Two Minds Blog

Eric Schwitzgebel’s (2013) book, Perplexities of Consciousness , offers some interesting observations that call out the limitations of the Narrative mind. Think about your own experiences with the following: Do you dream in color? This question can be surprisingly hard to answer. If you said "yes," are you sure that you actually experienced  your dream in color, versus remembering  it in color now? Schwitzgebel reviews historical data showing that before the 20th century most observers of the mind (e.g., Aristotle, Descartes, Freud) wrote about their dreams with details suggesting they were in color. But in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s less than 40% of people said they dreamed in color, and the well-known psychologist Calvin Hall even said that people had rare "technicolor" dreams that were the exception to the rule. Then, in surveys conducted from 1962 onward, the number of people reporting that they dreamed in color changed to 75% or more. Given that the human br...

In the initial article describing Two Minds Theory, we argued that mindfulness interventions work by strengthening connections between the Narrative and Intuitive systems. We suggested that mindfulness helps to focus the Narrative System on experiences occurring at the Intuitive System level, which could improve decision-making. Like motivational interviewing , mindfulness is a popular intervention approach without a single, clear theoretical foundation, and we suggested that TMT might provide a basis for understanding its effects. A recent review on the state of mindfulness research showed a dramatic increase in references to mindfulness since 2005 in both scientific literature and popular media. But despite this popularity there are still major gaps in the literature including the lack of a standard definition of mindfulness. In some studies mindfulness refers only to an awareness of one’s self or one’s surroundings, while in others it means a set of formal practices such a...