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Is our inner life (desires, identity, motivations…) an illusion? The Flat Mind thesis
This book is not about stoicism but about psychology. I’m reviewing it because it made an impression on me and I think its teaching can be useful to all lovers of wisdom. I link it to stoicism at the end of the post. Enjoy the reading!
I love him deeply. I don’t love him at all anymore. I have conflicting desires. Deep down, I feel this way. I need to find my deepest motivation. I have repressed desires. Who doesn’t recognize himself in at least one of these sentences? What they have in common is that they admit the existence of a form of inner life (the unconscious), which partly escapes us but which it would be possible to explore.
For the professor of behavioral sciences Nick Chater, this conception is entirely false. Our mind functions without depth. Every thought is the result of a process that selects, organizes, and interprets external data. Nothing comes from a supposed inner territory: everything comes from a flat mind that creates its reality according to the external data it receives.
Nick Chater presents his thesis in The Mind is Flat, a book that won the 2019 Clinical Psychology Book Award. Review.
