Stoicism is Not What You Think

An exclusive excerpt from Dr. John Sellars and Pelican Publishing

PAC would like to express their deepest thanks to Dr. John Sellars and Pelican Publishing for this exclusive excerpt from Stoicism is Not What You Think.

Stoicism Is Not What You Think

In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, the Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman outlines a distinction between what he calls ‘System 1’ and ‘System 2’ thinking, drawing on decades of empirical research. System 1 thinking is immediate, unconscious, and intuitive. Kahneman says that it ‘operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control’. Seeing a human face and judging it to be happy, sad, or angry would be an example of System 1 thinking. We do it immediately, without thinking, to the point that it is almost involuntary. If you see a smiling face, you judge it to be happy whether you want to or not (unless perhaps it’s Jack Nicholson in The Shining). By contrast, System 2 thinking is slow, deliberate, and requires cognitive effort, such as adding up the prices of items in your shopping basket. Unless you are a mathematical whizz, this usually takes some time.

It is important to note that these two types of thinking – fast and slow – are not restricted to different domains or subject matter. If I were to ask you what 2+2 is, you would likely respond with the answer 4 so quickly that it is almost an automatic reflex. You didn’t need to work out the answer or even pause to recall it from memory – you just blurt it out without thinking. However, if I asked you what 13x43 is, you are likely to stop whatever you are doing to concentrate on trying to work it out in your head or on a piece of paper. For most of us, finding the answer requires some effort, while some of us might simply give up in frustration. There may be a few who are so practised and adept at calculation that they can respond extremely quickly, but even for them it will require some cognitive effort.

So, we have these two different systems. The first generates immediate judgements while the second is slower and more methodical. Kahneman describes the way the two work together in the following way: ‘System 1 continuously generates suggestions for System 2: impressions, intuitions, intentions, and feelings. If endorsed by System 2, impressions and intuitions turn into beliefs, and impulses turn into voluntary actions. When all goes smoothly, which is most of the time, System 2 adopts the suggestions of System 1 with little or no modification.’ However, although much of the time this works smoothly, it is nevertheless easy to fall into difficulties because, as Kahneman puts it, System 1 is prone to ‘systematic errors’ and it ‘cannot be turned off’.

For the most part this is a highly efficient and beneficial set up. We see a lion and our System 1 thinks ‘danger’. We don’t want to stand about and think about whether the lion is dangerous or not – we just want to run. Sometimes the lion might be no threat at all, and we’ll run when we don’t need to, but on balance that kind of error is a price worth paying. It has kept the human race alive for a long time. However, as we all know, that same set up is sometimes less helpful in the modern world. Our deeply encoded System 1 reactions – especially connected to danger and threat – can be triggered by a whole range of things in everyday life that do not pose a real threat, such as a barrage of loud noise in a busy city or endless reports of faraway wars in the news. This can lead to stress, sometimes chronic stress, and a whole host of health issues as a consequence. As Kahneman notes, we cannot turn these immediate reactions off, so, if we are to navigate the modern world effectively, we need to make sure we can train our System 2 thinking not to accept unthinkingly System 1’s first reactions. We need to cultivate the art of thinking slow.

When I first read this, I was completely taken aback, for what Kahneman describes, based on extensive psychological research, is remarkably close to how the Stoics described this process. The Stoic version goes like this: we receive sense data from the outside world that is presented to the mind in the form of a proposition – ‘the cat is on the mat’ – and our mind either assents to or rejects that proposition. If it accepts the proposition, this generates a belief, which is the basis for our actions. Stoics such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius also note that in some cases the mind adds an almost involuntary value judgement to what we experience, so that the proposition presented to our mind also contains this judgement – ‘the cat is dangerous’. If we assent to this kind of proposition – one that goes beyond the bare facts of the situation – then we shall generate an emotion, following the model we saw earlier in Chapter 2. So, if we assent to the proposition ‘the cat is dangerous’, we shall experience the emotion of fear, thinking that we might be harmed in the near future.

Now, as we have seen, the Stoics think this kind of emotional response is an error for multiple reasons. First, the fact of the matter is that the cat is sitting on the mat; whether it is dangerous or not is a judgement we have added, so we should not assent to it as if it were a fact about the world. Second, even if this was an especially ferocious looking cat that might harm our bodies, this would not be a genuine harm to our true selves – our character. I would prefer that the cat did not bite my arm, but if it does, I am not harmed in a way that I should let impact my sense of how well my life is going. Whatever the cat might do to my arm, it cannot damage my character. However, if I were to get scared of the cat, or angry if it did bite me, then I would suffer genuine harm, because I would have let an irrational emotion disturb my otherwise calm and rational mind. The way to avoid this is, in Kahneman’s language, to make sure that my System 2 does not hastily assent to a mistaken System 1 response. Or, as Marcus Aurelius puts it, ‘Do not say more to yourself than first impressions report. You have been told that someone speaks ill of you. This is what you have been told; you have not been told that you have been injured. … Always abide by first impressions and add nothing of your own from within.’

This convergence of Stoic psychology with some of the latest empirical research on the subject is striking indeed. What Kahneman’s work offers, I suggest, is a substantial body of evidence supporting the central elements of Stoic thinking about how the mind works.

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Dr. John Sellars is Reader in the History of Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Director of its Centre for the Study and Application of Stoicism. A veteran scholar with a PhD in Philosophy, he is a founding member of the London Centre for Ancient Philosophy, a Member of Common Room at Wolfson College, Oxford, and Associate Editor of the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle project at King’s College London. Beyond academia, Sellars is dedicated to public philosophy as a co-founder of both Modern Stoicism and the Aurelius Foundation. His works include The Art of Living, Lessons in Stoicism, and the newly released Stoicism Is Not What You Think.