Educational articles

Andrii Baumeister (Ukraine)
Doctor of Philosophy, professor, public intellectual

German neuroscientist Gerhard Roth, whose research team has spent 40 years studying how people react to arguments, proofs and metaphors, claims that out of every 100 people, only 15-20 people hear, perceive and react to them spontaneously (without thinking for long). The vast majority - 65-70 people - react not to rational arguments, but to the behaviour of the environment - neighbours, friends, authority figures. The majority, especially those who are active on social networks, focus on the opinion of opinion-makers. The reactions of the remaining 10-20 people are archaic, as Jung would say, linked to old archetypes, deep schemes. (...)

Let me give you few more facts. The American neuroscientist Christof Koch, on the basis of years of research, says that by stimulating specific points in the brain with electrodes, a person can consciously experience a variety of sensations: hearing thunder, seeing distorted faces that look like something out of a Dali painting, a slight tingling sensation, a tickling sensation, a feeling of sexual arousal, and most interesting of all, the beginning of the search for a solution to some problem. (...) The electrodes were used to stimulate the part of the brain in the occipital region, which is responsible for conscious experiences - emotions and feelings. Koch called this neural correlation of consciousness.
I have always stressed the need to separate consciousness from thinking. And here we have cognitivist research to back this up. According to scientists, the frontal part of the human brain, which is responsible for analytics, decision-making, value choice, logical and mathematical reasoning, is hardly affected by electrical stimulation. It is different, not subject to direct influence. (...)

What is the relevance of this research for decision-making? Let us return to the group of 65-70 people mentioned by Mr Roth. These are very interesting people. They may be successful entrepreneurs and quite successful scientists, but they are learning about decision-making, business management or scientific schemes, using certain methodologies and technologies, observing successful examples of what is done and how it is done. They try to imitate it. However, in a group of 15-20 people (where we are talking about thinking, analytics, creative solutions), we see that the learning process is different: there is not a direct link between a successful example and its implementation, but rather a kind of discontinuity.

We can thus distinguish between two levels of decision-making. One is technological. It is a certain way of selecting tools, adapting them, polishing them, training them to react to one or another circumstance. (...) The second one is completely different, and it involves free choice.
Cognitivists distinguish 3 parameters of free choice: optionality (I have more than one strategy), authorship (I make choices based on my ideas, meanings, values, specific goals) and control (I am not a puppet in the hands of others, I am not manipulated, and I am in control of my own thoughts during the process of making choices).

Many cognitive naturalists believe that free decision-making is an illusion. (...) It is not us who make the decisions. We are just blind operators. Decisions are made by the brain and the environment. In today's context, when the number of mechanisms of external influence is increasing and our emotionalism has grown considerably, this is a very dangerous theory, because according to this theory, it is very easy to influence a person - it is just a matter of subtly adapting the mechanisms. (...) The proponents of this theory argue that there are schemas (decision-making on the basis of the first level) that a person selects and, in their "frame", he or she thinks, acts and formulates goals. In other words, he becomes a realiser of alien schemes. He tends to associate his achievements or effectiveness with the strategy he uses. He does not have time to test other strategies which may be more effective. He is content with the existing one.

Thus, this theory argues that we have no autonomy (we are objects), no control (we are embedded in the network of a particular system) and no options (the brain is not inclined to make a different decision). (...)

Another group of scientists (unfortunately a minority) argue that free choice exists, and that it is linked to the activity of the forebrain. Our decisions are linked to our ability to connect, to refine, to understand the meaning of ideas, values and goals. And this ability is not technical. It always requires an effort of will.

We are constantly confronted with hierarchical choices of ideas and values, e.g. the welfare of the family - the welfare of the country - the welfare of humanity. Everyone has his or her own way of putting together this scale of values. And it is not easy to do so. In the context of today's events, it is extremely difficult to answer the question of which value is higher than another. We cannot make a technological decision here. It is about what our ideas, values and goals are and how well we understand them. (...)

We make decisions on the basis of specific concepts such as justice, democracy, freedom. Most of them appear unconsciously in our heads - from books, films, upbringing, environment. Try to list and prioritise the five fundamental things that make up, for example, the concept of freedom. This is difficult because our consciousness tends to select things that do not define the concept. Imagine that concepts are the "bricks" of our thinking. Most of them we do not understand. You could say that they are "blind" concepts or "empty bricks". We build a house out of them - our understanding of the world. We think we understand the concepts of freedom, democracy, patriotism, nation, politics, but when we start to sort out the fundamental concepts, we find that we cannot explain them. The principle of "hollow bricks" means that we are building the walls of a house where only 5-6 bricks are real and the rest are hollow. Such walls are wobbly. If we do not try to understand what we are "putting" into a concept, we are acting like the aforementioned group of 65-70 people - technologically, by attributing alien concepts and values to ourselves. So, if the values, concepts, goals are not ours, if we do not "pass them on", how can we say that we are making conscious choices? (...)

Analyse your values. Many say: "Freedom is everything to me". What concepts do you use to define it? What is the order of hierarchy? What meaning do you give to them? You will see the ground begin to slip from under your feet. It often turns out that we are technologists, i.e. we look at what others are doing, we observe successful examples and we try to replicate them.

Excerpts from the CEO Club Ukraine lecture-discussion "How do we make decisions? Do we have freedom of choice?"