Public / Private

Moments of Truth: Feelings
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Grandma:  What you feel is really private - right?

Grandson:  Sure; no one can know how I feel.

She:  But don't you show friends when you're sorry or happy?

He:  Of course I do.

She:  So?

He:  Okay, I get it.  Let's have lunch, I'm hungry!


Amazed by how quickly I'd won a point, I came back to it a week later
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She:  We can fake it, that's why you agreed feeling is private.

He:   Yeah, anyone can act as though ...

She:  But the fact that you pretend shows you know people see what you feel - bad or good.
         Otherwise, why pretend?

He:   We don't think about it ...

Moments of Truth: Thinking
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Things seen and unseen with the naked eye are a big deal in psychology and behavior analysis.
For example, in day-to-day life we never look into people to find out what they think.
We look at what they do; and listen to what they say; and read what they write.
Brain cells can't say what the person does. Physiology doesn't tell us what individuals think.
If you question brain cells about what they think, they couldn't tell you.

When you keep your thoughts to yourself, others don't know your opinion; but when you air
them and explain why you hold your opinion, others can know not only what you think,
but what caused you to think as you do: what you saw, read, heard ... what interests you ...
what you stand for ... and so forth.

Like anyone else, you naturally make your thoughts public by voicing them in conversations.
As you write your views ... on paper ... on a wall ... in an email ... or elsewhere ... you also
argue or concur and then others know which side you're on: your beliefs, rour recollections.

Most psychologists still call thinking 'cognition' and say it goes on in the 'mind' or the brain.
Behavior analysts too, are sure thinking is 'mental' - 'a private event' - hard to measure.
I have to say this : the ways one can know what people are thinking, is by looking at them,
seeing what they do, listening to what they have to say ... making notes for a reminder.
The brain cannot see or hear - nor think for itself - individuals do that and much more.

Hearts don't feel either; they're the organs that work like a pump.
Brains don't initiate a dialogue with other brains, either.
Perhaps we should say brains function like photo-electro-magnetic batteries.

Pavlov's experiments show what dogs remember, recognize, why they anticipate, how they
come to expect or predict.  No one ever finds thoughts in a brain or a nervous systems, for
they are not persons who ask questions, seek information on the weather, sports, science,
politics, celebrities, and ... in general ... about what is happening in the world.

It goes without saying, the brain is involved in all that.
Wherever they stay - and wherever they go - individuals and their organs travel together.
We need our brain as much as other creatures need theirs.
Whales and dolphins swim about with the brain in their head.
We move north, east, west and south, with the brain in place.
And a brain is activated - energized by what individuals see and hear outside!

We musn't forget glands and the brain are affected by 'audio-visual stimuli'.
You and your brain are activated as others tell you or show what they think.

Additional points:
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Light rays and sound waves surround us and all living things depend on environmental quality
for their survival ... plant and human cultural cross-fertilisation ... nature and nurture combined.
I dream of collaberation amongst ecologists and scientists in an animal-conditioning environment,
searching for the contingencies which keep subjects psycho-somatically healthy, sane, normal, fit.

Convincing a teenager about public and private events may be easier than getting scientists to change
their opinion ... on the whole, understandable.  Nevertheless, there  are  very  good reasons for careful
optimism and the best is, no one loses, everyone profits.

I am in favour of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.
Abraham Lincoln

When it comes to having a central nervous sytem , and the ability to feel pain, hunger and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. Ingrid Newkirk

July 5, 2012