"Making Sense of Spirituality" article by Steven C. Hayes

I attached a PDF of an article titled Making Sense of Spirituality, written by Steven C. Hayes in 1984. Hayes is a modern behavioral scientist and the developer of both Relational Frame Theory (RFT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

ABSTRACT: In ordinary language a clear distinction is made between the world of matter and that of spirit. While dualism is typically thought to be incompatible with behaviorism, a behavioral analysis of self-awareness suggests that there are good reasons for dualistic talk. Reputed qualifies of both the spiritual aspect of humans and of a metaphysical God seem to flow naturally from the analysis. The use of the spiritual facet of self in therapy is briefly discussed.

Hayes gives a behavioral explanation for the development self-awareness (i.e. seeing seeing), as well as for the "you" that is seeing seeing (i.e. self-aware). Here's a snippet preview (which is much easier to understand when reading the whole article...)

"[C]hildren are taught to distinguish their perspective from that of others. Young children have a hard time with the issue of perspective. For example, young children seated across from a doll will, when asked, report that the doll sees what they are seeing. Gradually, however, a sense of perspective emerges. A child learns what he or she sees is seen from a perspective. Similarly, a young child, asked what she had for breakfast, may respond with what her brother actually ate, but an older child will not make such a mistake. Through correction ('No, that is what your brother ate. What did you eat?') a child must learn to see seeing from a consistent locus. Finally, it is also possible that a sense of locus emerges by a process of elimination or by metaphorical extension. Suppose a child can give correct answers to the question 'what did you x?' where 'x' is a wide variety of events such as eat, feel, watch, and so on. The events constantly change. In our terms, the seeing and the seeing seeing change. Only the locus does not. Thus, the one consistency between the word 'you' in such questions and behavior is not seeing or seeing seeing but the behavior of seeing that you see from a particular locus or perspective. Thus, in some real sense, 'you' are the perspective."

I'd love to know what you all think of this particular take on self-awareness and "self" as perspective.

Jackson


Attachment: Hayes 1984.pdf (120.0KB)

I'm glad you found it interesting.

Ideas about identity, separateness, mine vs. yours, etc. are all learned because they are functional. Being a human being usually means being able to learn in this way (there are exceptions, of course). A lot of what insight work is all about, in my opinion, is seeing through the process of language and identification so as to be able to choose when it is helpful and when it isn't, and then to act accordingly. As the RFT theorists often say, language has a dark side. It is responsible for a great deal of human suffering. Language gets us into a mess, and then it can help us to get out of that mess (if it points us toward examining our experience in a new way).

Fun!

Is the theory that a sense of self only comes with development after birth?

I'd kind of thought that the sense of self was included in our genetic make up and was even necessary for survival.

Maybe the capacity for developing a sense of self is in our DNA, but we just dont have it at birth?

If a wild person was raised by animals in the wilderness would he or she not have a sense of self?

The idea as I understand it suggests that human beings that develop normally (or above normally, in some cases) have the capacity to derive stimulus relations. For example, if I tell you that A is smaller than B, and that C is larger than B, and then ask you "Which is larger? A or C?" You will most likely answer "C". But I didn't tell you that directly. All I told you was...

A is smaller than B
C is larger than B

From that, you derived the "mutual entailments" that suggest...

B is larger than A
B is smaller than C

... as well as the "combinatorial entailments" that suggest...

A is smaller than C
C is larger than A

All of these together form what is called a "Relational Frame" - which is where "Relational Frame Theory" (RFT) came from.

Empirical studies have shown that humans are the only animals that can be verified to understand this type of relational understanding without more explicit cues.

I don't have time to go over how that ends up forming a sense or idea of selfhood, but perhaps another time

Jackson

I don't have time to go over how that ends up forming a sense or idea of selfhood, but perhaps another time



Cool.

Very interesting

I'm gonna take a look at the pdf. Thanks!