The Triune Brain Revisited

Thanks for your reply Felix. I was also reminded of the id, ego, and superego, and it is noteworthy how closely the layers of the brain fit to that model. But Freud may well have been influenced by the structure of the brain in developing that model; he studied medicine, which surely included the anatomy of the brian, he was also a pioneer in the study of neurology, particularly in the comparison of human and non-human brain tissues. The relationship between the brain and the mind was understood during his time. I don’t know for sure that the gross morphology of the brain informed his model of the mind, but I don’t think it’s a given that we can take his model out of the context of his own training and research.

For the tripartite divinities, I’m not sure how to evaluate your claims. There are certainly many examples of trinities, but they are by no means universal, and I question whether they even account for the majority of religious belief. And even the claims that certain trinities are the divine trinity for a given religion are not easy to answer. For example, the Hindu deities you mention are viewed as a trinity by some Hindus, but not by all. And it’s been theorized that the Hindu and Western trinities are derived from the same pre-Indo-European culture, where a three-way divides can be found in religion, culture, and politics.

But I think your examples of Taoism, Islam, and Judaism point to a central issue in the project of identifying divine trinities. Take Taosim: the way you’re counting yin, yang, and yin+yang as three should entail that you count father, son, holy spirit, and father+son+holy spirit as four instead of three. There are trinities in Taosim, but important divisions are dualities (yin and yang, tao and te), and the trinities are not always so central (e.g. the eight trigrams, which falls out of two possible states of three attributes (2^3=8) . For Islam and Judaism, the choice of three central things seems arbitrary. Both religions are predominantly unitary, focusing on a unitary god above all else. Counting Allah, Muhammad, and the Koran seems arbitrary: why not the Hadith? If we say that the Hadith just is Muhammad, then shouldn’t the Koran just be Allah? And what of the other great prophets recognized Islam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus? What of the Five Pillars of Islam? So too with Judaism: again we can arbitrarily cut it off with Yahweh, the Law, and the Prophets, but what of the Messiah whose coming is prophesied? Why count the law and the prophets separately, where both are often considered part of the Torah? And if we’re OK separating the Torah, why not separate it all the way down to the five books of the Pentateuch, and the many other chapters of the Tanakh? Judaism is rich in numerology, but three doesn’t seem particularly emphasized; we can find trinities, but we can also find many other division of the world that aren’t triune. To say that Judaism is tripartite seems ad hoc.

I guess this is all just to say that three has some properties that make it stand out without needing to appeal to brain structure. Any time we have two things, we can get to three by counting, “thing one, thing two, the relationship between them”. That doesn’t seem to depend on the shape of our brains.

This is far less complex as a 3 layer burrito. Causality was a thought process. One thought intriguingly lightening up another room of already valuable ideas. Still the process of delving into such realms of Spirit, Mind, and Holy Father are somewhat innate in those arriving at that point. It seems as though suffering doesn’t get over lapped because thing’s are as is, and cannot be otherwise. Although something inherently in our mind tells me truth towards what’s publicly dictating otherwise, I still cannot for the sake of me explain to all what’s going to happen, or is in other words already happening. Reality believed it was applicable to delve into more complex psychological feats as to reach a means to an end. But it seems ends and odds have already in some other words been met ages ago. Still with no distinct casual feat, or limitation as to what’s the effect? We can surely be aware that we still existence even inherently outside our own minds for some fabrication isn’t going to be justified according to what life agrees with?

'“These are the words of the One who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven lamps of gold:
2 I know all your ways, your toil and your fortitude. I know you cannot endure evil men; you have put to the proof those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3 Fortitude you have; you have borne up in my cause and never flagged. 4 But I have this against you: you have lost your early love. 5 Think from what a height you have fallen; repent, and do as you once did. Otherwise, if you do not repent, I shall come to you and remove your lamp from its place. 6 Yet you have this in your favor: you hate the practices of the Nicolaitians, as I do. 7 Hear, you who have ears to hear, what the Spirit says to the churches! To him who is victorious I will give the right to eat from the tree of life that stands in the Garden of God.”

8-[ :-"

No, thank you, Carleas.

I think that tripartite metaphors like I cited result from a primal ontological intuition:
"The Tao gives birth to One.
One gives birth to Two.
Two gives birth to Three.
Three gives birth to all things. [Tao 42]

The tetractys, a Pythagorean mystical symbol which is a triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and four points in each row, represents the same intuition. It’s the idea based on perceptual gestalt that the undifferentiated presence which is being as a whole must be divided into two to be experienced and that that triad is the ineluctable basis for all more complex experiences.

The divine trinities of the various religions are metaphors for this most basic perceptual experience. There is conceptual beauty and power in a theory or theology that can be expressed in a tripartite structure because it recapitulates and thus is validated by the simplest elements of perception.

I think the trinities I identified are more fundamental to the religions I cited than you acknowledged. And I only cited a few examples. There are many more. As far as the psychologists, no doubt MacLean was influenced by Freud and the division of the brain into the forebrain, midbrain and hindbrain was well known to them both. But, that that tripartite imposition of structure on the brain “makes sense” validates my proposition. It makes sense because it is like the gestalt of our most fundamental sensory perception.

Thanks for the considerate responses. The more I read the more I tend to believe that we make the gods in our own image, from our ways of seeing. This does not imply that the gods are not real or that our perspective invalidates their messages. They are effective because Their messages are as we are, otherwise we would have no conscious way of validating what we perceive to be real. Brain structures do control what can be thought or imagined. In their interactions are composed our dreams and desires.

Pneumatic-Coma,
“Coleridge explains metaphysics
To the nation;
I wish he would explain
His explanation.”—Byron

so, is it Jesus, God or the Holy Spirit that is the reptile brain?
And in the other religions, which is the counterpart to the reptile brain?

And which part of the brain is Mary for Catholics?

I’d like to make it clear if I haven’t already that to me the Triune brain idea is a metaphor for how brain structures reflect the process of evolution. Cognitive science has discovered that the conceptual systems used in the world’s languages make use of a relatively small number of basic image schemas. Body-based image schemas are among the sources of the forms of conceptual metaphor including religious or spiritual narratives and theological systems.

I did suggest that the tendency to see things in trinities may have a basis in embodied perceptual experience. I agree with Carleas that the first test of that hypothesis is whether the Trinity phenomenon occurs cross-culturally. That doesn’t mean that it has to be the only way that the Sacred is conceptualized or even the dominant way.

Even early Christianity was not trinitarian as evidenced by the New Testament. The earliest followers of Jesus were strict monotheists. Yet trinitarian formulae are present in the New Testament texts with little or no theological elaboration. Explicit trinitarian theology came later when the elements of the Christian gospel were subjected to analysis in terms of Greek philosophical categories.

There certainly are trinities, but there are also dualities and monisms. I am sure there are likely divisions into four also. I think some native american groups did this, perhaps based on directions. It is very likely that small integers will come up again and again because they give a good handle on things. Easy to remember, convenient. And also, perhaps, more likely to be metaphysically correct. It’s just when I read that the Trinity in Christianity is or may be coupled to the Trinity in the brain, it just doesn’t work for me. I can see God as superego and perhaps Jesus as the mammalian limbic system. But, then onthe other hand Jesus has issues with the limbic system. You won’t find many mammals turning the other cheek unless they are dealing with their young or submitting. For example, and there are others. Also the Trinity in Christianity has always struck me as something that just developed via so many damn voices getting a say. Hey, look, we have these three metaphysical entities, let’s say they are all the same, though also separate, and we decided this at the point in time where there were three, though Catholics kind of have four. Not that Mary made it into Es spiritus sancti etc. But in the hearts of Catholics she’s much more important that the Holy Ghost. I don’t see any schema that works well with the reptile system. I can see it as Hell, mammalian brain as life on earth and the human additions in the brain as Heaven. Though the mammalian brain as earthly life feels a bit sketchy to me.

I don’t see the parallels working with Taoism very well, though there are a couple of Trinities in Taoism. I suspect this has nothing to do with the Triune brain, which is a theory that is at best controversial these days, even just on the brain side of things.

Hinduism could have just about any number attibuted to it. But certainly two and three and one. Shiva Parvati and Brahma or Vishnu as the one over their two making a three. But you can also have two alone or one alone.

The ten thousand things.

Islam has a bunch of key numbers…
criticalmuslim.com/issues/10-se … ic-numbers

A case can be made for three in confucism, but then also for other numbers.

If the parallels were clearer between the purviews of the various brain sections and specific spiritual counterparts, then I could go along with the Triune brain thing.

But even Taoism which is very strongly three works very nicely with brain halves and the unified brain. Right brain Yin, Left Brain Yang, unified brain being one, in any case. Which is not to say I think that Yin and Yang are guided by our bicameral brain structure and should be the actual model, it’s more like, the small numbers are going to be the first ones we use to systematize, and we will start seeing Triune brains if we want to in systems that can be seen as three in other ways and as numbers other than three also.

Thanks, Karpel Tunnel
I used the metaphor of the Eden story because it fit so well to describe operations of a triune brain. It is not necessary to find such metaphors in comparative religions or other systems of thought. As you note Catholic theology is more about a quadrinity than about a trinity. This is possible because of a human need to express the Godhead in terms of all human relationships–mother, father, son, etc. It’s just that, for me, the trinity is a prime example of how brains work. Other numbers have been used to express the relationship between human evolutionary experiences and possible mental content. For the number three, as Felix noted, the modern secular metaphor is the computer, a mechanical brain. We create what we are; it could not be otherwise. From the experiences with senses, we have created radio, photograph, motion pictures, etc. etc.

Yeah, CG Jung thought that the Trinity could be represented as a mandela that is imbalanced which suggests a repressed fourth element that if acknowledged would more accurately represent God as a quaternity. He said the orthodox Christian formula was not complete because the evil principal is absent and that that led to the “awkward existence of the devil on his own”.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triquetra

Interesting! I do think Jung surpassed Freud in describing the content of the subconscious mind. Was Jung aware of the triquetra? Probably so–Or aware of Odin’s symbol of trinity.
MacLean doesn’t seem to be into the religious or pagan implications of the three brains. He merely suggests how they evolved and how they continue to think.

More trinities:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4070479/

Thanks, Felix.

“I look through the eye, not with it.”—William Blake

Neuroscientists still refer to the human brain as having a tripartite structure, including a proto-reptilian brain, a paleo-mammalian brain, and a neocortex. Whether this has anything to do with the so called “magic of threes” phenomenon and whether that “magic” has something to do with the Christian Trinity, I don’t know.

But, there are myriad instances of three-magical self-validation. Even jokes typically use the rule of three to set up a pattern followed by a subversive surprise the punchline. In journalism two is a fluke a third time is a trend. So there are a lot of trinities going on even outside of the world religions.

I think it makes sense to look for the origin of metaphors including this one in our embodied experience. So I suspect that something in Christian experience is the origin of the symbol of the Christian trinity.

But before they arrived at the divine Trinity, Christians were trying to figure out the relationship of Jesus of Nazareth to God. That debate went on for four centuries before they came up with the doctrine of the Trinity. When Trinitarian Christians read the Bible they see the Trinity in the text. But Unitarian Christians don’t. Why do you suppose that is?

Guys, the Triune brain is generally NOT accepted these days…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_br … _the_model
you can see this in the opening paragraph and then see some of the details under Status of the Model.
It is a nice, neat thing that is fairly easy to remember and so it’s a meme that has fastened, but neuroscience has gone past it.
Jokes coming in threes has to do with 1 not being a pattern 2 makes the pattern, and now the audience is in on the joke, so their is anticipate, drama. I know this from performing in improv and humor writing. But even there 2 can work in great scenes and jokes and four also. It is not about our not at all neatly or perhaps even at all triune brain. It’s not like the reptile brain notices the first and the mammalian brain the second instance, etc.
I suspect that unitarians don’t see the Trinity because it isn’t there, or better put, there is room for coming up with a wide range of number based models for C. The Bible is radically ad hoc. More so than most scriptures, perhaps all of the large religion texts. Given that C has more Bible than the Jewish ‘bible’ it is only more so. It a too many cooks spoil the broth concoction. And this concocting went on after all the pieces were gathered.
Small integers are going to be found if we go looking for them. We can find twos in all religions. Is that because we have a Triune brain or a bicameral one. Or is it because we have two sexes. Or is it because we are bilaterally symetrical. Or it is because it is a really neat aesthetically clear divide. We like dividing into opposites. It is hard to explain using the number one. Though the presocratics tended to be monists, making everying fire or water, etc.
We wnat simple models. And we have played around with the small integers, because those will be memes that most people can follow. Not because their brains are divided into some small integer, but because small integers are easier to remember than large ones. It gives us a handle.
I don’t think Freud’s model works with the Triune brain. None of those systems works well as a match for the different, supposedly discrete, parts of the brain. Yes, one could make the ID the reptile brain, but much of the unconscious id stuff is really rather conceptual. Some parts of the neocortex are like the superego, but then others are not. And I don’t think the limbic system works as the ego. And the ID has a lot of limbic qualities.

Oh I agree with you. What interests me is the rule of three, why it works and whether it isn’t the principle that makes both the tripartite brain and the divine Trinity and other trinities like Freud’s structure of the psyche, Newton’s three laws of motion, the three acts of a play, the musical triad, etc. ad infinitum seem valid. The ancients knew of the rule of 3 and often employed it in their texts.

That the rule of three is based on a small, easily remembered number is insufficient evidence for disclaiming its metaphoric significance. As for the brain’s evolution, finding the neocortex in reptile brains only supports the idea of three in one, with the neocortex subordinate in that condition to the dominant brain
area. I agree, Karpel Tunnel, that one should be wary of assigning ideas to aspects of brain to topography. Ideas, at the ontological level amount to incentives for certain types of thinking. It is through the neo-cortexial filter that these impulses become types of conscious ideas.

To me if reptiles have neocortex we cannot call the neocortex a not-reptile part of the brain. I would also be very wary of saying which part of the brain is dominant in us or reptiles. All the brains functions are inter causal and while I may tell myself it was my neocortex or my having thought somethign through, I generally fnd later that unconscious/emotional factors were the ones that swayed me. And ones that seem better assigned to other parts of the brain , IF we are going to view this part alone having control at a given time on a given thing. Or that they function like discrete parts in us or them. Further I just don’t see the parallels working out literally or metaphorically, and certainly not widely. And then why not two for the bicameral brain. You can actually separate those two parts and have a two brain personality.

I am not quite sure what you mean by metaphoric significance, as opposed to literal.

As far as my suggetion having insufficient evidence, I don’t really see much evidence for the triune brain, which is no longer considered in neuroscience to be a good model, but i can see an interpretative neatness that might be appealing. I think we’d be left with assigning the HOly Spirit to the reptile brain and that just doesn’t work for me. I have similar issues with many other ways the analogy would work in other religions and models.

I am not saying it isn’t true, but I don’t see much to go on, either interpretation wise or via science.

I think the case gets stronger with bicameral brain/mind, where at least some relatively good fits are out there, like Yin Yang. But I also feel pretty skeptical about that.

In pagan religions with their many gods, perhaps we would find brain parallels, and the types of functions found in what got called the reptile brain can be the qualities of deities, since the pagans are not so into all that transcendent perfection and holiness.

Three might come from father, mother, child. Three might come from subject, object, phenomenon or subject, object, relation. IOW social fundamentals with family. Or experiential fundamental. I think these fit just as well or better with, for example, the Trinity.

Thanks, Karpel Tunnel.
I do not believe MacLean’s tripartite brain theory can be used to describe the Christian trinity or similar religious trinities. It’s not a one size fits all theory.It does, however describe the pre-Christian Adam and Eve story as well as possible parts of the human psyche in action. Sperry’s right brain/left brain theory requires a third “brain” to describe drives and instincts. By metaphoric significance I refer to physical underpinnings of the stated metaphor.
According to Julian Jaynes the bicameral brain broke down sometime within the past two thousand years. Added to the Gods speak/humans hear was Consciousness of Self or I hear and think. IMHO, yin and yang are incomplete descriptions for physical/mental reality. Without the I they are incomplete.