abba Eban; https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/abba_eban_167934

[6] Susan Haack, Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate (Unfashionable Essays), University of Chicago Press, 1998