Two Minds Blog

One of the most exciting things about a new theory is that it can give us a different or deeper understanding of things that we didn’t originally consider when developing the theory itself. This post explores the writing of C. S. Lewis from the perspective of Two Minds Theory. C. S. Lewis is best known as a Christian apologist and the author of the Chronicles of Narnia children’s stories. However, two other facts make him an interesting case study: First, Lewis was a great observer of his own thoughts in books like his early allegorical novel The Pilgrim's Regress , his autobiography  Surprised by Joy, and the journal that he wrote after his wife’s untimely death, A Grief Observed. Second, Lewis was himself a theorist about the workings of the mind. He was an inveterate reader, considered the best-read man in England during his lifetime, and drew routinely on classical as well as contemporary sources in his arguments. This combination of characteristics makes him a fascinating so

One of the most exciting things about this historical moment for studying our two minds is the widespread availability of cheap, accessible, consumer-grade sensor devices. Sensors provide data on physiological processes that (a) occur outside people's conscious awareness, (b) are happening all the time in the context of everyday life, and (c) are probably related to mental states or behaviors. These are the ideal characteristics for a measure of the Intuitive System. In previous years many devices were available but only in the context of an artificial laboratory situation, for example in a formal biofeedback intervention or in physiological research. Now many sensors can be worn all the time, and send data back to researchers via wireless upload. Time-stamped data can then be matched with information from other sources like environmental sensors, surveys, or participants' demographic and clinical characteristics (age, disease history, medications, race or ethnicity,  gender