3-System Theory of the Cognitive Brain

A Post-Piagetian Approach to Cognitive Development

Olivier Houdé

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781351630894
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

3-System Theory of the Cognitive Brain: A Post-Piagetian Approach to Cognitive Development puts forward Olivier Houdé's 3-System theory of the cognitive brain, based on numerous post-Piagetian psychological and brain imaging data acquired from children and adults. This ground-breaking theory simultaneously anchors itself in a deep understanding of the history of psychology and fuels current debates on thinking, reasoning and cognitive development.

Spanning the long-term history of psychology, from Plato and Aristotle to more current experimental psychology, this pioneering work goes beyond the approaches of Kahneman (i.e. System 1 theory) and Piaget (i.e. System 2 theory) to put forward a theory in which the inhibitory-control system (i.e. System 3) takes precedence. Houdé argues that the brain contains a third control system located in the prefrontal cortex which is dedicated to inhibiting Kahneman's intuitive heuristics system and activating Piaget's logical algorithms system anywhere in the brain on a case-by-case basis, depending on the goal and context of the task. 3-System Theory of the Cognitive Brain simultaneously explains the early logical abilities discovered in babies, the dynamic, strategic and non-linear process of cognitive development in children, and the fast heuristics and biases observed in adults. Houdé considers the exciting implications of this theory on neuro-education using examples from the classroom.

This book is essential reading for students and researchers in cognitive development and education, child psychology, reasoning and neurosciences.

PART I

History of theories about thinking

Philosophy, biology and psychology

1

FROM PSYCHE TO THE LOGOS

Antiquity

When we think of antiquity, what we tend to remember is Greek mythology, which was given a more concrete form in the eighth century BC by the poets Homer (in the Iliad and the Odyssey) and Hesiod (Works and Days), a tradition that was continued by the Roman poets Virgil and Ovid. This mythology describes the creation of the cosmos (first Chaos and then Gaia, the Earth, who bore the mountains, the sea and the sky) and the gods of Olympus; and there are numerous stories in which Olympians, Titans, Giants and even humans confront one another. One of the humans was the beautiful Psyche; her name means ‘soul’ – and from her name came ‘psychology’.

It is often said that myths lost their power to explain the world once Aristotle had promoted the logos, ‘reason’ or ‘rational speech’, the foundation of philosophy and science in ancient Greece. Indeed, rational thought now replaced myth as being regarded as indisputable truth. We can see this in the work of Plato, Aristotle, Herophilos and Galen, who were already starting to develop a rational science of the soul (or mind) and the brain, even if in Plato the mythological aspect persists. In fact, the two forms of thought coexisted among the Greeks.

1. Mythology: Psyche, psychopomp and Oedipus

Though ancient myths continued to inspire the arts over the centuries, in science they gradually came to be regarded as ‘primitive’. From the nineteenth century onwards, they were even seen as superfluous and incompatible with science. In the twentieth century, their status changed somewhat: they again became part of contemporary thought, especially in psychology, with Freud and the Oedipus complex, and also Jung and the Elektra complex (the counterpart of the Oedipus complex). Even today, these myths continue to be handed down, with variations, and to stimulate the imagination. Almost all of them have a psychological dimension: we shall return more particularly to the myth of Oedipus. However, let us begin with Psyche and the psychopomp, which will act as our guides.

1.1 Psyche, both spiritual and material

In mythology, Psyche, or Soul, is a young mortal, the daughter of a king, and a woman of incomparable beauty. Eros (the god of love and creative power) falls in love with her, but Aphrodite, his mother, has always been jealous of Psyche and, in order to get rid of her, she subjects her to formidable trials. Psyche succeeds in overcoming these through her courage and tenacity and Eros then leads her to Mount Olympus, where he obtains permission from Zeus, the king of the gods, to marry her. Psyche is thus deified. The Latin novel by Apuleius (123–170) known as the Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass includes the complete Roman version of this story (with Eros given his Roman name, Cupid). A rich album of drawings, paintings and sculptures representing Eros and Psyche by the greatest artists, from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance until the nineteenth century, was published in the early 2000s.¹ The cover of this album reproduces one of the most beautiful paintings of Psyche, by Édouard Picot (1817), which can be found in the Louvre in Paris, France. The book shows how this founding narrative has always fascinated Western culture.

Apart from the fact that the Greek word psyche means ‘soul’, so that the word ‘psychology’ literally means ‘the study of the soul’, there is in this myth an essential, highly illuminating vision. The most interesting aspect of this very old story is that Psyche has a spiritual and ethereal quality, through being raised to the rank of goddess, but is also (and indeed especially) a creature of flesh and blood thanks to her mortal origin. She is both spiritual and material, like psychology. This is at the very heart of psychology as a discipline. Throughout its history it has sought to achieve a delicate balance between the two aspects, spiritual and material, from the Ideas of Plato to the neurosciences (brain imaging); mind or soul on one side, matter, body and brain on the other. We find this special status even today in the epistemological and institutional position ascribed to psychology, seen as both a human and social science, and as a science of life (i.e. a natural science).

1.2 The psychopomp: a guide and measure of souls

The psychopomp, another mythological figure, is as interesting as Psyche in the way he sheds light on psychology. The term ‘psychopomp’ derives from the Greek psykhopompós, meaning ‘guide of souls’. In Greek mythology, he guides the souls of the newly dead into the afterlife. There are many examples: Charon, Hermes, Hecate and Morpheus.² In 1524, Joachim Patinir took Charon as the subject of a very beautiful oil painting on wood, Landscape with Charon Crossing the Styx, now in the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain.

Psychopomps later reappeared in Christian beliefs: for example, the archangel St Michael, the best known of the Christian psychopomps, guides the dead and weighs the souls on the Day of Judgement. This is why he is often depicted holding scales. Two key elements that would play a part in psychology can thus be extracted from the myth of the psychopomp: the guidance and the measurement of souls.

1.3 Oedipus: family oracles and the solution of a cognitive riddle

The myth of Oedipus was reintroduced by Freud at the beginning of the twentieth century by giving his name to a psychological state (a complex): in psychoanalysis, Oedipus is a universal family fiction. According to Freud, the Oedipus complex is a fantasy born of the child’s desires for the parent of the opposite sex, desires that are then repressed: the boy is attracted to his mother and thus views his father as a rival. Freud drew these conclusions from clinical observations and his knowledge of Oedipus Rex, the tragedy by Sophocles (495–406 BC). Laius, king of Thebes, learns from an oracle that if his wife Jocasta gives birth to a boy, the child will kill him. So he has the baby exposed out in the wild, with his feet bound so that he will die or be lost forever. Nevertheless, some shepherds find him, and since his bonds have given him ‘swollen feet’ (in Greek oidípous), they call him Oedipus. The child is presented and offered to the royal couple in Corinth. Oedipus, unsure of whose son he really is, goes to consult the oracle at Delphi. Instead of reassuring him, the oracle tells him that he will kill his father and marry his mother. Terrified, Oedipus decides to evade the oracle by not returning to Corinth. He flees, but on the way he encounters a traveller, who provokes such anger in Oedipus that he kills him. This traveller is none other than his biological father, the king of Thebes. On his way to Thebes, Oedipus encounters the Sphinx, a monster who poses to all who enter or leave the city a ‘deadly riddle’: as no one has thought of the answer, everyone so far has been devoured. When Oedipus takes his turn, the Sphinx asks him: ‘Which creature, with a single voice, has at first four legs, then two legs, and finally three?’ Oedipus immediately replies: ‘Man’³ (for in his early childhood man walks on his hands and feet, as an adult he stands on his legs, and in his old age he uses a stick to walk). Oedipus’s intelligence makes the Sphinx so furious that she kills herself. After this exploit, the inhabitants of Thebes offer Oedipus the vacant throne of the city: quite naturally, he marries the king’s widow, Jocasta (his biological mother). The oracle of Delphi is thus fulfilled and Oedipus does not learn the truth until many years later. With admirable insight, Freud took the fate of Oedipus and made it the cornerstone of the development of the human psyche: a psychosexual stage in the life of the child. In a letter to his disciple and friend Fliess, he explained this discovery – a discovery which he firmly believed in. For Freud, the horror which the story of Oedipus had aroused ever since ancient times is explained by the fact that each person, as he develops, imagines himself to be living through such a scenario with his own parents. This is undoubtedly the best-known example from the twentieth century of a belief from Greek mythology being recycled in the human and social sciences: Oedipus has become a subject of ‘science’, in the psychoanalytical sense of the word; and, surprisingly enough, this leads back to beliefs or, more precisely, to religion. Indeed, according to Freud, all human development involves going through the ‘Oedipus stage’ so that the individual can attain the heterosexual stage and the formation of the ‘superego’ (the psyche’s agency of control), which Freud sees as the source of morality and religion. Thus, the myths have continued to stimulate the scientific imagination, drawing here on clinical observations.

Finally, the myth of Oedipus can also illuminate cognitive psychology, for solving the riddle of the Sphinx is a matter of reasoning and quick thinking. In this sense, Oedipus is a cerebral hero. This was Hegel’s interpretation: for him, Oedipus facing the Sphinx is the incarnation of the power of human intelligence. Shortly afterwards, Nietzsche proposed a similar interpretation: in his eyes, the man who triumphed over the Sphinx was the founder of the Greek spirit, trusting to the power of his intelligence to solve problems which he had previously overcome by force.

This leads quite naturally to Plato and Aristotle, who were philosophers and already psychologists – friends of wisdom whose new ambition was to try to construct a more rational and scientific vision of the world. These were the beginnings of a ‘science of the soul’ and – as will be seen later – of a science of the brain, as developed by the doctors Herophilos and Galen.

2. Plato: innate ideas and the will of the soul

In the centre of Raphael’s famous fresco, The School of Athens (1512) in the Vatican Museum in Rome, Italy, we see Plato (428–347 BC) and Aristotle (384–322 BC). Plato is pointing upwards to the ‘Heaven of Ideas’, while Aristotle, his pupil at the Academy, stretches his hand forward, symbolizing the earthly world. Indeed, for Aristotle (who does not believe in the Ideas as such), the general and the particular are transmitted here below.

2.1 Eternal, immutable ideas: the good, the true and the beautiful

In a series of dialogues between his master Socrates (470–399 BC) and Socrates’ disciples and adversaries, Plato states that a demiurge (a god who created the universe) shaped the initial chaos into a cosmos given form by the eternal Ideas. Among these, the Good, a meta-Idea higher than all the others, forms the basis of ethics. This guides the individual and the collective behaviour of men in the sciences and in society (the City).

More precisely, Plato sees the cosmos as a five-tiered hierarchy. In descending order, these levels are comprised of: Ideas or intelligible archetypes (the Good, the True, the Beautiful, etc.); numbers; geometric solids; the elements (fire, air, water, earth, ether); and concrete things. With his intuitive grasp of simple geometric solids, Plato prefigures mathematical theories in physics and chemistry.

For the author of the Republic, souls, thought of as ‘immortal’, have already contemplated the world of Ideas during their prenatal period. Birth disturbs this process. That is why ‘the body is a tomb’, according to the philosopher’s expression. Nevertheless, thanks to the psychological phenomenon of reminiscence, triggered by the perception of concrete things in the sensible world (relations, numbers and qualities), we can rediscover the innate Ideas. For example, Plato states that we grasp the idea of perfect equality with pieces of wood that are almost equal, but that the ‘equal’ itself does not reside in the pieces of wood. It is we ourselves who, from sensible objects, infer their essence. In the same way, when we look at six knuckle bones, we cannot say that the number six is in any one of them, or in all of them together, since it is we ourselves who have made the connection between the Idea and the objects. Even Meno’s slave, who appears in the dialogue of the same name, is able to deduce, starting from a right-angled triangle, Pythagoras’ theorem: the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. A century before Plato, the geometer Pythagoras (580–495 BC) had indeed demonstrated this theorem – a ‘discovery of the True’.

According to Plato, these immutable Ideas are latent knowledge: they are within us from birth, without our knowing it. In this already subtle psychology, it is not a question of ignorance but of latency: dormant truths which man seeks. It is at the cost of mental effort, often requiring a whole education, that the innate Ideas can (re)appear. They are recalled and reactivated. Hence the importance, from a Platonic perspective, of the maieutics of Socrates, the art of ‘giving birth to minds’ (Socrates’ mother was apparently a midwife), causing doubt and astonishment in one’s interlocutor. Plato thus underlines the educational role of the social environment. However, learning is not a matter of filling the mind, seen as an empty tabula rasa (‘blank slate’), by means of mere sensation, as it is in Aristotle, and as the young Theaetetus, an empiricist, suggests in a Socratic dialogue narrated by Plato. On the contrary, the Ideas are already present from birth, as a pre-existing cognitive store, a capital sum of reason that can be reactivated. Here we identify the ancient root of the rationalist and innatist trend that stretched for two millennia, right up to the ‘core knowledge’ of the baby’s cognitive psychology, according to Elizabeth S. Spelke (2000), via Descartes, Kant, Chomsky and Fodor.

2.2 The allegory of the cave: approaching the Ideas

In this pedagogical allegory, Plato illustrates the intellectual approach which man, a prisoner in his cave, must follow in order to (re)ascend from perceptions to the Ideas, from this world to the beyond, since the concrete things that we perceive actually exist only as imitations or reproductions, reflections of the Ideas. The prisoners are chained and shackled in a deep cave with their backs to the entrance, and all they can see on the rear wall are the shadows of objects carried along by slaves in front of a fire. These objects themselves are reflections or representations of real things: the prisoners perceive only reflections of reflections. One prisoner is freed of his shackles and manages to reach the light of the world of Ideas outside, beyond the artificial objects, bypassing both the slaves who carry them and the fire that casts their shadows. Nevertheless, the prisoner has to be forced to go outside, for the light is dazzling. Plato thus expresses metaphorically the role of education and society, which must play an active ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface to the English edition: one, two or three systems of thinking in human beings?
• PART I: History of theories about thinking: philosophy, biology and psychology
• PART 2: 3-system theory of thinking and reasoning
• Conclusion
• Index