Future of the Mind 
tremendous powers by language and memory from our inherit- 
ance. I don’t think, Dr. Chisholm, that it is at all likely that 
this will be readily abandoned. Whatever the future holds for 
man, it cannot hold a completely fresh start, because such a 
concept is really not meaningful. It is likely that the existing 
concept of learning will be modified and to some extent be 
replaced. Indeed, what is the process by which concepts be- 
come modified, particularly in the light of the history of dis- 
covery and technology? This is a really interesting problem— 
the repercussions between technology and biology particularly, 
between finding machines which imitate and supplement human 
weaknesses, and then the study of our own capacity by the use 
of the very instruments we designed in order to supplement 
them. This seems to me to be a very subtle cycle, which has 
been very little investigated and is well worth further study. 
I believe the pattern of our understanding of emotion is also 
likely to change dramatically. Dr. Hoagland was fascinated by 
the monkey with the amygdala removed. It is possible to take 
out the amygdala today and put it back tomorrow, by cutting 
the brain essentially in half and occluding one eye. Then the 
side of the brain which is receiving the input from the open eye 
has, so to speak, no amygdala. The monkey is then very tame, 
at least in respect to visual stimuli. If you then open the other 
eye, which feeds the side which has an amygdala, the animal 
will go back to being a wild monkey. This is a very powerful 
technique which is going to show us a great deal about emotional 
responses and give us an understanding of them so that they 
may in future be better controlled. 
The basis of a lot of the conflict that Dr. Chisholm was 
talking about is the question of what sort of things we react to 
emotionally. What are the signs that we put to each other 
which produce aggression, for example? Again, it is difficult 
for people of different genetical backgrounds to communicate. 
Facial communication systems don’t fit, and therefore it isn’t 
equally easy for all parts of the human race to communicate. 
We often tend to forget this and there might well be more 
studies of the difficulties which are liable to occur: such things 
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