Meditation and Cognitive Independence
Will Wilkinson has an interesting post titled “Declaration of Cognitive Independence?” in which he talks about the perils of confirmation bias, the process “whereby we seek and find confirmatory evidence in support of already existing beliefs and ignore or reinterpret disconfirmatory evidence.”
After pointing out some of the silly (at best) and destructive (at worst) behaviors that can result from confirmation bias, Will ends with the following suggestion:
So, this Independence Day, why not pick up a political book you know you’ll disagree with. Or write a short essay giving the best argument you can think of for a position you find abhorrent. Or really listen to what your annoying brother-in-law thinks about the war at the family picnic. We could all be a little more rational, and a little more free, if only we really wanted to be. Dogmatic, whole-hearted commitment does feel good. But there is more to life than feeling good. There is truth, for one thing. And there is freedom — self-command. We’re all jerked around by our own minds. But we can be jerked around less.
This is a good suggestion.
But I believe there’s something we can do that helps even more, and may lead to a more lasting and fulfilling kind of cognitive independence: learn to meditate.
While the scientific research on the benefits of mindfulness meditation tends to focus on the emotional and medical benefits of meditation (see Ruth Baer’s meta-analysis, for example), it is no less true that meditation can help change our cognitive habits.
In particular, many forms of meditation help us relax our unconscious identification with thoughts and emotions. While I don’t have scientific proof at my fingertips, I’m almost certain that this would reduce a person’s tendency toward confirmation bias.
In my experience, meditation — and especially the cultivation of “witness” consciousness — is the single best way to reduce the kind of knee-jerk emotional/cognitive reactions that cause us to reflexively identify with a particular intellectual position.
Note, we do not give up our views. In fact, we may see what is right and what is wrong more clearly than ever. But we don’t have the same unconscious pull to identify with those views, e.g., to become easily upset or defensive when they are challenged.
This is true cognitive independence: The ability to choose not only your beliefs with greater objectivity, but also how you will react mentally when those views are inevitably challenged.
