The unity of all knowledge, if represented by the mere physical facts of existence, is a laudable, universally acceptable, and eminently practicable goal that represents what we commonly expect of science. Science allows us to easily understand and apply knowledge, and permits us to control our worlds, and absolute knowledge advances understanding and power absolutely. Yet although a firm grasp of and control over our physical world is a good thing, when it comes to human nature it is quite a different matter.

Nothing can be more representative of the spirit of mankind than the fact that it is ornery and unpredictable. Give us a rule, a standard, a commandment, and even if it was plain, sensible and was the commonly accepted wisdom of ages, you can be sure that someone will eventually break it, and quite possibly make a major religion out of it. The fickleness of human nature, its sheer indeterminacy, its inherent freedom, is a badge that sets us apart from the animals, and in the most rudimentary of determinacy’s, is set in motion only by God.

The indeterminacy of human behavior is generally embraced as a matter of course, and is confirmed by the chaotic nature of contemporary psychology that ventures myriad distinctive processes for every observation. But is this because human nature is at root intractable, or is it merely due to language, or perhaps the manners that dictate the languages we use?

Ultimately, to achieve understanding, molecular processes must account for the large scale or emergent processes that derive from them, and vice versa. These large-scale ‘molar’ processes represent subjective aspects of experience as described in the highly metaphorical language of common sense. Thus, when we speak of the molecular processes of disease, we can migrate upwards to the subjective accounts that emerge from them. Similarly, when we speak of headaches, heartaches, and aches in the rear, we are able to refer downward to the smaller scale molecular processes that constitute them. In the physical sciences, the ability to integrate levels of knowledge from the ‘top down’ and from the ‘bottom up’ allows one to more precisely predict and explain the world, and with an economy of language that follows from the use of common terms that have meaning across levels. Thus the ability of the physical sciences to conceptualize different levels of analysis and integrate those levels eliminates the intellectual chaff of looping suns and forest spirits, and ultimately makes for the simple explanations and precise predictions that enable our scientific and technological progress.

The ability to move from the large scale to the small, and vice versa permits us to correct for the aspect of language that distorts or obfuscates our view of what we consider true knowledge to be. In addition, it allows us to escape the unproductive debate on the definition of terms that needlessly confounds and prolongs debate. The effect of this has been most salutary for the physical sciences, since controversies over flat earths, human genesis, and animistic agencies for diseases have been removed entirely from academic discourse, albeit not entirely from the approval of popular opinion. However, in the social sciences this has not been the case.

Whereas molecular psychologies can scale upwards to account for the molar or subjective aspects of experience, the opposite is not the case with molar psychologies that have as their subject matter dynamical personality and social structures. For molar psychologies, general prediction is enough, and the methodologies used provide that in abundance. Hence molar psychologies use very small population samples, as in narrative accounts, or use large populations that find general tendencies, but not direct cause-effect relationships. Again, the question is ultimately not about philosophy, but about method. Methodologies that merely lead to the inference of processes rather than their direct observation recount Galileo’s frustration with the ‘science’ of his time, and substitute general predictive schemes in the place of a deep understanding of the way things actually work. But as Galileo knew when he implored his peers without success to look into his telescope, the ultimate argument against established orthodoxies lies in the acceptance of new ways of looking at events familiarly understood.

Psychology, like politics, engages points of view that seem to be eternal opposites. Like Democrats and Republicans or liberals and conservatives, schools of psychology often represent incommensurable points of view that are as inbred and unchangeable as your personal blood type. But these differences resist reconciliation if one view or another is regarded as more privileged than others. Of course, in terms of explanations, no point of view can ever be privileged because good explanations integrate all points of view. However, in terms of predictions, both molecular (neuro-psychology, learning theory) and molar (social, humanistic psychology, evolutionary psychology) psychologies assume as a matter of course that their predictive capabilities are what primarily matter.

Thus:

For evolutionary psychology, nativism is destiny. Our behavior is generally predictable through knowledge of our innate or native sensitivities to sensate (smell of a steak, view of a female form) and abstract (play, need for control) stimuli that translate into behavioral patterns that occur regardless or environmental or cultural influences. For purposes of prediction, activating and learning variables are secondary, and are generally not considered.

For neuro-psychology, activation is destiny. Our behavior is predictable through knowledge of the activating events that nonconsciously shape our most basic decisions. These events fall under the general classification of emotion. For purposes of prediction nativistic and learning variables are secondary, and are generally not considered.

For learning theory, information is destiny. Our behavior is predictable through an accounting for the knowledge of historical patterns of information and reward and from the future contingencies of reinforcement that we discriminate from that history. For purposes of prediction, nativistic and activation variables are secondary, and are generally not considered.

For social psychology, group dynamics are destiny. Behavior is predictable through knowledge of the dynamics of groups of individuals. For purposes of prediction, nativism, activation and learning are secondary, and are generally not considered.

For humanistic psychology, individual dynamics are destiny. Behavior is predictable through knowledge of individual dynamics. For purposes of prediction, nativism, activation, or learning are secondary, and are generally not considered.

Each of these ‘schools’ of psychology is differentiated by its subject matter, the level of analysis and general methodology that are employed, and the procedures that are used within that methodology. But above all, they all aim to achieve the maximum predictive power attainable through the methods, procedures, and the accompanying data languages that describe them. However, to engage and justify the predictions they make each school establishes sets of processes both real and inferred that represent the inner mechanics of behavior. However, because these processes often cannot be mapped to or described by the differing methods and data languages of each school, proponents of differing schools end up talking past each other rather than to each other since one party will not admit the non-empirical or inferred processes that the other unreservedly accepts (Kuhn, 1972).

The problem with the uncontrolled postulation of inferred processes of course has not been ignored, and the degree that it is recognized represents a significant contrast between the philosophical positions that are derived from and inform the essential characteristics of each school of thought. In the ‘hard’ psychological sciences, inferred psychological processes are typically avoided, and if postulated are used as mere ciphers until actual processes are reliably determined. Hence, in learning theory and neuropsychology, the variability and number of inferred processes is naturally limited by the respective level of analysis and types of procedures engaged. Thus the components of behavior are described in fine grain and molecular detail within individual subjects in time (within group design). In contrast, in the ‘soft’ psychological sciences inferred psychological processes are common, and their postulation is often accompanied by their implicit acceptance as real mental objects that do not need to be decomposed into constituent parts. Hence, in evolutionary, social and humanistic psychology, the variability and number of inferred processes is virtually uncontrolled by the level of analysis and procedures involved. Thus, the components of behavior are described as large scale or molar entities and are determined through the comparison of the self-reports or observed behavior of groups of individuals (between group design) that are summarized and contrasted at separate moments in time. For example, molar psychologies commonly hypothesize molar or modular mental entities (e.g., memes, flow states, needs for achievement) that are inferred from patterns of behavior rather than the neuro-biological events that comprise and often redefine them.

In contrast to molar perspectives and between group designs, molecular analysis limits the number of processes that can be hypothesized. The advantage of the parsimony such approaches bring to psychology would seem to argue persuasively for their exclusive use in psychology, since they reduce the number of inferred events that serve only to confound understanding. However, parsimonious explanations do not necessarily equate with simple explanations that can be easily understood. Indeed, common language neatly parses or abbreviates the informative content of speech through the extensive use of metaphor, and is quite foreign to the highly structured language of science where little or nothing is left to inference. Moreover, molar concepts such as consciousness, value, motivation, emotion, etc. are not practically derivable from molecular concepts alone. That is, without guidance from the large scale or subjective values that give perspective and direction to our behavior, molecular processes taken in themselves have little meaning.

For example, I may walk across the room to get a book, but logically deriving and predicting my action from a consideration of neurobiological events alone represents logical difficulties that are intractable for human reason. Hence, to predict behavior requires not only an understanding of its inherent neurobiology, but also the emergent subjective goals and behaviors that allow us to codify the profound detail that occurs under the skin. In other words, the best way to perceive a forest is from a distance that summarizes and systematizes what we see in every tree.

Finally, molar concepts commonly extend the immediate causes of behavior from the neural mechanisms that reside in our heads to events both real and conjectured that occur extended in a fourth dimension of time. Human behavior, although always instigated by present events or momentary changes in neural activity, is universally perceived to be extended in and controlled by events in time. Sometimes these time scales are very short, and reflect processes that are best categorized as occurring in present time. But often these processes can only be understood in terms of causal events that range widely from calendar to geologic time.

In a molecular analysis, behavior is determined through moment-by-moment interactions between behavior and the environment. Past and future events are not extended in some conceptual temporal dimension, but are realized in the fine grain processes of memory as mapped to neural or informative events. In contrast to molecular perspectives that map behavior to processes that are realized in the present, molar perspectives of evolutionary, humanistic, and social psychology posit multiple motivational events that are extended in time. That is, behavior occurs because it serves conceptual goals that represent past or future events. In evolutionary psychology, the numberless events that constitute natural selection cannot define the mental processes they ultimately select for, but behavior is motivated by an appeal to ancestral goals that result in morphological changes that increase the survival of individuals and their offspring. This teleonomic perspective anchors our motivations to the fulfillment of historical goals that are deduced from the inferred course of evolution over the eons. Hence we are kind to our children, cheat on our wives, and cooperate with our peers because these behaviors serve the demands of our evolutionary past. So, our interests are maximized to meet an historical demand for genetic fittedness rather than some future goal that emerges unbound from the natural history of the race. On the other hand, humanistic and social psychologies typically conceptualize our behavior as ultimately instigated and controlled by future events that are virtually detached from our evolutionary and even learning histories. Of course, no humanistic or social psychologist would deny the logic that behavior is ultimately rooted to the biological facts of our existence, but practically the disconnect is very real. Hence, we are driven by disembodied objects extended forward in time that are practically independent of the evolutionary and biological histories that gave them value. So whether we are driven by dreams of money, self-actualization, or summer vacations in Tahiti, motivation can be easily encapsulated in future wants and needs.

The philosophy that posits discrete or indiscrete future events as driving behavior represents a teleological point of view. If these motivating objects are discrete, like SUV’s, stock options, or Coca-Cola, and if we consistently frame motivation in terms of such objects, we therefore may be considered to subscribe to a materialistic philosophy. On the other hand, if motivating objects are indiscrete, such as honor, glory, virtue, or the grace of God, then we subscribe to a spiritualistic philosophy. Of course, in real life we find it hard to choose between the two, with the result that contemporary philosophizing (as well as countless sermonizing) is mainly about the respective regard one must give to God or mammon.

The division between the past and future, subjective or objective, matter and spirit represent the eternal dichotomies that characterize our common sense appraisal of the world, and in turn our behavior. But as we have seen, all we have and will ever have are different perspectives that merge and emerge as we change our focus. But are realities as multiple or our perspectives, or is reality merely surplus baggage? And if perspective is all we have, do we need irreducible animistic or other unique forces to fill in the cracks of our ignorance? Ultimately, the answer depends upon the availability of deep explanations that provide multiple perspectives that individually possess differential predictive power yet as a group may be systematically integrated. This of course describes the ontology or state of being of the physical sciences that use separate perspectives to meet separate predictions, yet through their integration achieve parsimony by sorting out the metaphorical from the real.

In physics, the persistent dualities fall away as fine grain detail becomes more in focus. Thus, reality dissolves into a timeless and monistic abstraction conceived metaphorically as quantum multiverses or cosmic string. But if the observable regularities of nature can be mapped to simple and abstract physical laws, then those laws can in turn be employed to predict those regularities with a reliability denied to common sense. Thus the solar system can be mapped to Newtonian laws, but the same laws are validated by their ability to predict the future positions of the planets and moon. A higher-level conceptualization, namely predicting the motions of the solar system, literally pops out of the symbolic machinations of Newtonian mechanics. But mathematics can go beyond even the creation of cosmic train schedules, and literally predict the train itself! Thus, in grand unified theories of the universe, entire universes replete with the physical laws that drive them can pop out of literal nothingness.

If you know the outlines of what you are looking for as codified in the law of gravity or the laws of evolution, then they can be literally predicted from the ground up. In other words, given a little foreknowledge of what you’re looking for, matter, time, Einsteinian and Newtonian mechanics, and even life and consciousness itself can be derived from rudimentary first principles. Thus, the separate strands of a molecular analysis may be woven into a picture of earthly and personal visions, but only if those phenomena are fixed first in the mind.

But if this view is true for all sciences, then all of psychology can theoretically be built from the bottom up, guided merely by the correcting nudge of subjective values. Can the psychological faculties of will, courage and virtue and the values we hold dear be derived from the rudimentary foundations of neurology? And beyond their mere description, can a neural foundation go beyond the is to the ought, and prescribe behavior as it should be? That is, can we use physics to vault to philosophy? And if so, what philosophy, horrific or sublime, may be there to greet us?

There is, in the arduous climb to philosophy, a hope that the ascent will end with the apprehension of a beautiful and endless vista. But sparing that vision, how do we know when the ascent is in fact at an end? As the allusion suggests, it comes with the altitude, the rarefied level where all paths lead to a pinnacle of singular dimension and simplicity. In the spirit of the metaphor, understanding human motivation is an intellectual Everest that leads to the rarified air of simple neural processes that are as evanescent and mercurial as the mists surrounding a mountain peak. But can we see past them to where we will be, and as importantly, where we should be?

Tying philosophy to overarching perspectives from free will to the second coming can be seductive and have results both disastrous and sublime. The teleological perspective is the broadest and most pervasive of these, and has suffused western culture and philosophy, phrasing behavior in terms of discrete material and spiritual goals that beckon us on. For common sense as well as philosophy, the fact that we are motivated by a linear procession of goals has provided the skeletal framework that allows us to conceptualize our world in all its forms. In recent times, mankind has discovered its past, and now we can conceive ourselves as not only pulled by future goals that we freely choose or have chosen by us by our culture, but as being also pushed into behaving by the cumulative import of evolutionary selections over countless millennia. Of course, our distant past was not a world of talking dinosaurs and cuddly primates, but a volatile landscape that for its inhabitants was mean, brutal, competitive, and short. Naturally, a primeval lifestyle is not an incubator for Disney like values, and indeed civilized value systems have no meaning at all in uncivil times. Unfortunately, as our motives become informed by instinctive or innate imperatives driven by the past, good and evil are conflated, with virtuous motives becoming merely ulterior ones, and vice merely animal spirits. The metaphor of natural selection, although instructive of the general truths of evolution, has been adopted as the fulcrum for philosophies from Social Darwinism to National Socialism that have resulted in the disparagement and diminution of Judeo-Christian values, and the sublimation of the individual to the impersonal designs of abstract racial, national, and group identities. In turn, these identities, along with the individuals that embody them can be manipulated, expanded, or destroyed depending upon the dogma that binds them, and the often tyrannical minds that give that dogma personality and force.

This ‘new man’, whether the entrepreneurial type of American Capitalism or the worker drone of the Soviet State, owes itself in large measure to the adoption of the metaphors of evolution as a proper mapping of the mind. As an explanation it is insufferably rude, since it relegates to natural and predetermined causes the very essence of human decision-making, and casts into doubt the metaphors that underscore human freedom and morality.

But is it really explanation? Explanation after all reflects the integration of multiple levels of analysis that progressively map to finer and finer empirical events. As noted earlier, the genetic causes of human behavior generally do not denote the actual mechanisms of behavior but rather the inferred influence of historical events on the development of the mind. Moreover, the actual neural mechanics behind instinctive behavior are just as obscure as the mentalistic mechanisms that underlie common sense interpretations of the mind. Hence, because of their reliance on mental mechanisms that are at root inferred, evolutionary explanations for behavior are not true explanations. Nonetheless, because they provide more elegant and simple metaphors that describe behavior, the hypothetical processes they denote achieve the benefit of the doubt. For example, the simple and sensible observation that genetic fittedness is not served by the marriage of close kin leads to the equally simple and sensible inference that there is a mental ‘module’ in the mind that causes an instinctive aversion for incest. The postulation of an inborn mental trait against incest is ‘logically’ inferred, yet is not demonstrated empirically since the neural mechanics underlying that trait are hidden. But as we have noted in our earlier consideration of the incest taboo, logic unfortunately cannot substitute for the true facts of behavior that may in turn have an entirely different logic of their own.

As this example demonstrates, the substitution of inferred for real processes makes for mock explanations that are too often uncritically accepted as real explanations. Inferred processes are not necessarily false processes, but when they are used to justify the inclination to not look any farther or any deeper into their ultimate essence, then science stops and dogma begins. Of course, attending to the details that attend such a validation can be onerous, and can take one far a-field of the metaphorical language that comprise one’s subject matter. Thus, an adoption of the celestial mechanics of a Galileo or Newton is a rude intrusion into the very different spiritual language that posits celestial spheres and heavenly hosts, and a foray into neuroscience, although ultimately complementary to the viewpoints of evolution and humanism, forces one to adopt a new data language that is foreign to say the least.

Of course, scientists who lack an integrative bent are quick to dismiss a focus on the fine grain details of existence as a mere reductionist philosophy that diminishes the human experience by focusing on the parts of experience rather than its whole, and that the face validity of gross experience is the only subject matter that counts. But this common rationale is nonsense. At root, science is not mere reductionism, and can never be solely reductionistic. Indeed, science seeks explanations that wed t he large scale with the small, and constantly corrects for spurious presumptions by a greater and greater attention to detail. Although they may achieve face validity, as even common sense explanations recognize human instinct and learning, true explanations go beyond merely vouchsafing the obvious, but describe the fine details of obvious events in unobvious ways, and make predictions that greatly surpass the predictive powers of experience as codified by common sense. Nonetheless, to raise the fine detail to the level of general understanding requires the development of new metaphorical schemes that can encapsulate them, much as a simple concept (water) or equation (E=mc²) provides a shorthand for the highly detailed processes and characteristics of the realities they denote. The secret behind all intellectual pursuits, from physics to music composition to chess lies in the ability to perceive and manipulate the metaphors that get to the heart of the problem at hand, with the fine print as an afterthought that is nonetheless just as critical to thought. Whether viewed as Einsteinian thought experiments or chessboard strategies, the high-end conceptualizations are always implicitly informed and corrected by the fine details of existence. The conceptual metaphors that empowered an Einstein or a Darwin, although often practically disassociated with the fine grain observations that gave them birth, are by nature constrained by those very observations. Hence, no matter how elegant, simple, or beautiful the equations may be, ultimately a true explanation must be grounded in the fine grain details of existence. Thus, the Copernican, Darwinian, Einsteinian revolutions, although propelled by simple and elegant conceptual structures, never took root until confirmed by the painstaking detail of experiment and observation.

Common sense is overturned not just when a theory is proposed that challenges common viewpoints, but when all or nearly all the details that theory predicts are confirmed. In other words, when our instrumentalities allow us to observe nature in all her details, as well as codify all of those details, then we are forced to reconsider the common facts of existence. The historical metaphors that described the cosmos, human origins, time, space, and disease all fall away when comprehensive sets of facts and their accompanying conceptual frameworks are revealed. When the facts are partial and indirect, then different theories may be erected to account for them, but when the facts are near complete and are directly observed, then we have the stuff of revolutions.

The present fractious and fragmented nature of psychology is due to the fact that until the present day, the neurobiology of the mind had been only partially or indirectly revealed. But it is also due to the fact that the pursuit of psychological knowledge is highly channeled into separate subject matters and methodologies that emphasize predictions from response rates (behaviorism) to self reports of feelings (humanism) to neural activity (neuro-psychology) that remain incommensurate. Thus we have noted how subject matters in psychology such as neuro-psychology, behaviorism, evolutionary psychology and so on remain unconnected by any interpenetrating explanations since explanation is but an afterthought.

The philosopher of science David Kuhn noted that different theories are incommensurable when their respective advocates will not admit the separate non-empirical assumptions (i.e., inferred processes) that each holds as critical. Thus psychologists invariably end up talking past each other rather than to each other because they do not agree on a common definition of terms. In other words, productive debate was forestalled because a commonly agreed explanation of their terms was not possible. This tendency was inevitable as long as the true workings of our brains was obscure, but in the last ten years, the processes of the human brain have revealed themselves through the employment of ever more incisive tools, and the metaphors that describe those processes have become simpler and possessive of greater predictive power. Thus, psychologists of different schools of thought can now define their terms because their terms finally can be incorporated with the metaphors of contemporary neuroscience. In other words, the methods of psychology, taken all together, can now be synthesized with a much more comprehensive knowledge of how our brains actually work.

The possibility of constructing true rather than mock explanations of behavior has now become an impending reality. But it does not culminate in sterile intellectual arguments that lie unread on a journalistic shelf, but rather with simple and compelling explanations that lead to the destruction and reconstruction of our common sense ideas about how our minds work. And as we will see, the real explanation, although destructive to common sense, reconstructs common sense in new ways that serve to ironically validate the simple childlike values that have been instilled in us since birth.

The metaphors that describe how our minds work are simple, elegant, and are the foundation for much of psychology. They are also the reason why we unquestioningly accept psychology as we know it. They are also wrong. And now, as the facts of neuroscience become abundantly apparent, the dissolution of this foundation will cause much of the proud edifice of contemporary psychology to teeter and fall. Now this of course is a breathless, imposing, and somewhat rude prognostication for such a mature and amply documented subject matter, but a true scientific revolution would have it no other way. Tossing out much of the accumulated wisdom of the past does not discard the observations of the past, as even Galileo used the star charts cast by his illustrious ancestors in science. Rather, what are discarded are the interpretations of the past, the theoretical models that arrange observations in workable ways and the simple metaphors that codify them.

In the physical sciences, isolated theories of the origin of fire, the nature of force and motion, and the genesis of the universe have been replaced with interpenetrating theories that provide deep explanations. Thus Newtonian, Einsteinian and Quantum theories of nature are viewed as perspectives that are separate from but nonetheless inform each other. These theories also provide new sets of metaphors that unify in new and better ways what we know or think we know. Thus when we look at a setting sun, we can at turns picture in our minds a rotating earth, the speed and bending of light, and the nuclear fusion that ignites its internal fire. Similarly, in the biological sciences, complex viewpoints from the macroscopic to the microscopic are translated into the easy metaphors of cold germs, nerve impulses, and the circulation of blood. As we have noted, the simple metaphors that frame existence provide the intellectual framework for the questions we ask and the procedures we follow. At root, the common metaphors that describe the rudiments of existence provide the intellectual gatekeeper that allows us to immediately discern between sense and nonsense. Thus we can dismiss a mind reader or faith healer with a shrug, but entertain the most implausible therapies of the mind because they cohere with the simple ways we think the mind works.

In the modern age, from biology to physics, the conventional wisdom of how things work has been continually challenged by progressively deeper explanations of the world. In psychology, the ‘revolutionary’ notions of psychoanalytic, behavioristic, or evolutionary psychology have likewise challenged conventional wisdom. Yet because the instrumentalities were not available to examine the actual neural processes that underlie behavior, these new interpretations of the mind could comprise no more than mock explanations. But more importantly, these explanations never did challenge the common metaphors that describe how our brains work since at root they implicitly accepted those metaphors, and even built upon them.

Indeed, nearly the whole of western intellectual tradition merely elaborates the root metaphors that describe our minds, and thus in the most radical sense were not revolutions at all! The entire scope of philosophy and psychology over millennia can be seen as representing and elaborating upon a simple unreformed view as to how our minds work. This 1^st generation cognitive science provides the skeletal framework for nearly the whole of western thought

As a philosophical concept 1st generation cognitive science is second nature because it so commonly reflects how we think about human nature. Primarily, we think of cognition as the manipulation of symbolic events that occur in a serial order. Just as language proceeds linearly, so does thought, and so do the mechanisms that translate thought into behavior. Secondly, activation variables as represented by affective, feeling, or emotional events only intermittently serve to influence thought processes, and in general distort rather than inform thinking. Third, motivating events are represented as mental modules that are practically irreducible. These mental ‘faculties’ from will power to wisdom to jealousy represent the basic psychological components of the mind. Fourth, motivating events are extended in time and become more or less motivating dependent upon how they are arranged in a temporal space. Fifth, rewarding events are discrete events, and can be understood without detailed knowledge of their informative context or connotations. Sixth and finally, value is relative and molar, and is relative to the maximization of physical or other large scale events (houses, cars, Super-bowl rings). Thus, we are motivated to do and value any action from the simple (walking and talking) to the complex (planning and thinking) by disembodied mental processes that occur linearly, act modularly, and are elicited by discrete events that occur in time.

In contrast to this academic and conventional wisdom, 2^nd generation cognitive science is built upon a radically different set of principles that are derived root and branch from modern neuro-psychology. Primarily, thinking and action is derived from the activity of mass arrays of neurons that are activated in parallel. Secondly, motivation is generated primarily by non-conscious and non-symbolic somatic events that universally guide choice, and are subjectively reported as feelings or emotion. Third, mental modules or ‘faculties’ are not isomorphic to distinct neuro-anatomical modules, but rather emerge from the relatively simple interactions of rudimentary neural processes. Fourth, behavior occurs because of events that are modeled in present time rather than are extended in future time. Fifth, motivating events are not discrete events, but are rather comprised of the environmental relationships signified by discrete events. Sixth, value is absolute and molecular, and is relative to the maximization of molecular events, or incentives. Thus, we are motivated to do and value any action from the simple (walking and talking) to the complex (planning and thinking) by embodied mental processes that occur in parallel, emerge from the interaction of simple and common processes, and are elicited by indiscrete perceptual relationships that are modeled in present time.

The entire tradition of western thought and common sense is at odds with what we now know about the actual mechanics of our minds. This tradition, which is so rooted in language and the dependence of thought and behavior upon language is not just wrong, but wrong in the most colossal sense. But if this is true, why would we accept it, how could we use it, and what manner may we simply and irrevocably demonstrate it?