Thread by @EpistemicHope

Folks who do psychological parts work (Focusing, IFS, etc.),

Will the science of the future find that parts / subagents are neurologically "real"? (eg we'll be able isolate a neural structure that instantiates a given part)

Or are they merely helpful metaphors?

Another (maybe better?) way of operationalizing this:

Are parts distinct and persistent entities that exist when you're NOT doing parts work?

Or are they more like the handles for doing perspective taking, spun up for change work, but which don't persistently exist?

In that second hypothesis, parts have the same ontological status as _query responses_.

I can ask myself "If [some project] were going fail, how would it fail?" or "What's the most plausible story under which [my current theory of something] is false?" and my brain will return an answer.

(Those are both super useful cognitive moves, by the way.)

Similarly, I can ask "Suppose there was some reason why it made sense for me to get distracted. What would that be?" and my brain will return an answer.

"The part that wants me to get distracted" is just me, repeatedly taking the perspective or frame from which the distraction is good, and then having my brain fill in the details.

Maybe a part is just that kind of querying process, treated as if it is a persistent thing.

@diviacaroline @xuenay @meditationstuff @JasenMurray

@threadreaderapp unroll

For people who answer "neither", what are they then?

This tweet, I think, further clarifies what I'm wanting to get at.

Will we one day be able to similarly breakdown the "neruoanatomy" of a part?

Or will we be able to look at a live brainscan and identify parts in conflict, and which ones want what?

https://twitter.com/EpistemicHope/status/1416681759945617408?s=20

Another way of putting it:

Is a "part" more like a _thought_ or more like a _brain system_?

Thoughts are easily variable. If my internal monolog is saying something, I can just make it say something else, or talk in Morgan Freedman's voice.

Brain systems are less flexible. They have robust structure that you can't just "imagine differently."

https://twitter.com/EpistemicHope/status/1416849309002203136?s=20

Thoughts are made of NEURAL ACTIVATIONS.

Brain-structures are made of NEURONS.

A thought is a process, a verb.

A brain-structure is a thing, a noun.

Of course, thoughts build brain structures and brain structures generate thoughts.

Thoughts that you regularly think become habitual, and there will be brain structures that instantiate that habit.

But "habits of thought" sound a lot less...active and agent-like, than parts or sub-agents.

Habits don't _choose_, or respond creatively to new situations.

If a part is a habit, that implies that, when I'm talking with a part, I'm doing a lot of narrativizing of intention / agency around a simple behavioral core.

In that case, when I "let a part decide to release a behavior or not", that isn't actually what's happening. The neurons that instantiate the part are not the ones that are making that decision (though that might still be a pragmatically helpful framework).

But there's another possibility, where "when I let a part decide", that is literally what is happening. There's a (probably distributed) network that instantiates a simple thing that is meaningfully _wanting_ something, and can meaningfully choose between options.

Granted, in that possibility, parts might be sharing time on specific hardwired brain structures. Like, they all need to use the hypothalamus (or something) to make decisions, and only one can use it at a time.

But that doesn't obviate the thought / structure distinction.