The Construct of Mindfulness

Journal of Social Issues, Spring, 2000 by Ellen J. Langer, Mihnea Moldoveanu

The phenomenon of mindfulness also has implications for the ways in which we view and represent the mind and its connection to the brain. The "cognitive revolution" has relied, as previously noted, on models of the human mind based on the image of a computer or a generalized computational device. Most investigators in this area (e.g., Churchland, 1987) have sought to explain mental processes by reduction to computational or algorithmic processes that can be modeled using sophisticated computer science representations. This reduction has recently been extended to explaining mental phenomena in terms of neurobiological processes taking place in the brain (e.g., Churchland, 1987), which can themselves be represented in computational terms. An epistemological problem, however, is that these metaphorical devices cannot be transcended or refuted by empirical means because the organizing metaphors have never been explicitly made subject to empirical investigation. All that investigations based on the mind-as-comput er metaphor can tell us is whether our problem-solving processes deviate from the normative precepts that make up the metaphor in question. Thus, we are not informed about the possibly nonalgorithmic processes by which people come to solve the practical problems that cognitive scientists expect them to solve by algorithmic means.

Mindfulness theorists are not alone in positing the importance of nonalgorithmic factors in problem solving. Logician Kurt Godel wrote eloquently about the incompleteness of any non-self-contradictory logic system (see Putnam, 1985). Because of this, we as a society are still trying, with little success, to build robots that can navigate their way around a relatively uncrowded room and can resolve problems like catching a ball that a child can resolve while riding a bicycle, carrying on a conversation, and listening to his favorite tune on the radio. We believe that the time to investigate the nonalgorithmic dimensions of thinking is ripe, and the phenomena of mindful engagement can provide a portal to these relatively unexplored dimensions.

Mindlessness as a Social Issue

Mindlessness can show up as the direct cause of human error in complex situations, of prejudice and stereotyping, and of the sensation of alternating between anxiety and boredom that characterizes many lives. Boredom and malaise, particularly, can be thought of as conditions brought on by mindlessness. Without noticing differences brought on by the passage of time within ourselves and the outside world, each day looks like every other. Students feel stuck and listless in the classroom. Their teachers often absent-mindedly slog through long-winded lectures and sermons. Employees such as telephone operators, checkout clerks, and airline personnel often sleepwalk through their days, mechanically carrying out the tasks that have been designed for them. The day when surgeons and airline pilots may check out psychologically because of standardization and routinization of their work is perhaps not very far off, with potentially disastrous consequences. Already, human error accounts for more casualties in the Americ an military than does any actual military conflict (Snook, 1996).