Mountains of the Mind: How we get depth from flatness

In his short life as a Catholic priest in the nineteenth century, wrestling with the twin peaks of faith and doubt, the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote: 'O the mind, mind has mountains'. He lived a century and a half before cognitive, evolutionary and social psychologists came up with a very different reading of the contours of our mental landscape: the mind is flat. According to the behavioural scientist Nick Chater, writing in 2018, 'There are no mental depths to plumb'.If this is so, many of our cherished assumptions are thrown into doubt: our sense of self, consciousness, free will and certainty about what we think we know. Where does that leave our pride in independence of thought, the reliability of memory, the impartiality of reason, the promise of progress, the appliance of science, even our belief in belief itself?In a healthier place, say flat mind theorists. It pays to know our own mind, its peaks and troughs. Hopkins would agree. As he wrote in his journal, 'What you look hard at seems to look hard at you'.It is time to journey into the mountains.