Desirability of religion and the non-cognitive function of misbeliefs

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Desirability of religion and the non-cognitive
function of misbeliefs

• Konrad Talmont-Kaminski Marie Curie-Sklodowska
  U., Poland

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Background

• Philosopher of science
• Investigating superstitious, magical and
  religious beliefs and practices
• As cognitive, evolved phenomena
• Their relation to science and human rationality
• PhD from Monash Uni, Australia
• Teaching in Lublin, Poland
• Fellowship at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for
  Evolution and Cognition Research

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Background

• Two developments make my approach possible
• The cognitive turn
• 1960s onwards
• Positing mental mechanisms to explain behaviour
• Applied to religious superstitious practices
• Evolutionary explanations of human behaviour
• 1970s onwards
• Ultimate vs. proximate explanations
• Behaviours as adaptive, byproducts, etc.
• Cultural as well as genetic evolution
• Applied to religious superstitious practices

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Background

• Cognitive Science of Religion
• Pascal Boyer, Justin Barrett
• Religion as byproduct
• Evolutionary psychology
• Massive modularity
• Dual-process accounts of reasoning
• Other approaches exist
• Approach pursued by me
• Religion as a cultural adaptation that
  exapts/recruits existing cognitive byproducts
• Dual inheritance theory
• Bounded rationality theory

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Plan

• How can misbeliefs be adaptive?
• In what ways can misbeliefs be protected?
• What makes certain misbeliefs plausible?
• Why are some misbeliefs potentially desirable?
• What effect does investigating misbeliefs have?

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Adaptive misbeliefs

• Misbeliefs can motivate adaptive behaviour
• Fear of Fri 13th leads to avoiding train crash
• Coincidental
• Only significant if systematic
• Possible systematic examples
• Magical contagion
• Religion

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Adaptive misbeliefs

• Magical Contagion (Paul Rozin)
• Cardigan example (Bruce Hood)
• Fear of catching evil
• Invisible vehicles of contagion passed by contact
• Very useful given bacteria viruses
• False explanation, partly true (overgeneralised)
  correlation
• Role of explanation?
• Ideas of magical contagion motivate behaviour
• Ideas of magical contagion post hoc explanation
  of behaviour
• Studied extensively by Paul Rozin
• Misbelief explained as byproduct of cognitive
  heuristic

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Adaptive misbeliefs

• McKay and Dennett, BBS 32.6 (2009)
• The boy who cried wolf problem
• Misbelief in the face of counterevidence
• Misbelief unstable due to counterevidence
• Can not be systematically adaptive
• Disproved misbeliefs
• Rejected
• Reinterpreted
• Contagion example
• Belief that you can catch evil not adaptive
• But, belief in contagion in general is

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Protecting misbeliefs

• Misbeliefs can be protected against
  counterevidence
• Talmont-Kaminski, BBS 32.6 Teorema 28.3 (2009)
• Protected misbeliefs stable
• Can still motivate behaviour
• Three ways to protect misbeliefs
• Content
• Social context
• Methodological context

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Protecting misbeliefs

• Content of stable misbeliefs
• Avoid content in direct conflict with experience
• Claim epistemic impediments
• Invisibility ghosts, Christian god
• Shyness faeries
• Distant locale dragons, Olympic gods
• Shape-shifting Olympic gods
• Vagueness New Age beliefs
• Semi-propositional content (Sperber)
• Holy Trinity
• Apparent problem
• Belief in the face of the lack of evidence

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Protecting misbeliefs

• Social context of misbeliefs
• Make investigation of misbeliefs socially
  unacceptable
• The sacred religious and magical beliefs
• Religious relics
• Respecting religious beliefs above other beliefs
• Disparage curiosity
• Oppose rational criticism
• Problem
• Stultifies progress

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Protecting misbeliefs

• Methodological context of misbeliefs
• Related to social context
• Limit development of science
• Scientific theories
• Scientific methods/equipment
• Scientific attitudes
• Problem
• Limited access to science
• Not such an issue traditionally

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Plausible misbeliefs

• Why believe without evidence?
• Not really a problem
• Only problem with perfectly rational beings
• Boundedly rational beings will have systematic
  biases
• Why believe without evidence the things we do?
• Primarily Due to the particularities of human
  cognitive system
• Due to the particular heuristics humans use
• Secondarily Due to function of the beliefs

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Plausible misbeliefs

• By-products of cognitive heuristics
• Type I errors (Skinner)
• Error Management Theory (Haselton)
• Smoke alarm principle
• Magical contagion (Rozin)
• Contagion heuristic
• Cognitive science of religion
• Minimally counterintuitive concepts (Boyer)
• Hyperactive agency detection device (Guthrie)
• Enormous scope for further empirical research

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Desirability of misbeliefs

• What, if anything, is the function of misbeliefs?
• Not to accurately represent the world
• Protecting against disconfirmation ensures truth
  of a belief is coincidental
• Allows noncognitive functions to determine
  popularity of belief
• Function must depend upon the behaviour motivated
  by the belief

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Desirability of misbeliefs

• Several possibilities
• Adaptive for individuals
• Costly-signalling (Sosis)
• Adaptive for groups
• Prosocial behaviour (D. S. Wilson)
• Adaptive for beliefs
• Memetic virus (Dawkins, Blackmore)
• Not directly functional
• Simply a byproduct (Boyer)

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Desirability of misbeliefs

• Which thesis about function is correct?
• Need to investigate religion to find out
• Answer may be complex
• Superstitions byproducts
• Religions prosocial exaptations (ancestral
  traits?)
• Is religion is something desirable for us?
• Universally assumed by religious individuals
• Dennetts Belief in belief
• Need to investigate religion to find out
• Not necessarily even if an individual-level
  adaptation
• Dennetts question Who thinks that their goal in
  life is to have as many kids as possible?
• Issue is somewhat more complex, of course

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Still, Dennett has a point
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Investigating misbeliefs

• Even if religious is desirable
• There is a problem
• Investigation of religion
• Requires scientific attitude
• Maintaining positive effects of religious claims
• Requires maintaining belief in those claims
• Which requires protecting those beliefs
• Investigation of religion undermines its function
• Even if that function happens to be individually
  desirable
• But to determine if religion is desirable we must
  investigate it

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Thank you

• Konrad Talmont-Kaminskikonrad_at_talmont.comlublin.
  academia.edu/KonradTalmontKaminski
• McKay Dennett, Evolution of Misbelief, BBS 32.6
  (2009)
• Talmont-Kaminski, Effective untestability and
  bounded rationality help in seeing religion as
  adaptive misbelief, BBS 32.6 (2009)
• Talmont-Kaminski, Fixation of superstitious
  beliefs, Teorema 28.3 (2009)