By: Antonio Chávez
hnc.correo @ gmail.com
Next August will take place in Canada the annual meeting (2010) of the International Association of Cognitive Science of Religion (IACSR in English), within the framework of twentieth world congress of the International Association for History of Religions (IAHR). Some of the papers that I find interesting (actually all are) is that of Steven Horst * " What insights? What is dualism? "and Afzal Upal" effect the minimum counterintuitive seen based on context. " Then translate their abstracts (not yet available the full articles.) After each comment.
• Steven Horst: "What insights? What dualism? "
Proponents of Cognitive Science of Religion (CCR) argued that the dualism and belief in non-material agents are" intuitive "(Bloom, Guthrie) or" counterintuitive "(Boyer, Barrett .) However, these claims require further philosophical scrutiny only in relation to what is meant by 'dualism' 'Belief' and '(anti-) intuitive. "
Bloom's argument is based on claims of developmental psychologists on "nuclear systems of knowledge" for objects and agency, exploiting the fact that these systems are dissociable: the agent detection system can be activated without the system object is activated. (This seems consonant with the explanation pioneer Guthrie.) In fact, children can learn the additional skills of triangulation of humans and animals through the two systems. In the explanation of Bloom and Guthrie, the ability to conceive without a body agents should not be counterintuitive or cause cognitive dissonance, at least one stage early development. This is what supports the claim that we are "innate dualists." But the argument does not hold true dualistic vision (one which states that agents are distinct from the bodies), and to think without thinking agents falls short bodies to think no-body-servants, much less as "thinking substance but discontinuous "(But unextended thinking Substance ).
Boyer and Barrett suggest that agents disembodied concepts arise naturally when our typical patterns of Theory of Mind and Intuitive Biology (folk biology) come into contact with our ability to alter the parameters of these schemes to form beliefs minimally counterintuitive as' minds without bodies. " Such concepts are much closer to truly be regarded as "dualistic", though of course not contain all the elements of a formal dualistic metaphysics expressed by Descartes. They are "counterintuitive" at least in the sense established by Boyer, but you could argue that they are "intuitive" in the sense that human minds are highly biased towards train them and accept them.
real competition of these two explanations may depend on the details of the development of basic cognitive schemas as the core agency and the Theory of Mind. For example, proponents of the Core Agency (Spelke, Carey, Wynn) argue that this can be found as early in development as we can verify reliably, while the most common criterion for the theory of mind (the false belief test) is not last until the age of three years. This suggests that the Theory of Mind may emerge later, perhaps built on a more primitive core of the agency system that is shared with many other species. If this is the case, then the two arguments may actually snapshots of different stages of development: the bloom early, before the development of theory of mind or intuitive biology. In this phase, agency systems and of objects can be fully differentiated and activated separately. The theory of Boyer and Barrett may reflect a later stage of development, in which schemes for humans and animals have come to incorporate standards of objectivity and agency. At this stage, think of ghosts or gods as "people without bodies" can be considered truly counterintuitive in cognitively stimulating as Boyer suggests. ***
On the first presentation, I personally am skeptical of what they repeatedly insist philosophers as "philosophically correct" on the concepts, in this case employing Bloom, 'dualism '. In fact, if we DRAE be based on the definitive Bloom should not even mentioned that word. However, as he The Edge said in discussing the Innate Dualism " The dualism that I discuss is that the soul-which contains the memories, desires, and consciousness is immaterial, is distinct from body. This is the view of René Descartes, but it is also expressed by Plato, Thomas Aquinas and Augustine, as well as many other . "So I am not clear why dualism" right "Horst is required to be satisfied. Further, I believe it would be problematic if not unnecessary, to expect that infant cognition here is perfectly equivalent to how philosophers define adults 'dualism'. Also, I do not see how else to be called to the fact that a young child relates to "his" brain as "their" toys and even an adult, referring similarly to the "substance discontinuous" as "his "car or" his "house. The brain and / or body do seem to innately understood as something different from the emotions and desires (the "mind").
Horst's suggestion on the two cognitive stages seems likely to change quite plausible. I have suggested previously that the core of the agency is ultimately the detection of biological motion, whereas infants seen in just 48 hours old. It does not seem possible to go backwards in human child development to identify other nuclear based mechanism, in addition this has been identified in other animals. It seems, in effect, that there is a biological motion sequence → ToM → agency that actually determines or skewed to human cognition to intuit the contents inadvertently mental "especially emotional, as something different, not cognitive dissonance in infants and when they sensed identically, at least viewed as something Special as adults, with or without cognitive dissonance. The concept of mind-disembodied is intuitive enough agreeing to Guthrie, but be that as explicit attributes telepathy, telekinesis or transcendence in time / space, which is nothing but the "soul" in religious terms, are products development of more sophisticated cognitive abilities and later in child development, not only thanks to the Theory of Mind. Very interesting and timely here is what Bloom said in The Edge " the question of the immaterial soul concerns the future, your future and the future of your loved ones '.
Indeed, the "soul" as a religious concept is not possible without some sense of the future (not present in infants up to 2-4 years) without being able to visualize scenes and imaginary situations in which we represent the dead agent ( this even still after 6-7 years of age). This concept "soul", its easy learning and cultural acceptance is possible not only because our own cognition tends to fix violations in the memory of what we expect on the behavior of agents (eg the narrative of a "mind "going through walls at will or moving objects without physical body captures the attention and memory) it's about what this next paper, but additionally but decisively, because we have Mental Time Travel (MTT) (and therefore also have suggested, according to Tulving , counterintuitive that it is possible due to its ability of representational transespaciotemporalidad agent, who is short, a recombination of emotions, memories, planning, and abstraction).
Afzal Upal • "The effect of minimum counterintuitive seen from the context"
The finding that minimally counterintuitive concepts are remembered better than the intuitive and maximally counterintuitive that has been important for many cognitive scientists of religion, who have used it to explain the pervasiveness of the concepts minimally counterintuitive in religious beliefs throughout the world. Attempts to account for the benefits of minimally memorability of counterintuitive concepts can be divided into two classes. The first approach advocated in (J. Barrett & Nyhof 2001, Boyer 1994, Boyer & Ramble 2001) and most clearly articulated by Barrett (JL Barrett 2008) only emphasizes the psychological aspects of minimally counterintuitive concepts and is expressed in terms of a modular view of mind. The second approach presented in (Upal 2005; Upal, Gonce, Tweney & Slone 2007) is minimally counterintuitive concepts and ideas that violate people's expectations and emphasizes the role of the context to make them memorable. While the second approach emphasizes the role played by the context, I refer to as the contextual approach and the first approach and the conceptual. Both are similar in many ways. Both are under the general epidemiology of beliefs developed by (Sperber 1996) that focuses on exploring the competition between ideas to understand why certain representations may spread and become cultural. Both approaches also assume that the best evocation minimally counterintuitive concepts is the product of evolutionary processes that result in people having a memory architecture that causes minimally counterintuitive concepts are remembered better than other types of concepts. Both approaches also share the goal of developing a cognitive model of learning and memory in humans concepts, aimed at processing information, which can account for the counterintuitive effect of the minimum. I will develop the two approaches noting the many similarities and differences between them and discuss a range of influence of experimental studies on these issues. ***
This issue has been addressed previously translating an entire article about it. Indeed, there is mention of the distinction made by philosopher McCauley:
"between natural cognition of maturity (ie, the natural product of human growth - early developed, highly automatic and fluent, and low cultural variation) and cognition practiced natural (also automatic and fluent, but it requires special devices and explicit instruction, and high intra-and inter-cultural variation). Intuitive cognition is invariably the first type. "
Accordingly, the counter-part the second kind, and as is evident, involves the influence of context. But I think the counter-cultural and spread covers two aspects: modularity both cognitive and environmental influences. And I think the identity of the two aspects is formed by the MTT. That is, minimally counterintuitive concepts may be as intuitive as the cognitive architecture itself, just the MTT, has a default extra-ordinary nature . Going back to what said above, eg single evocation of memories, something unseen but active at all times, means reversing the arrow of time in reference to the view of time in scientific terms. Make plans for tomorrow, past or in the next 10 years obviously means jumping in time, whether or not that was actually made our plans when the real time comes. If we are to characterize the supernatural beings as counterintuitive, counterfactual or directly as opposed to scientifically guided experience, eg contrary to natural law (as the arrow of time), then these terms can be characterized to own human cognition, by default, as opposed to that experience.
is that, as I said elsewhere: more surprising than the fact that the earth appears flat in spite of astronomy and geometry (the same way that simply do not perceive especiotemporal curvature, but it is provable), is the fact that we can form beliefs about mental content actually inaccessible to someone, or the sudden death of a loved one triggers the feeling of grief over what is nothing but a corpse incapable to perceive our empathy. More complex than simply not able to perceive something but can prove exists outside our heads, is that although we prove (scientifically) that a family has no real presence or mind can no longer such cognitive-emotional mechanisms are triggered or yes, and this would say that largely out of cognitive dissonance. From a scientific perspective this is counterfactual and yet this is the default operation of our cognition. Clear is that in principle, she does not know the scientific or philosophically "correct" but that is adaptive and probabilistic, although, paradoxically, allow the actual construction of scientific methodology. The idea then is that it is an issue strongly dependent on the context that both counter-cultural prosperity and scientific objectivism, since neither is the same as the 'reflex sympathetic' to the dead that the concept of Chi, the same way that knowledge science is progressive and cumulative. In an initial state of psychological development, an agent with whom you have an involvement empathy is understood as having feelings even though dead, and this without causing any discomfort or cognitive dissonance, while in an adult the accumulated scientific knowledge acquisition may involve a real cognitive effort of having to be consciously modulating the teleological intuitions by example.
counterintuitive We saw that the 'strict' Boyer & Barrett (ideas that contradict the concepts / expectations innate) could belong to a later stage of cognitive development, I point it as dependent on the appearance of MTT, already seen as intrinsically counterfactual . Therefore, the contextual approach counterintuitive fact by Upsal also be possible only with this capability, while such an approach is made to interact with external stimulants contraintuición (eg acquisition of beliefs that allow to form new potentially counterintuitive metarepresentational degrees).
certainly and finally, it remains intriguing that attention and memory focus on the content counterintuitive an idea or a story, which is what ultimately causes his success and cultural persistence, generation after generation. Intriguing because in the end, this effect is a natural consequence of how our cognition operates, therefore, everything defined as counterintuitive is certainly intuitive. At least, those definitions seem to now be useful to the cognitive study of religion, but may be purely illusory.
(*) the time was available in the English abstract is here fully translated. Now I could only locate a shorter version yet.
Related Topics:
- MINIMUM COUNTERINTUITIVE
- ANIMISM, FOLK BIOLOGY AND BIOLOGICAL DISPOSITION OF MOTION
- THE COUNTERINTUITIVE (INTUITIVE) AND THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION
- "RELIGION IS NATURAL?
- MENTAL JOURNEY IN TIME ('MENTAL TIME TRAVEL') AND RELIGIOUS COGNITION
- Mental Time Travel, Agency, and the origin of religion
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